Maybe it’s a question about me holding out for the price slashing and final markdowns before purchasing gifts, then having to pay for next-day shipping. Or it could be a comment about decorating, which I sometimes find myself loathe to do because I have to rearrange the whole living room to accommodate the tree and have to practically secure a walkway to the kitchen. Another possibility is that they know I’m not much of a baker and that after three failed attempts at making spritz cookies, I resort to eating the dough. I mean, come on, my hand freezes into a claw-like position after cranking away for hours, with dough that won’t dislodge onto the cookie sheet. What’s the trick?

Or perhaps it’s about getting a dumpster – I mean straightening up the house. Or  tripping – I mean joining – frenzied shoppers at the grocery store for the last pound of butter.  Or sampling – I mean selecting  — wine at the liquor store. And the menu is always a challenge. Our family has no Christmas meal traditions, but most favor homemade egg rolls. An interesting choice and not easily understood by other Scandinavian families serving Swedish meatballs, lutefisk or oyster stew.

And if ready includes mailing out Christmas cards, I will never be ready. I gave that up in an attempt to simplify my life about 20 years ago. The downside is that I don’t get Christmas cards, either, anymore. I guess it’s a reciprocal thing. The upside is that I don’t get Christmas cards anymore. One more letter about vacations into the heart of Africa, grandchildren on honor rolls or the joys of retirement in the Caribbean and someone may have to talk me down off the ledge.

So how do I reply when asked whether I’m ready for Christmas? I usually say either “I was born ready” or “I’m never ready.” Neither of which is true, but who really knows or cares, even. Besides, what fun would ready be, if I couldn’t panic when I realize I forgot where I hid some presents, didn’t label others and there’s no oil to fry the eggrolls. Now that’s a Christmas rush.

Adding to my distress was a pizza the woman across the aisle had carried on and stowed under her seat. The smell of the pizza, whether real or imagined, caused me to search for that little bag in my seat pocket and to hope I wouldn’t wake up my seat partners with the retching. I was also debating the merits of not having eaten before the flight and figured that with my stomach doing flip flops, it was probably a good thing.

To hasten sleep and escape from the dealing with turbulence in total consciousness, I clenched my eyes shut for the entire flight, as if the harder I clenched, the better my chance for deep and immediate slumber. The only result such intense furrowing of my brows produced was a wide-awake headache.

The flight was eerily quiet, but every once in a while, I would sense the shadow of someone gliding past my seat and was relieved to think that if I had to make a mad dash to the bathroom, no one would wrestle me to the ground.

A pilot once described turbulence to me as just like waves on the water – kind of literally going with the flow. Much as I’ve tried to wrap my head around that, all I can think of is our fateful trip on the barf barge (yes, that’s what they called it) sailing fromCopper Harbor,MichigantoIsle Royale.  The horror. Visions of group motion sickness danced in my head and accelerated my nausea.

Turbulence has never killed anyone, so that same pilot went on to say. Uh huh. But there’s always a first time and a person could die of fright, maybe. With my eyes shut, my stomach on edge and my wide-awake headache, I waited for the inevitable bumps and drops and rocking of the plane, but it never happened. Nope. It was a pretty smooth flight. Even though I imagined the worse and fretted and planned to lose the lunch I hadn’t had, I realized that I had literally and figuratively made myself sick. Either that or I had really slept through the flight and the whole ordeal was just a dream. The bag was still in the seat pocket, the pizza was still across the aisle and I was now inMinneapolis. Huh. Makes me wonder about the time I dreamt I ate a giant marshmallow, only to wake and find my pillow missing.

While I enjoy a deal just as much as the next person there are limits to what I’ll do to get one. Like peeling low-priced tags off cheaper items and affixing them to more expensive items, hoping the cashier won’t notice or counterfeiting coupons or printing dozens that say “limit one per customer.” And there’s no question that some shoppers have given checkout people good reason to pull out the stuffing to inspect bags.

Shoppers seeking deals should remember their shopping etiquette. Like avoiding the impulse to snatch the last sale item out of someone’s hand. Shame, shame, I know your name. But enough about me. And, for the record, “while supplies last” just encourages competitive shopping and cart hijacking, I’m sorry to say.

