Almost sleepless in St. Louis

Published May 7, 2007

The plane was about to land in St. Louis.
The muffled voice of a flight attendant was coming in over the music on my iPod. I pulled out my earplugs, and yep, the mom behind me was still loudly encouraging her baby to continue his squealing.
I was that cranky business traveler unnerved by an assuredly first-time mom and her assuredly adorable baby.
I unfolded myself and got off the plane.
I had come to the Gateway to the West for a newspaper conference that was being held in a hotel right across the Mississippi River from the famous shiny 630-foot arch.
The hotel had two round towers, a tall skinny one and a short squatty one. I checked in, and the clerk pointed me toward the short squatty tower.
With my laptop and my carry-on on my left shoulder and my large rolling suitcase in my right hand, I went looking for my third-floor room.
The circular tower was set up so that the core was open from floor to ceiling. I got off the elevator and circled around until I found my room.
I was so anxious to see the arch, I let all my bags fall when I got into the room and ran over to the window.
I looked out. There was an arch, all right, the slight arch of a rather ugly bridge beyond the brick walls of rather ugly buildings.
Oh, well. I won't be in the room much anyway, I thought.
Might as well take a quick shower. I went in the bathroom, only to find a pool of water standing over what appeared to be a clogged tub drain.
Back to the front desk.
"My tub is clogged," I quietly told the desk clerk.
"Oh, there are always drainage problems over there. I'll put you on a higher floor. Those seem better," she told me.
Dreaming of my new room on the fifth floor - this one surely with a view of the arch - I hauled my repacked bags out of my room - and into the roar of dozens of teenagers pouring into the common area of the tower. A man was telling them to go find their rooms.
When the elevator came, about 10 of these teenagers dashed past me. I got in, looked at the "5" button but pushed "1."
Back to the front desk.
"Um," I said to the clerk who had accommodated me earlier, "there seems to be about 500 children in my tower."
"They're here for a retreat," she said.
I found myself wishing for the single noisy baby on the airplane.
I walked away. I had to think. I had to figure out if I was being difficult or if I was entitled to not only a tub with a working drain but also some peace and quiet.
Ten minutes of pacing in front of the hotel convinced me.
I went back to the front desk and chose another desk clerk. I explained - nicely - what I had been through. He not only put me in another room in the other tower, he also gave me some coupons for free cocktails.
I was tired as I got in an elevator for the third time. I had no expectations as I pushed "17" and the elevator carried me up.
I slid the card into the slot on my door and pushed it open.
There, before my eyes, stood the great arch. I walked over to the window and pulled the sheer drapes. Wow. What a view. I looked around. Wow. What a room.
Now this was the kind of place a girl from out of town could sleep in.

