Life With The Campbells

We’ve been through richer and poorer. The sickness and the health. I guess it stands to reason, then, that since most of our 42 years together have been “better,” that it was about time for the “worse.” And the “worse” just came right out and hit us over the head.

It was like this. I thought that since we live in Ohio, surrounded by large, interesting cities, we might want to spend the day and night in one of them. See the sights. Visit a museum or two. And top the whole day off with dinner in some gourmet retreat, followed by a romantic night in a B and B.

I have always had fantasies about B and B’s. And during our marriage, we have stayed in hundreds of them. Well, maybe forty or so. And despite the fact that perhaps two of them were as I imagined, I have doggedly continued to make reservations, always hopeful that the room with the fireplace that works, the real antique furniture, the little basket of cheese and wine, and the beauty of the bedrooms in Architectural Digest—that this room exists in an inn somewhere.

So I did what we all do. I went on the internet. And I trusted the pictures of the little hotel (I am not naming names. After all, this isn’t an expose.) And I had no idea that the neighborhood that it was in was what the spin doctors dub “transitional.” It just looked charming to me.

So when we got to the hotel, and the front door was locked tight, I should have known. After we rang the doorbell to no avail, I should have known. When I feared for my valuables as gangs of what looked like cast members from “The Wire” walked past, I should have known. But hope springs eternal.

Finally, after calling the “innkeeper” on my cell phone, they sent someone over to open the door. She probably came over from the nice neighborhood where she lived. It took that long. She let us into the “hotel,” where there was not a single human being in the building, the lights were all off, and as far as we could tell, there were no other “guests.” She showed us to our room, which did indeed have antiques.

The rest of the evening was memorable. Rather than recount, I will just include here for all of you the email that I sent to the “innkeeper” the following afternoon:

My name is Molly Campbell. I booked a reservation to stay at your hotel for last night, May 8. It was our 42nd wedding anniversary. We chose your hotel based on your lovely web site. I would like to tell you just why I would like a refund:

1. The Hotel was locked tight, and we had to wait on the doorstep for twenty minutes before we realized that no one was in the building. When I called you, you mentioned that you had left me a message. However, I gave you my land line number when making the reservation, so we did not get that message, as we were traveling.
2. When your employee finally appeared to show us the room, we realized that the building was completely empty—no staff members, no lights on downstairs, and no other tenants. It was creepy.
3. When we drove down the incredibly narrow alleyway after dinner to return to the room, we worried that there were no noticeable lights on in the parking area, and we had to walk past construction equipment down a dark passageway to get back to the front of the hotel—once again completely empty.
4. In our room, we discovered that there was no light working in the bathroom, only the fan. So taking a shower was completely out of the question. I had to use the light on my Kindle to see in there, and it was not pleasant.
5. There were no shades on the upper windows, and so the lights from the street shone into the room. Not enough to light the bathroom, however. But just enough to make me realize that sleep would be impossible.
6. My husband spent twenty minutes with the instruction manual, trying to get the television to go on, to no avail.
7. Finally, we decided that to actually try to spend the night in the room would be an exercise in futility, so we drove home at ten last night, STILL IN OUR PAJAMAS.

I am happy to report that we got a refund. I am not so happy to tell you that I have given up on my romantic fantasy about Bed and Breakfast Inns.

Does Motel 6 really leave the light on for you?

I have been operating this blog for about four years. I, like all bloggers in the beginning, was completely obsessed with how many people were actually looking at my site. I went to the “blog statistics” site almost hourly, and was alternately thrilled or depressed about my numbers. This lasted for a few months, and then I got on with things.

It occurred to me recently that I now have absolutely no idea if anyone reads my blog. I blithely publish my posts, and then get on Twitter or Facebook to tell everyone what I am wearing. So I thought that it might be a good idea to check to see just how popular I have become in four years of blogging.

So I logged on to the “analytics” site that I subscribe to. I guess that they, like everybody else, upgrade their site periodically, so it looked completely different to me than it did four years ago. But I was immediately struck with how much my readership had changed over the years. So I called out excitedly to my husband.

ME: Hey, guess what? I am incredibly famous now, and I didn’t even know it!

HIM: Huh?

ME: OMG. Can you believe this? Over 300,000 people visited my site last year! And even more exciting, I have fans ALL OVER THE WORLD.

HIM: What are you talking about?

ME: Well, for starters, I had about two hundred thousand readers in India!

HIM: India? Are you thinking of Indiana?

ME: No! It says right here that I have fans by the thousands in India. OMG. And apparently they find me hilarious in Bangladesh. I have three thousand readers there…

HIM: No way. People in Bangladesh have much more on their minds than to read your blog about exfoliating and the fact that you now have chin hair.

ME: The numbers don’t lie. Gee, maybe I should start charging for guest posts.

HIM: (coming over to my desk and reading over my shoulder) You know, you should take a course in reading graphs and spreadsheets. Actually, you should take a course in reading, period. That chart you are looking at is the EXAMPLE. Scroll down the page—yeah, here are your stats.

ME: Oh.

So while my popularity has grown, I am very disappointed in all of you out there in India and Bangladesh.

For those of you who are regular readers of my blog (and I think there are at least ten of you), you know that I am not to be taken seriously. Occasionally, I am semi-serious. So before you go any further, please take note of this. Nutritionists, scientists, Stephen Hawking, and Dr. Oz, if you are going to read any further, I really don’t solicit comments from you and your colleagues.