And why not apply the science of time management to the checkout? For some reason, I always get behind the person who seems to have only four items in her shopping cart, but is determined to drag out the process. First, she decides to challenge the price on one item. Then she whines that another item was $4 dollars less last week and she missed the sale because she sprained her wrist working at the soup kitchen and couldn’t they just honor last week’s price? Next, she holds up the third item to claim that, although it rang up $12, the sign said it was $7. Then I hear those two little words that make the hair stand up on the back of my neck:  “price check.” That’s 20 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

Maybe people should just cut the chit chat, too. When a cashier says “how are you” it’s just a rhetorical question. She doesn’t really want to know about the wart on your foot or your cousin Sheila’s recipe for Oysters Rockefeller or your husband’s guilty plea. She just wants you to say “good” and move through the line as quickly as possible, without incident.

There ought to be a law about shoppers who refuse to come into the 21^st century. My opportunity for quick getaway at the grocery store is often dashed when the person ahead of me pulls out a checkbook, proceeds to ask the date, fills out the check with penmanship that would make Mrs. Schwartz proud and takes adequate time to ensure his signature is a work of art. Another 15 minutes down the drain. And if the bagger decides it’s time to go on break the minute I start unloading my groceries, I lose another five to seven minutes.

But, seriously, don’t these people know how busy I am? They should really cut me some slack. I’m pretty sure I didn’t run over that guy’s toe with my shopping cart and I don’t think I really told that kid there was no Santa Claus so I could cut through that line blocking the aisle and I would never dream of pulling the fire alarm to empty out the store. Then again, I did manage to buy seven gifts in seven minutes. Hope everyone likes soap shaped like Jesse Ventura. Hey, they were on closeout.

NOTE: This is the last Tuesday Talk will be the last one posted on the Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea internet or intranet. If you are interested in continuing to receive these posts, please subscribe and they will automatically appear in your email, as they are written and posted. Otherwise, please go to www.tuesdaytalk.com to check for new posts. Thank you for your readership.

If my husband didn’t consent to wrestling with that raw turkey – cavity and all – there would be no turkey on our Thanksgiving table. Although I’m no big turkey fan (turned off, maybe, by the state of it raw,) I won’t buck tradition by serving an entrée with which I have a more cordial relationship.  

It’s not as if I’m lazy, really, or a woman who thinks dinner is something that comes from Chef Boyardee or out of a microwave, but my rendition of Thanksgiving is definitely stress free, if not pretty darned tasty. And yeah, yeah.  I get Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living and Rachel Ray, with covers that sport golden brown turkeys accompanied by colorful side dishes. I admit those delectable photos momentarily inspire me to trade up. But reality returns when I find that each recipe calls for about 20 ingredients, most of which I don’t think are available in my grocery store. Like a salad made with walnuts from the black tree of Outer Mongolia, combined with watercress grown in a hot house inThailand and cheese from albino mountain goats in the Himalayas.  

And honestly, I’m not even really sure what a caper is or why I should whip cream, when I can just buy whipped topping in the freezer section or why I would knead dough and wait for it to rise, when I can buy brown and serve rolls with a three-year shelf life.

Undaunted about what could be, I settle for what is and what forever will be. Because, first and foremost, my family does not like to deviate from the expected and the familiar, even with the prospect of a gourmet meal and because I have learned that no good can come from stressing over a meal (i.e. migraine headache, premature cocktail hour, Chinese takeout.)

And I take no umbrage with those that say Thanksgiving in a box, jar or bag is the easy way out. I prefer to think of it as tradition.

NOTE: The Nov. 29 Tuesday Talk will be the last one posted on the Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea internet or intranet. If you are interested in continuing to receive these posts, please subscribe and they will automatically appear in your email, as they are written and posted. Otherwise, please go to www.tuesdaytalk.com to check for new posts. Thank you.