There must be some spread in heaven today

Published April 30, 2007

"I love stories. Stories keep alive those who have gone before us."
And with that, jazz singer Dianne Reeves launched into a song about her grandmother during her appearance at the Tri-C Jazz Festival this weekend.
I couldn't help but think about the stories we will always have about my mother-in-law, June. She died last Friday, after being sick and bedridden for more than a year.
She would never recover to come to live with us in the house we bought with her in mind, a house with a kitchen big enough for her to work her magic.
And "magic" is as good a word as any to describe what the former school secretary and mother of three sons did with food.
God love her, she may have been the worst cook to ever put a head of cauliflower in the oven.
It's true. One of her favorite dishes involved coring a head of cauliflower, pouring milk over it, sprinkling nutmeg on the top and then baking it in the oven.
Then she would proudly squeeze it on the table between a roast, a pitcher full of "gravy" (grease drippings) and candlesticks, a centerpiece, and salt and pepper shakers in the theme of the nearest holiday.
Add a bowl of pureed coleslaw - she made it in the blender - and champagne glasses filled with still-frozen mixed fruit to the crowd in the middle of the table and you had Sunday dinner at June's house.
But her love of cooking wasn't limited to Sunday dinners; she baked, too. And it didn't matter that anything she baked had the consistency of the nutmegged cauliflower.
When my husband and I were first married, she invited me to help her bake Christmas cookies. I'm no whiz in the kitchen myself, but I didn't want my new mother-in-law to know that - at least not yet - so we set off to holiday baking.
Three hours and batches and batches of cookies later, the kitchen was as white as the snowy backyard. There was flour everywhere, even on the ceiling, but it was all in a day's baking to June. What she lacked in culinary skill, she made up for in enthusiasm.
She loved holidays. Maybe it's because she was born on the Fourth of July. Every day had holiday potential. What better time for a Thanksgiving feast than a hot July day?
In a beach house. In New Jersey.
Why wait until a cold November day when you can cook up a turkey and all the trimmings any day of the year?
When my boys were young, we would join my in-laws for vacations on the Jersey Shore.
Imagine my surprise when I came up from the beach one day to find a 20-pound turkey thawing on the counter. For three days, that bird sat there slowly becoming unfrozen.
I don't remember how the meal went, but I do remember fearing for the life of my young son. But we all survived, just as my husband had survived a childhood of living in a house where "refrigerate after opening" was seen as an option and not a mandate.
We'll miss all those Sunday dinners with June. We'll miss her company and her joy in putting them on for us.
And some of us will even miss her cooking. My younger son told me not to forget to mention how good her "rolled meat" was. In this, another of her specialties, she took some sort of beef, rolled it around onions and raw bacon, cooked it in her favorite cast-iron pan and then served it with the grease from the pan ladled over it.
Hmmm. Greasy beef of undetermined origin.
Would someone please pass the coleslaw?

Did you ever buy a vacuum you liked?

Published April 16, 2007

Eureka, Dirt Devil, Kenmore, Fantom.
They stood like soldiers up on a shelf.
Below them were their boxes that proudly proclaimed things such as "Bagless!" "12 amps!" "Rated 33.0!"
And I stood in the middle of the aisle sizing up one vacuum soldier after the other.
I was on a "Buy a Household Appliance" mission and there are few things in this world that are more humbling.
There are two ways to buy: As an educated consumer or flying by the seat of your pants.
Which is better? Beats me. I've never figured it out. All I know is that there was always something better than the one I bought.
I recently bought a new dishwasher, and I could not have been more educated. I studied online, and I studied the Consumer Reports' Buying Guide. I narrowed my choices, tucked the guide into my purse and went to nearly every store in the county that sells dishwashers.
My choices were nowhere to be found.
I showed a clerk in a popular large appliance store my choice in the buying guide.
She put on her reading glasses and looked at the page.
"Oh, those are last year's model numbers."
"But this is the 2007 buying guide," I told her.
"Yeah, but it comes out before the new models do."
See, you try to be an educated shopper, and they change textbooks on you.
I followed her to the model that she said used to be the model I was looking for.
"This one," she said. "See, it has three washing arms and an adjustable top shelf."
I wasn't looking at the dishwasher. I was looking at her, trying to figure out if she was telling me the truth. She seemed honest enough, but I couldn't be sure.
In the end, I wrote down the new model number and told her I'd be back.
As I was walking out of the store, I started thinking that my old dishwasher wasn't all that bad.
In fact, I didn't even need a new one. Just because the door was broken and the bottom shelf rolled down it and across the kitchen floor during loading or unloading was no reason to get rid of it. I could just keep using my leg to keep the shelf from rolling across the floor.
And it did get the dishes clean.
A couple of weeks and a bruised shin later, I was back in the store. My spirit was broken. My will to find the World's Best Dishwasher gone.
All I had left was faith in my fellow man so I bought the one the saleswoman recommended and hoped for the best. Although it has been fine, I still wonder about the lost model.
My trip to buy a vacuum cleaner was completely different. I decided we needed a new vacuum to clean our old house - yes, we still have both an old and a new house - and I went to buy one.
So, there I stood in the vacuum aisle, wishing I had my Consumers' Report Buying Guide. I narrowed down my choices by process of elimination and bought one - not the least expensive, but definitely at the low end.
It seemed to work fine, but what do I know? I found my buying guide and opened it to "Vacuums."
My chosen model was not among the top 10. Shoot, it wasn't among the top 33. But the brand was - and maybe, just maybe, they changed the name of the model after the guide came out.
After all, it is the 2007 buying guide, you know.

