Inside the Gator

Inside the Gator

            What am I doing on the stage in an alligator costume before a cheering audience I cannot see and can barely hear, bouncing to the music and trying not to fall off the stage? My daughter, Genne´, drafted me to be Albert, the University of Florida mascot, for the Cure by Design fashion show to raise money for cancer research. How could I say no? As the models, all cancer survivors, drift by in a world of bright light and music, I bounce and stumble like a drunken hockey goalie, doing my surreal part toward finding a cure.

            Alberta and I suit up in a storage room just off stage. Terry, an O.R. nurse who works with Genne´, is having problems with her costume, but I figure that she played Rudolph in a Christmas gig at the hospital, so she can handle it.

            The pants are baggy, of course, with woolly green legs and a wide hoop at the waist. The contraption, which includes the tail, is held up by suspenders velcroed together at the top. Buttoned to the suspenders is a foam breastplate that prevents the front-heavy head from tipping forward. I slip on the huge orange jersey, jam on the doughy Gator feet that I’m supposed to walk in, and I’m ready for the head.

            But not the smell that the previous Albert left behind after the hotly contested Florida-Kentucky basketball game two days before. When I tried on the damp 4-fingered gloves, I sensed trouble ahead. Then I think about all those cancer-survivors taking part in Cure by Design, too many of them kids, and the many more who will benefit from the research funded by the show, and it’s hard to feel sorry for myself. Besides, I only have to be in here for a few minutes.

            I’m surprised how heavy it is. Not as heavy as a fifth-grader’s backpack, but heavy in a massive but resting-on-my-shoulders way. My head wedged snugly in the suspension system, I shuffle after Alberta toward the darkened wings of the stage to await our turn. We are ready.

            Inside the full costume I feel totally sealed off. I’m vaguely aware of what is going on from yesterday’s rehearsal, with the models bravely struttin’ their stuff to the upbeat music in designer outfits donated by local stores. Visual contact with the brightly lit stage and the shadowy backstage crew comes only through the narrow mouth, hinged with a spring mechanism so it flops open and closed. Even that elusive slit is draped with black mesh. Of course, the fact that I had to remove my glasses doesn’t help. Sounds seem distant. After posing with some models awaiting their number, I yell to the side of Alberta’s head, “You seem to be a mile away.”

            “I am,” she replies,

            I soon learn that the costume is not engineered for a tall person because when the head rests on top of the breastplate, the jaws point 45 degrees toward the ground, so all I can see are feet and electrical cables. I roll my shoulders forward to catch the rim of Albert’s neck while arching my back like a drum major, a posture that makes chiropractors thumb through yacht catalogues. But it works for me.

            After the shadowy forms stop floating past, someone mercifully leads me from the stage. I follow Alberta back to the dressing room, where I remove my head and stare at my hybrid self in the mirror. As I begin to change into my next costume, a shirt and tie for the benefit luncheon, I reflect that Albert was a success. Nobody was injured, including me. My high-5’s didn’t deck anybody. And my Gator Chomp was convincing enough, even though I rooted for my Wolverines against the Gators in the Outback Bowl. I’m proud to be associated with these survivors. Proud of my daughter, who had produced the event. And most importantly, I’m proud that Cure by Design raised a quarter of a million dollars for cancer research. I am Albert, and Albert rules!

--David Stringer

Bourbon Balls

Bourbon Balls

            My first piece of advice: Don’t make bourbon balls when there is a full moon. A second: sample one of the main ingredients.

            Kim is a great cook (me – not so much). She can pull off the gourmet meals, but what makes her gifted in the kitchen is that she knows how to do all those little things that make the regular dishes special. If you don’t believe me, try her mac and cheese or her venison chili. She especially shines as a baker – her scones, the Texas sheet cake, her pies, and her cookies. (Time out here for a snack.)

            Which is why I was confident that her bourbon balls would turn out great, even though she told me that she had never made them or any candy before. “No problem,” I thought. “It’s Kim!” She knows how to do stuff in the kitchen.

            In retrospect, the problem might have been because I was helping.

            Kim was working from a recipe she’d found in a magazine, but it was vague on some of the details. I offered to google bourbon balls (How will people 20 years ago understand those three words?), figuring that the computer would get me out of the kitchen so I would be less likely to harm the project. I found eight recipes with contradictory ingredients and instructions, so I returned to the kitchen to measure the bourbon and add it to the other ingredients Kim had assembled in a bowl. So far, so good.