Actually the cost of a new television then was about the same as the price of a new television today, but watching was free. No cable company, no dish, no direct tv or monthly charge of any kind, just entertainment pouring in freely from the invisible airwaves or whatever. In those days and until it actually happened, it was inconceivable that anyone would pay to watch. Because, after all, radio was free and television was just radio with a face.

 I wonder if they could have even sold those early televisions, if part of the deal was paying to watch. I was just a kid, but it seemed like in the 50s, there weren’t a lot of monthly bills and everything was pay as you go. People just cashed their paychecks, drove around town and paid their bills in cash. No need for stamps or checks or online banking. Just bring home the cash and separate into payment envelopes. Whatever was left over was for savings or funny money.

And there wasn’t much fancy stuff to have, really, except for a television or a transistor radio or maybe a toaster oven. It seems as if plastic and the whole “buy now, pay later” thing became the norm just about the time all those newfangled gadgets and electronic devices came to be. How incredibly convenient.

Now we pay more for television each month than we do for gas and electricity. Granted, our cable bill includes internet and phone, but it seems totally out of whack to me. When I started paying bills forty-some years ago, I could never have conceived of paying for the privilege of watching television, much less paying an arm and a leg for it. Of course, in those days our gas and electricity bill was about $9 a month. If television had been that much, I would have had to choose between Johnny Carson and health insurance.

So is television still a luxury? Or do we just pay for it like it is? Maybe I’m just not keeping up with the times, but the idea of paying so much really bugs me. Maybe I should just watch tv sometime to see if it’s worth it. But since Johnny retired and Laugh In went off the air, how good could it really be?

NOTE: As Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea builds it s new public website scheduled to go live in early 2012, Tuesday Talk will no longer be available. The last Tuesday Talk on the public website will be Nov. 29.

I’d like to believe that’s still true, but it’s a lot tougher now. Not sure how it worked in my dad’s era, but as baby boomers we had the opportunity for the  ”pay as you go” plan to fund our educations. We could work full time during the summer and part time during the school year and pretty much pay for tuition, rent and books. Not sure who can do that now.

While tuition has risen dramatically over the last 20 years, wages have not. So when fellow baby boomers say “I worked my way through college – my kids can, too,” I feel compelled to argue the point. According to CNN Money, average tuition and fees for a four-year public university in 1998 was about $2,800. Ten years later that number had climbed about 130% to roughly $6,500 a year, not including books or room and board. If incomes had kept up with surging college costs, the typical American would have earned $77,000 a year in 2008, rather than the $33,000 they actually did earn. That makes the “pay as you go” plan pretty unrealistic.

Sure, there is loan and grant assistance available but, by definition, they have to be repaid. Back in the 60s, some college kids took out loans to buy stereos or cars because it was cheap money and repayment was reasonable and realistic. A college degree can now necessitate loans totaling $60,000 to $80,000 and post-college could be well over $100,000. What kind of entry level job supports that kind of loan repayment and how much money is too much money to borrow? The other day I heard that a good rule of thumb is to borrow only as much money as you would expect to earn each year in your career. So if your salary might range from $40,000 to $50,000 a year, your total school loans shouldn’t exceed that amount.

Education is an investment, a solid investment, with worth that doesn’t fluctuate with the economy. I just hope those with the potential to cure cancer or to find new sources of energy or to stop global warming aren’t daunted by the cost of education and the ability to borrow money or to pay it back. We need you.

So, as with all the wisdom my dad endowed upon me this, too, is true. Education extracts a cost, one way or the other. And my money is on those who pursue it.

NOTE: As Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea builds it s new public website scheduled to go live in early 2012, Tuesday Talk will no longer be available. The last Tuesday Talk on the public website will be Nov. 29. If you are interested in continuing to receive these posts, please subscribe and they will automatically appear in your email, as they are written and posted. Please look for more information on next week’s post. Thank you.

When I was young, I probably enjoyed it as much as the next kid. And in those days we were what they now call “free range” kids. Able to play or go places, generally, without adults or use of carpools. And at Halloween, well, we went out right after supper and didn’t come back until our pillowcases were full of candy.