That said, I want to tell you about some research I have noticed on the web recently. According to many health and diet gurus who are desperately concerned about the morbidly obese, oh, and I guess the rest of us schlubs, the reason we all have spare tires and worse is due to carbohydrates. For those of you in my group of ten faithful readers who need a definition, a carb (we are very chummy, so I can abbreviate) is anything that converts to sugar in your bloodstream. This means that a carb is basically anything worth eating.

Carbs are in things like bread, pasta, fruit, wine, beer, desserts, and perhaps toothpaste. Food without carbs is the stuff that Dr. Atkins loved: meat, cheese, eggs, and butter, with some vegetables thrown in. But not corn.

Apparently, people who want to live long and healthy lives are now eschewing (but not chewing) anything with carbs in it. There is all kinds of research involving lipids, blood pressure, brown vs. white fat (this is not a racist thing, believe me), and Spanx, to indicate that we should not ever eat carbs again.

I respect all these scientists who are now leading colorless lives, void of any pleasure other than watching sports on TV and having sex–I do. But I have to represent all of us out here in the heartland (no pun intended) who are approaching old age. Here is our position: We do not want to live to be one hundred. “Hundredaires” are often lonely. Their friends and family have died, probably because they ate cake and drank beer. So these centenarians live most likely in nursing homes, cared for by nurse aids with Cheeto dust on their hands. These oldsters spend their days rolling around in wheelchairs and being addressed as “honey.”

Do you aspire to this? I don’t. Do you just love cake? I do. Is your life enhanced not only by sex and television, but also by the occasional beer with nachos? Mine is.

So don’t worry too much about carbs. If you need to lose weight, up your exercise, and just have cake and beer on Saturdays. Stop the fear and dread of carbohydrates. You will have a happy life, and if you are lucky, you and your friends will all die during the same decade.

Once upon a time, there was a spotted dog whom no one seemed to want. Even the woman and her daughter, looking for a dog that day, overlooked her. But the people at the shelter convinced them to take her home, so they did.

That was eleven years ago, and that spotty dog was very good, very loving, and very strong. She helped the woman and her daughter deal with some pretty heavy emotional things, and she gave them something happy to hold onto during hard times.

This dog never did a bad thing. She was devoted to her “mother,” and she learned everything that was asked of her. She helped her “father” recover from a stroke. She put up with five cats who liked to rub against her, and even though she hated it, she let them. She laid by the sliding glass doors when her “mother” was out, waiting for her to return. She memorized the sound of her “parents’” cars, and she always knew when they were pulling into the garage, and she met them at the door with a toy in her mouth.

When she was ten, she had to have her leg amputated. No big deal to her; she just learned very quickly to maneuver on three legs. But the cancer that caused the operation eventually overtook her, and though she dealt extremely bravely with the chemotherapy, it seemed too much to ask for her to go much further, struggling.

So on April 16, she said goodbye, and she died as bravely and gracefully as she lived.

She leaves a jagged hole in the lives of her family. They hope to find another one to fill the void, but that seems almost impossible.

This is in memory of Stirrup, the wonder dog.

Females need friends. Males don’t, really. Men/boys need buddies. A buddy is someone you get drunk with. Or watch sports with. Buddies don’t share feelings, pain, or life lessons. Heck, unless they are poets or Ernest Hemingway, men don’t even know they have feelings, I wager.

But women/girls are different. And each of us, I hope, is lucky enough to have at least one long standing best friend. You know what I mean: a friend who knew you when you were skinny. A friend that you can call when you have PMS. Someone who won’t tell your innermost secrets, even if they are juicy. A person who always defends you, even when what she really thinks is that you are nuts.

I have three such friends. I won’t name them by name, but I will tell you about them. They know who they are. These women are a constant presence in my life, and even my husband loves them. Well, maybe love is a bit too strong a word choice. Let’s just say that he has taken each of them out for coffee. Without me.

In no particular order, my three friends are as follows:

FRIEND ONE. This woman is so small, you could thread her through a needle. However, no one ever makes the mistake of thinking she is weak, because she is the boss of absolutely everyone. She tells all of us what to do, and we obey. She raised three strapping sons, and they are all now wonderful fathers. She knows how to make Mickey Mouse pancakes and toll house cookies to die for. She drives fast. She listens. And when I almost lost my husband to a stroke, she lent me her empty house to cry in.

FRIEND TWO. This woman is a college professor and attorney. She writes scholarly types of things. She has written a book and wonderful poems. She has won prizes for her writing. But I am her friend because she and I can’t spend more than ten minutes together without lapsing into hysterics. Plus, she once introduced herself to a member of the Ohio House of Representatives and was so nervous that she forgot her own name. So she made one up.

FRIEND THREE. This woman could go on the road as a comic, but instead, she sells diamonds. I have known her for ages, and once she interrupted a game of Ping Pong in order to use the paddle to liberally smack one of her sons, and then resumed the game unruffled, asking “Now what was the score, again?” This woman forgot to bronze her younger son’s first baby shoes, and, wracked with guilt, she bronzed his third, GIGANTIC pair.

You have friends like this, don’t you? Women who forget to put on their robes when they go outside to get the paper, and then lock themselves out? Women who dive in the pool and lose their bikini tops in front of their teenage sons’ friends? Women who never forget your birthday, even when everyone in your family does? Women who tell you when you shouldn’t wear horizontal stripes?

If you don’t have a friend like this, it isn’t too late. But you have to keep your eyes open. See that woman in the produce section? She just ate some grapes right out of the package, and then looked around to see if anyone noticed? Start with her.