That robin looks as if it could use a bath

Published March 26, 2007

Ahh, spring.
Time to put on some shorts (yikes), open up the windows to air out the house and do some spring cleaning.
Suddenly the "ahh" is gone.
No, I shouldn't say that. As much of a chore cleaning a year's worth of grit and grime is, it always feels so wonderful to be sitting in a clean house.
I know you probably feel the same way. Because, according to a survey done by the Soap and Detergent Association, which represents the makers of 90 percent of the cleaning products marketed in the United States, 98 percent of people feel good about themselves when the house is clean.
Yet, despite that, only slightly more than half (54 percent) said they clean on a daily or weekly basis, and 18 percent said their homes are filled with clutter.
But 65 percent believe a good spring cleaning will fix all that.
What room do you think people found the biggest priority when spring cleaning? It was the kitchen, followed by the living room and the bedrooms - with the bathrooms and family room a distant fourth and fifth.
If you go on the Good Housekeeping Web site, you can take a quiz to find out what kind of housekeeper you are. (As if you don't already know.) It's all based on how much time you spend cleaning each week.
The soap group's survey also asked people what the least rewarding tasks were. Cleaning the kitchen was No. 1 - hmmm, guess that explains its importance when it comes to spring cleaning.
Other unrewarding tasks were doing laundry, cleaning the garage or basement, cleaning the bathroom and mopping floors.
I really don't understand those answers, because it seems that doing those things results in instant gratification. You can see results immediately.
My first choice would have been cleaning out the garage or the basement, places that no amount of cleaning can make look clean.
Or how about that side of the stove that butts up against the counter, that magnet for all things gross?
Good Housekeeping rated me - a person who spends seven hours a week cleaning her house - a "member of the White Glove Sisterhood."
It says I'm a "serious cleaner."
And then it estimated the time it would take to complete my spring cleaning tasks: Five days.
Five days? Shoot, I just did what I thought was my spring cleaning in five hours.
But I did forget a couple of Good Housekeeping's recommended tasks, like cleaning the blades and grills on all the ceiling fans and washing the blinds and shampooing the carpets.
Now, I knew that I absolutely could not do that all myself, so I went to find my husband.
He was last spotted in the back yard raking leaves off the top of the pool cover.
He had moved on.
Now he was clearing the tall ornamental grasses he had chopped down.
Spring cleaning the yard.
I watched him bend over, scoop up a pile of cuttings and throw it in the trash. Go back for another load. Bend over, scoop up cuttings and throw them in the trash.
There aren't a lot of things that are readily apparent in married life, but this one was. I knew this yard-working man was not going to come indoors and help me dust the grills on the ceiling fans. I actually knew better than to even ask.
Hey, that's a subject matter the soap people never dealt with: Who in a house is responsible for all the spring cleaning?
It's easy to figure out the answer to that question here.
It's the person in the house, of course.