We had a kind of covert operation where we knew which houses gave out the good stuff and we’d circle back to them later in the evening, hoping they wouldn’t recognize us. Some kids would switch masks before the second visit, but I usually felt non-descript enough to get by. Kind of funny to think about it but the house we live in now was one of our marked spots in those days because they gave out little cartons of chocolate milk. We always hit that twice.

And, of course, what we didn’t trade off at the end of the evening, we hid under our beds to be used as currency to get out of chores or as bribes to assure a sibling’s lips were sealed, should she witness an activity from which we’d rather spare our parents.

From those candy collecting days we migrated to those junior high Halloweens where we pretty much just ran around in hopes of raising some kind of havoc. All I remember about those occasions were rotten tomato “drive-bys” and some rowdy smearing Vaseline in my hair. That was sport, I guess, to assault a person with slime that was impossible to wash out. We tried everything to get rid of that greasy clump of hair – even laundry detergent – with which we scrubbed repeatedly until our scalps were raw. Those unlucky enough to be “slimed” were marked for at least a week, with a Vaseline slick that couldn’t be denied.

In my younger adult years, there were costume parties which were best suited for those with creative flairs, not me. My husband still talks about the year we wrapped yellow tape around black garbage bags to go as bumble bees. We were like walking saunas. That gave new meaning to the term “wardrobe malfunction” and I lost the autonomy to make costume decisions.

When I started working at the medical center, some staff liked to dress up for Halloween. I wasn’t sure how others felt about it, but I had to think most patients weren’t too keen on Dracula drawing their blood or a clown doing their mammograms. And how many little kids would welcome a zombie taking their temps or Frankenstein looking down their throats? We don’t do that anymore, thank goodness. Some traditions are good to let go.

So now I’m evolving into a kind of Halloween curmudgeon. I’m not to the point, as are the majority of our aging neighbors, where I sit in the dark and hope the bell doesn’t ring.  But I do turn out the light at 8 p.m., scoff at parents who drive their kids around and have been tempted to deny treats to kids with facial hair. And I did put my hoses away, turned off the outside water and didn’t put my garbage out, for fear someone would tip it over. Those are either the signs of an anti-Halloweenite or me moving further into my dotage.

But maybe I can get back into the swing of things by stringing jack-o-lanterns across the yard or dressing up like Lady Gaga or inviting the whole neighborhood over to bob for apples. But then I might start a fire, cause mass nausea or become known as that kook whose name comes up in conversations about Lizzie Borden or Ed Gein. Guess I’ll just let nature take its course.

We’ve tried different approaches to address her living situation, based on a consistent theme: keeping her safe. We used that logic to convince her (well, she’s never been convinced, but she gave in) to move my dad to a memory unit, to finally move to assisted living in the same building as my dad and as the reason for our reluctance to let her move back home. Although assurance of safety sounds absolute, it has been more of a negotiation tool, a variable that has led to a series of temporary moves and stop gap measures. And she’s still not safe. Sure, she isn’t crushed under the weight of caring for my dad, she’s mostly recovered from a broken hip and she has a caregiver to help her out a few hours each day, but that doesn’t really do it.

She’s bound and determined not to return to assisted living under any circumstances, “I’m never going back to that place,” she adamantly and constantly reminds us. So she’s reluctant to tell us when she has a mishap, for fear that we’ll ship her back to that place which, I guess, is a fate worse than death. So when she’s fallen or forgotten to turn off the water (which caused a flood in the bathroom) or heard the doorbell at 2:30 in the morning, she’d prefer we not know.

But now, with her eyesight failing after a detached retina in one eye and macular degeneration in the other, she is less safe than ever. And bad eyesight is a risk for falls or misreading directions or operating appliances incorrectly or failing to maintain awareness of her surroundings. Try as I may, I can’t fully understand why living at home is The Thing. After all, it entails elaborate arrangements, a driver to shuttle her back and forth to the memory unit daily, an unsettled feeling for me and my sisters and one concession after another on our part, as additional risks and concerns come to light.