            The next step was to roll the mixture of butter, powdered sugar, nuts and bourbon (plus, possibly, other ingredients I wasn’t paying attention to) into balls about the size of a strawberry. Despite the fact that Kim had chilled the stuff in the fridge, it stuck to our hands as we rolled it. Kim’s hands are warmer than mine, so it stuck to hers more. This might have been fun had we been drinking the bourbon, but alas, it all went into the balls. I figured that the sticky-balls problem would be resolved when we baked them in the oven. I mentioned this to Kim, who informed me that of course these were not going to be baked. As I said, I’m kitchen-challenged.

            We eventually assembled them all on a cookie sheet and placed them in the refrigerator to chill. Meanwhile, we addressed the problem of how to melt the chocolate into which we would dip them. Kim’s recipe suggested the microwave, so we put the chocolate chips into a bowl and gave them a quick zap. They came out sorta melted (that’s an official chocolatier term), so we zapped them a little more. No improvement. A little more, and they turned fudge-like with a texture similar to caulk. More computer research revealed that the full moon causes this to happen.

            I went to the store to buy more chocolate chips. I also bought potato chips, as I figured we’d need a salty snack with the bourbon we would be drinking that night. When I got home I retreated to the computer to research how to melt chocolate chips. Skipping the microwave option, I found instructions on using the double-boiler. Unfortunately, I did not read the instructions all the way through.

            The next morning we decided to try the chocolate again. I retrieved my mom’s old copper double-boiler from the back of the cabinet, and Kim heated the new chocolate chips there. More caulk. I read the rest of the instructions and discovered that the pan with the chips in it should not touch the water boiling below it. Kim put in a dab of Crisco, a hint she picked up from our daughter, Genne’. It worked!

            Next challenge: how to get the chocolate onto the bourbon balls. One problem is that the warm chocolate would melt the balls – we’d noticed that they started to collapse when they sat, briefly, at room temperature. We tried dipping them by hand, which led to good finger-licking but otherwise, too messy. A spoon led to a dropped ball. We ended up using toothpicks for most of them, one at a time from fridge to Kim to cookie sheet, then a few more dribbles to cover up gaps caused by Kim’s fingers, then quickly back in the fridge. Success! We decided not to press our luck by putting pecans on top, as some of the recipes suggested.

            Kim later called Genne’ to report on the cooking misadventures. “Not you,” she said. “You’re Martha!” But, of course, we never see Martha Stewart’s husband “helping” in her kitchen.

--David Stringer            

How to Discuss Paint Colors with your Wife

            I’m like most men—comfortable discussing colors using one-syllable words like red, blue, green, or brown. Orange and yellow make me a little nervous, and anything that sounds French, even monosyllabic French, brings on a queasiness of stomach, a rolling of eyes, and a desire to go outside and chase something. Try it and see: taupe, beige, mauve, or (shudder)—ecru.

            I was recently in a paint store with my wife. While she was pouring over the 3,000 shades of yellow to find the right one for our bathroom (“the color of butter, but fresh butter, straight from the farm”), I noticed a young couple doing the same thing. The wife was studying 40 tabs of off-white, placing them next to one another as if that would reveal some profound truth, while her husband sat with arms crossed and a scowl on his face. “Just pick one,” he said, “and I’ll tell you if I hate it.”

            Now, as a man enjoying my second marriage, I could tell that he was going about this in entirely the wrong way. For his benefit, and men like him, here are my seven secrets for discussing paint colors that you don’t see or care about:

Take it outside. This is what the experts do. Natural light is very different from indoor light, and even indoors, incandescent light bulbs are different from fluorescent. Trust me on this one. So when your wife asks your opinion on 2 or 3 colors, repeat what I just told you about light and take it outside. You probably won’t notice any difference except that everything will appear brighter if the sun is shining. But at least you get to go outside for a while.

Use the plural. When your wife asks you what color you think the television room should be, don’t say, “tan” or “green” or “I don’t care.” Say something like, “I was thinking of greens.” Maybe you were, maybe you weren’t—it doesn’t matter, since we all know that she is going to pick the color anyway. But answering in the plural marks you as a sensitive guy who is aware that there is more than one shade of green. This will be worth some points down the road, though I have yet to discover where.

“There’s X in it.” Here’s one that took me years to figure out: No paint color is what it is. There’s a base color, and then a bunch of other colors are added and the result is blue or red or whatever. The discriminating eye—my wife—can look at a brown and conclude, “There’s red in it,” and other women will nod in agreement. Well, you can learn to nod just as wisely. And you can also pronounce, when looking at a blue wall, “There’s green in it.” Here’s the funny part: You may start doing this randomly to appear sensitive and discriminating, but if you stay with it, you’ll start getting it right more and more often. In fact, I’m starting to believe that my wife is correct—there really is green in that yellow wall in our dining room.