A walk down pierogi memory lane

Published March 19, 2007

When I was young, we couldn't eat meat on Fridays so we ate fish or pierogis.
(Yeah, well, sometimes we ate toasted cheese, too.)
Then, in the '60s, the Catholic Church relaxed the rules and we could eat meat on Fridays - except during Lent. So, this time of year always sends me on a trip down Pierogi Memory Lane.
When I was young, my mother - who, being Hungarian, had dumpling skills for chicken paprikash but not pierogis - would phone St. John's Ukrainian Catholic Church on East 31st Street in Lorain - my dad's family's church - and order dozens of the potato-filled dumplings.
Then we would take a big empty bowl and a piece of tinfoil to St. John's church basement where tables of old women chatted in Ukrainian as they turned out pierogi after pierogi, lining them up on a big wooden cutting board. When the board was full, someone would carry it into the kitchen where other workers would drop the stuffed dumplings into boiling water.
When the pierogis were done cooking, they would be ladled into a big pot and it was from that pot your order would be counted out into the bowl you brought, ladled with butter and sauteed onions and sealed up with your piece of tinfoil.
Well, St. John's is still making pierogis - not every Friday but the third Friday of every month. And the dozens of very old women who made them when I was young have been replaced with about 20 young and old, male and female, church members, about half of whom speak Ukrainian.
Friday I went to St. John's to pick up some pierogis I had ordered.
I introduced myself to the man checking orders and taking payment at the door.
He pointed over toward the stove. "Talk to Father," he said.
I looked across the room and I saw a man in a T-shirt stirring huge steaming pots. I looked back at the seated money-taker.
"Father. Over there," he pointed again.
Then I realized he meant the young man in the T-shirt.
Father Steven Paliwoda was working just as hard as everyone else making the 200 dozen pierogis they expected to sell that day. He spoke to me in English but occasionally spoke to the woman next to him in Ukrainian.
Donna Kapucinski, who is 69 and lives in the same house on East 31st that she lived in as a child, told me St. John's has been making pierogis for at least 75 years.
"My grandmother made them here," she told me.
Across town, at St. Anthony's Catholic Church on East Erie Avenue, pierogi-making has been taken to a new level.
The school's PTU - with help from volunteer parishoners - makes about 1,200 dozen each week. Last year, the group made $32,000 selling pierogis.
Chairpersons Carla Rock and Lisa Stefan have the weekly sale down to a science. Those who can't come to the church to help out can peel potatoes or chop onions at home.
Unlike the Ukrainian St. John's, St. Anthony's has no ethnic affiliation. In fact, the priest, Father Joe West, who is Scottish and German, said he never heard of pierogis until he got to Lorain.
When I went to visit its pierogi-making operation last week, I was sent home with bags of frozen pierogis to cook.
So we've been eating pierogis every day since.
My son just asked me if I wanted anything from Taco Bell. He was going to get a March Madness snack.
"There's a lot of pierogis left in the refrigerator," I told him.
"I don't know how many days in a row I can eat pierogis," he said.
And then he added, "How many did you buy anyway? A gross?"
No, I thought, that's just the number of calories in all those pierogis I've eaten.

Victims made not born

Published March 12, 2007

"Help me. Help me, please! Please, someone help me."
Those were the words, the only words spoken - over and over and over - by the new roommate that the nursing home had moved in with my mother-in-law.
If this woman was my mother or grandmother, the words would have been heartbreaking.
But she wasn't. And the words did not break my heart; they made me angry.
I was working late last week when the phone on my desk rang.
It was my husband. He was calling on his cell phone from the nursing home to tell me about it. He was upset and he was angry.
"Where's her old roommate? Did you complain?" I asked him.
Apparently they had done some patient shifting at the nursing home that afternoon and the way it looked to us - the only way it could look - was that they put this troublesome woman in with someone who couldn't complain about her - my mother-in-law.
My husband's mother has been in hospitals and nursing homes for a year. Her health is steadily declining. She speaks a little but could never complain about a roommate.
And that's where her son and his wife come in.
"There's nobody to complain to," he told me. "The only one here is the night nurse and she doesn't know anything about the move. In fact, she feels terrible about it. She keeps apologizing," he told me.
Nobody to complain to? Quite impossible for this newswoman to believe.
I had an idea.
"I'll call you back," I told him.
It wasn't even 9 p.m. I had bothered people a whole lot later than that.
I got the phone book and looked up the number for the nursing home. The receptionist answered the phone.
"I'm Patti Ewald. My mother-in-law is a resident there. Can you please tell me the name of the nursing home director?" I asked her.
She promptly gave me the name.
"Would you like her voice mail?"
"Do you have her home number?" I asked.
"Just a minute," she said. With that, I cradled the receiver between my ear and my shoulder so I could use both hands to look in the phone book myself. Yep, she was listed.
I told the receptionist never mind and then I dialed the director's home number.
I was trying to stay calm but I was having about as much success doing that as I have staying out of the ice cream in the freezer.
"What happened to her old roommate?" I asked.
"She said she would move," the director answered.
"She asked to move?"
"She said she would move," the director repeated.
Now, I know this roommate. I talked to her often. I was fairly certain she had not asked to be moved.
The director continued dancing around questions until it became apparent what had happened: The patients who could speak up and complain were spared the wailing roommate.
And since my mother-in-law couldn't, she was the unlucky winner.
But not for long.
My husband and I complained enough that by the next night, my mother-in-law had been moved to another room with another roommate.
And the wailing woman?
I don't know what happened to her. This particular nursing home has no separate quarters for Alzheimer and dementia patients.
She probably was put in a room with someone else who is unable to complain.
But this new "someone" most likely doesn't have a son and daughter-in-law willing to insist on peace and quiet for a gravely ill loved one.
And that's a shame because that means they don't have a mother like mine who taught us not to allow others to treat us unfairly.
"You have to stick up for yourself," my mom always told us.
"Because if you don't, no one else will."