But she’s home and she can only use the main floor, someone else does the cooking, the cleaning, the wash and her medication dispensing. She can’t visit my dad without a ride and probably won’t be able to go at all when her sidewalk is icy. And if she needs immediate assistance, well, immediate isn’t available.

So we’ll try to monitor the safety risks caused by her failing vision and try not to feel like we’ve sold out, by letting her live at home. But this is her last bite of the apple, I’m sorry to say. Any major malfunction (not sure how we’ll define that) and the odyssey continues, most likely to assisted living, despite her protests. While I don’t look forward to that, I pretty much expect it.

Until then, we’ll plod along as we always have, make necessary adjustments and hope for the best. Maybe at some point she will realize that being safe should count for something and that assurance of her safety would be a comfort to us. There are times I harken back to her telling me I couldn’t do something just because she said so, followed by “and it’s for your own good.” If I thought that would work, I’d give it a shot.

His license plate said he was a veteran and there was sticker on his window that said Colonel something or other. My guess was that he used to berating people and giving orders. I have great respect for veterans, but his behavior towards me wasn’t even close to respectful and had nothing to do with his military service. He could have just rammed my car or forced me off the road like any other self-respecting vigilante, but he had to scold me. And I don’t take kindly to that. Flashback to Miss K. who did the same thing. One day, to try to knock some sense into me when I just wasn’t getting that long division stuff, she put her thumb and index finger together and thumped me quite forcefully on the forehead. Scolding didn’t give her the results she was looking for, I guess.

But I showed her. I promptly developed a headache, went to the office to say I was sick and was sent home. They maybe forgot to call my mother to tell her I was coming, though, because she seemed pretty surprised when I walked in the door. It could be – and my brain hasn’t been thumped for a while, so I can’t really remember – but it’s possible I went home without stopping at the office.

Back toIowa. I realize the protector of the truck turn lane had no way to graciously educate me on the error of my ways. But screaming and finger waving aren’t terribly effective methods to communicate, much less educate. Maybe for this guy, it’s all in a day’s work. He entertains himself by monitoring that turn lane, assuming the mantle of a colonel and challenging drivers who don’t follow the rules. But he scared me and triggered a flashback that produced a headache on a par with that one 50 years ago. But this time I didn’t go home, with or without permission.

No, my retaliation this time is more passive. I won’t be driving through that town again and I’m weighing the pros and cons of sending some anonymous letter to their newspaper suggesting they remove that big welcome sign. On the other hand, maybe I could have overreacted and this guy was just a concerned citizen trying to keep his town safe. In that case, his behavior could have been justified. I’m just relieved he wasn’t close enough to tweak my forehead. That would be like crossing the Rubicon.

There are probably lots of unsung Good Samaritan heroes doing things every day that go unnoticed.  Like the other night when the Maid Rite guy gave me $5 too much change, I said, “hey, you only owe me $9.” And when I turned around to see if the sun was shining directly on me or whether those behind me in line had their mouths hanging open in awe of my honesty, there was nada, nothing, not one single, “wow, I’m going to nominate you for citizen of the year” or “let me shake your hand” or “you are my hero” or even “let me give you $100 for saving that man $5.” Nope. Instead someone asked me whether the guy took credit cards and another told me my shoe was untied.

I find that curious because I see lots of stories on the news like the kid who caught a baseball and handed it off to another kid who had reached for it. For him, they rolled out the red carpet and give him tons of stuff worth more than that baseball. Positive reinforcement has now gone viral as things like that hit YouTube, Facebook and then bounce around the world until that person is showered with gifts and cash and offered his or her own reality show. I know I’ve said it before, but isn’t helping someone its own reward?

Someone I know once defined integrity as doing the right thing even if it might cost you personally or professionally. It’s kind of like doing the right thing, even when no know is looking.

So, do you put money in the tip jar only when the cashier is looking? Do you put a note on that car you back into when no one’s around? Do you quietly take the change handed you, even though you know it’s too much? Or do you pretty much act and react the same, regardless of who, what, when, where and why?

As for me, I’ll likely do the same thing next time I get too much change, except I’ll try not to make a scene or compare myself to Mother Theresa.  After all, she was much shorter.