Tapdance. This strategy is based on two assumptions: 1) Your wife will eventually choose the color anyway, and 2) You don’t want to suggest that you “don’t care.” Some fancy footwork might help you through this minefield. Sigh and explain how the light is different depending on the time of day, or that the color changes depending on what is next to it (as in that green couch, which has some blue in it), or that it depends on whether it’s drywall or plaster, the size of the paint sample, the nap on the roller, etc. Hold something up to it—a pillow, a piece of curtain, whatever—and turn your head about 30 degrees to the side as you stare and frown. Warning: Most women catch on to this one fairly quickly, as they don’t like being made fun of. If you sense that she is staring at you rather than the paint samples, take it outside.

The name game. If you ever actually look at those color tabs that your wife brings home from the paint store, you’ll be surprised to learn that all those colors actually have names. You might want to pick your color based on which one has the coolest name—much the way I pick horses at the racetrack, and probably with the same results. Anyway, one way to discuss colors with your wife is to toss around those color names as if they were real. When she asks what color you would like the bathroom to be, say something like “morning rose,” “peppermint,” or “summer evening.” (OK—I confess I’ve never dared to try this strategy, but I enjoy imagining the look on my wife’s face if I actually said “summer evening.”) You can have fun with this one. The color for your living room? How about “putting green” (a real color name I saw), or “light lager,” or “nice pear.”

“It Works.” This is an important phrase. I know this because they use it a lot on HGTV. As in, “That couch works in the living room,” or “This color works on this wall.” The nearest I can figure out, “works” falls somewhere between “is the same as” and “clashes with.” The meaning is close to “blends,” but “blend” is too much like “bland.” I suggest you think of a color “working” in a room the way you think of your relationship with your wife. You certainly aren’t the same, but you don’t go together as badly as the clothes you wore before your wife started dressing you. No, you “work” as a couple because you are just different enough to keep things interesting.

--David Stringer

Following publication of the above, several folks have responded with their own stories:

We are redoing our kitchen.  That means my opinion has been sought out on the color not only of the walls, but also the cabinets, the countertop, and the backsplash with and without accents.  .  We are now appraising all possible combinations of the different colors under consideration each.  Several weeks into the process, we are considering 4 shades for the walls, 3 finishes for the cabinets, 2 tiles for the backsplash, and one countertop.  And yes, we have been listening to The Twelve Days of Christmas.  It is a good thing I am retired.

--Joe Moran

Sorry, guys, but you have no idea. My wife was (is) an interior designer. I painted our master bedroom walls four times, and for $1000 I could not tell you the difference between any of the four colors. Levine definitely has this dialed in. Seriously, it is a continuing source of amusement.

. . . 

No one has even mentioned the issue of "warm" and "cold" colors. My wife has explained this to me many many times, and I still couldn't tell you if a color is warm or cold. I have come to believe that these color guys moonlight as wine reviewers.

--Jerry Shimp

I have always felt that the biggest difference between men and women was not the y chromosome or anatomy, but rather the size of the box of crayons. My Crayola box held 8 crayons. There were 3 primary colors, three secondary colors, black and white. After a while I was able to learn which ones matched and which ones clashed. My wife's Crayola box had 128 crayons. Forget burnt umber. She had mauve, taupe, puce, and fuscia. I have no idea what these are but she brings them up in conversations regarding clothing and home decorations and furnishings I am baffled so I fall back on the thing that I learned during my first week in husband school , and which I use to this day  "Yes dear".I am comforted to know that I am not alone.

. . .  

Ten minutes ago a blinds salesman left our home. We moved to a new condo last April and needed to put new blinds in one of our rooms so that our grandchildren could sleep over. This guy had a bunch of samples. These appeared to me to be light browns and tans. He and my wife went through a process of elimination and the final three contenders were taupe, flax, and ambrosia. After nodding my head in agreement and saying "yes dear" a number of times, They (my wife and the salesman) decided on ambrosia. I'm sure that when they are installed, I will forget the commercial color and think of them as the tan blinds in the den.

--Carl Levine

I certainly have enjoyed the tutorial and subsequent discussion, and I must say that it has made me realize just how blessed I have been all these years.

I live in a magic house with a great artist  (see http://www.buffalosocietyofartists.com/?select=news&type=video&data=lynn_northrop )

In my entire married life I have never been asked about my opinion of a paint color.  Furthermore, I am not asked if I like it when it is finished, and, best of all, I don't even have to paint it.

Life is good, peace to all.

--Jere Northrup

Carl does have it dialed in. Just last week my beloved and I were having what I considered a frustrating " discussion " on the color of some Xmas ornaments and rather than allowing the discussion to become elevated I turned to my I-pad and discovered that women see many more colors/ shades than men. Who knew! !Here we are at 72 and this revelation occurs. But take heart Van Gogh et al knew what to do with what he had. Carl you would not look good in a taupe shirt. All these designers have come up with about 40 or 50  shades of white. We just need to stick with the basics. Evergreens are green and ribbons are red and Merry Xmas and Happy Holidays to All.