Yes, it was a purr-fect day

Published in The Chronicle March 5, 2007

We were going to the cat show.
My brother, my friend and me.
I was going because I really wanted to see all the cats.
They were going because I was schlepping them there.
They lasted, um, about five minutes.
"Know what it smells like when they put 500 cats in a gym?" my friend asked.
"Like they put 500 cats in a gym," he answered himself.
I don't care. I didn't smell anything. Besides, it was 225 cats, not 500.
I love the cat show. The North Coast Cat Fanciers group holds one every year at Clearview High School. It was at this very show 12 years ago that I bought a skinny little loudmouth I named Charlie Chan. He's sitting on my lap right now, no longer skinny but just as loud as the day I bought him.
If you have never been to a cat show, let me set the scene for you.
Vendors of feline paraphernalia line the hallways leading to the gym. They sell cat toys and cat beds and anything else a cat could ever want.
In the gym, cages of cats sit on rows of tables that stretch from one side of the room to the other. Their owners sit on chairs in front of them. Some are friendly, some are not (the owners, not the cats). I saw more than one sign that said, "Do not touch; owner bites."
Four judging tables line one of the walls and there are so many categories, judging goes on all day long.
I peer into cage after cage. Fluffy cats? Not for me. I'm in search of Siameses and their look-alike brethren, the Oriental Shorthair.
Ah-ha. I finally spotted my favorite - an all-white Oriental Shorthair. He looked just like a white Siamese.
He was curled up asleep in his cage - which was actually more like a zippered pup tent - with a chocolate-point Siamese that looked exactly like my Charlie did 11 years and about nine pounds ago.
The white cat's name was Versace. His Siamese friend's name was Zhivago.
As I looked at them, a woman came over and took the white cat out.
"He's beautiful," I told her.
"Thanks. It's his turn to be shown. When I come back, you can hold him."
Hold him? Me?
With that, she went scurrying toward the judges' tables.
When it was Versace's turn on the judge's table, he was a star. His beauty was overshadowed only by his personality. He batted at the cat toy the judge waved in front of him. He was quite charming. A winner.
But he didn't win! The judge put a Second Place ribbon on his cage.
How could that be?
Versace's owner, a woman from Denver, took the beautiful white cat out of the numbered cage and walked back toward her table. I waited a couple of minutes, then I followed.
When she saw me, she said, "Oh, do you want to hold him?"
She had been serious!
"Can I?"
"Sure," she said and she handed him to me.
"I can't believe he didn't win," I told her.
"I can't believe it either. He's No. 1 in his region," she said, "and 25th in the country. Oh, well."
"Do you win money at these things?" I asked her.
She laughed.
"No. It costs me money, a lot of money.
"But, when he wins one of these," she said as the back of her hand brushed the ribbons attached to the front of his cage, "I feel pretty."