--Geoff Stout

I also have to say, that I must be a man deep down inside, because I have looked at the paint chips with the very best of intentions and have gotten it wrong time and time again.  I never see the red in it, or the blue undertones.  I just don't.  And I hate to linger...there are pictures waiting to be taken while I'm in Lowe's wasting my life looking at paint chips.  So I just pick something, tell Marc that it'll be fine, spend $82 on 2 gallons, throw it on the wall and then step back and think, oh what a disaster this is - how is it possible that I did it again?!?...This has happened so many times to me (and poor Marc) that you would really just cut my estimated IQ in half.

--Barbara Woodmansee

Dave, I wanted to mention that I have run into a variation on the problem of talking to a wife about color.  It is how to talk with your wife about wallpaper.  Some of the color issues resurface and several others emerge that found me unprepared.  I handled peelable and stripable well enough and I managed to address stripes, but when the conversation turned to florals, geometrics, grasscloth, and print size, I was on shaky ground.  Taking a cue from your blog, I did come up with some lines that seemed to help.  Does the color go with the furniture/tile floor/ hardwood floor/rug or will we want a new carpet?  Considering who will be using the room, might we want it to be more masculine (with a geometric) or more feminine (with a floral)?  Do you think we should be a bit bolder/less bold?  Is the print too large/small for the room; after all we don't want to be shouting at our guests?    Are you sure you could live with it after a month or two?  Still a work in progress here.

--Joe Moran

Transition

            I remember learning in a Lamaze class many years ago that the most difficult stage of labor for a woman is the one called “transition.” I don’t remember anything else about “transition” except my feeling of gratitude that I did not have to experience it. Lamaze substitutes the word “discomfort” for what the rest of humankind calls “pain,” and I think that’s a good thing. In any case, I am now, at

last, experiencing some discomfort with my current transition.

            Many people anticipate that as we trudge through our 70’s we will be called upon to learn new things – such as how to make decisions about long-term care, how to shift investments away from long-term gains, how to deal with neighbors in a condo, what are the signs of a stroke or Alzheimer’s, how to avoid driving like an old person, or how, finally, to operate a smart phone. But it’s looking like my journey through my 70’s will demand that I learn a different set of skills, things like how to drive a tractor or how to milk a goat.

            Kim and I have decided that we no longer want the expense and hassle of owning two homes, one in Michigan and one in Florida. So we decided to sell them both. (This is where the word “transition” skulks just out of sight.) Does this mean condo living – no more weeding the garden, struggling to start the weed-whacker, or scraping paint blisters off the windowsills? No, not if you are married to Kim.

            She has always wanted to live on a farm. She spent years living close to nature in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and she recalls dating a cowboy. I grew up in the Connecticut suburbs, where the closest I came to farming was mowing the lawn, and then I taught for years in Ann Arbor, where my farming experience consisted of teaching Walden. I do enjoy watching movies about farming, where other people do all the work.

            Another complicating factor is that my stepson Scott wants to buy some land for hunting, and he needs at least 40 acres. Adjoining the farm property we are looking at is an 80-acre woods. Scott has a full-time job – more than full time, since he owns the business. This means that I would probably have to add chain sawing to the list of learnings I need. Maybe I can reserve a half-acre for my own private Starbucks.

            Of course, I would not actually be farming all those acres. No, we’d be leasing them out to real farmers. These are the people for whom, in a sense, I’d be the boss, providing leadership and motivation using the skills I learned editing a couple of business books for my brother. I’d also generously share my insights into farming.

            Kim, meanwhile, is deeply immersed in planning our new home. She’s designed a meadow, selecting a half-dozen wildflowers she would establish to attract birds and butterflies. She’s rehearsed instructions to our farmer-tenants about reducing the use of pesticides. Inside the barn will be a separate building, perhaps a studio, with its own source of heat and water, and part of it will be a deer camp for Scott, complete with a poker table and U.P.-themed décor. The farmhouse, if we don’t have to build it from scratch, would retain its original wooden floors and cabinets, though the plumbing would have to be upgraded. We’ve looked into the cost of installing a ground-water heat pump (expensive!) to replace the propane (also expensive!). She seems especially drawn to farms with silos, and though I don’t know how she plans to use them, I suspect that I will be spending some time in a silo.

            Though Kim has borne two children, she is more than willing to look beyond the “discomforts” of transition. And I’m willing to follow her lead. Kim has always led the way in making significant creative changes in our life, and she’s an artist where Our Home is one of her best media. Call it a labor of love.

            By the way – does anyone know the best way to milk a goat?