Part of the Problem

It used to be that friends and family only harassed you by telephone or with unannounced visits. My own family tends to just walk in because I almost never lock my door. Then I get greeted with statements like, "You're not dressed!" That's right. I might have been had you rang first, but you didn't. Now when I remember to lock the door they still arrive unannounced and pound until I let them in. The question then is, invariably, "Why is your door locked?" To keep you out.

But thanks to the wonder of technology, you can and will be harassed through email, text and instant message. Chronic harassers prefer these methods because they can't be rejected. You'll never actually block your dear friends' or your mother's emails, so they have a clear shot at you. Chain emails are my favorite, by which I mean they are the things that make me want to spill blood. Not mine either.

Guardian Angels, Friendship Roses and Good Luck Prayers clutter my inbox daily, all of them urging me to forward them on to at least 10 other unsuspecting schmucks, all of whom have probably already received this same email from somebody else. A few of them even urge me to forward the thing back to the person who sent it to me! I can't imagine such an idea. I didn't want the first one, so why in the hell would I send it on to 10 other people with the hope that all 10 of them will send the same damn thing back to me again?

It's not that I don't appreciate the thought that I'm included in someone's "forward to" list. Some of the emails are even cute, but most of them are stupid and none of them will I forward on to another individual. I will not do it because I have enough people and situations in my life that force my hand, and I will not be ordered around by an email. Threaten me with disaster and financial ruin if you must, but it's getting deleted. The other day I got one that said, "If you don't forward this message you are part of the problem." Good! Delete.

I've called my T-shirt guy and he's screening me a shirt that reads "I Am Part of the Problem." I'll take a picture of it and send it to all my friends and family with the plea that they forward it along to everyone in their address folder. If they refuse to do it, well, they're just part of the solution.

Left Out

I don't drink coffee. More than just not liking it, I am put off by it. Years ago I could at least say that I liked the aroma of coffee if not the taste, but when I was pregnant 13 years ago my sense of smell was heightened to such an extreme that even scents I liked before became noxious. Coffee was one of those, and I have never recovered from it.

The problem this poses for me is that I am totally left out of the Great Coffee Social that seems to thrill the rest of the world. All the time people are "going for coffee," or chatting it up on their coffee break or talking about how you "just don't want to see me before I've had my coffee," and it makes me feel like a loser. I think, "Wow...I wish people were scared to see me before I had coffee! That must kick ass." Hell, "Coffee" is the first entry on one of my favorite blogs ever, Stuff White People Like. See how important it is?

I've tried coffee every conceivable way, and it just doesn't work for me, so there I am, the one non-coffee drinker of the bunch. Oh, I've tried to fake it. I've done the hot chocolate instead. I've even gone exotic with a vanilla soy steamer or something equally ridiculous, but it's like I'm the one guy drinking a Fuzzy Navel when everybody else is doing Jåger Bombs. It's just pussy. You don't do it.

But the worst are the incredulous looks I get when I say I don't drink coffee. It's not astonishment even. It's more like horror. "You don't drink coffee? Are you kidding me?" No. Not. I'm just a vanilla soy drinking loser. Sorry to offend.

This is a manageable malady though. In time people come to accept my deficiency and some even find it charming in that "isn't she weird?" kind of way. I can live with it. I just have to remind myself never to mention that I also don't like Led Zeppelin. That would really mark me as a total freak, and I just don't know if I can deal.

Sexy Weather

Don't let the map of Ohio fool you. It was just too good not to use, but rest assured nobody has sexier weather than Alabama and no people get a bigger boner for the weather than people in the South.

I know what you're saying. We don't get blizzards down here and we rarely suffer major floods. It's true, our weather is fairly temperate. What that means is any weather incident is newsworthy and likely to cause great excitement and widespread panic. For example:

Heat and Drought
Amazingly enough, Alabama can go eight weeks straight with no rainfall and yet maintain a humidity level of 100 percent. This is typically accompanied by dramatic reminisces of the "Drought of '64" in which the earth was so parched and cracked you could stare straight down into the yawning mouth of Hell itself. It is also marked by comments on how dead the grass is, water use restrictions and fantastic weather graphics on the nightly news indicating the Deadly Heat Index. Eventually, it will rain, and this is always celebrated with a rash of car accidents as soon as the first drops of moisture hit the asphalt.

Tornados
It is hard to get sexier than a 250-mph funnel of doom. This typically causes a frenzied circle jerk among the weather persons in the state. All regular television programming is suspended on a night in which tornadoes are forecast so each station can run competing maps of their Mega-Doppler 3000 Accu-Cast. There is exciting talk of "hook echoes" and discussions of "straight-line winds" and "super-cells." Midway through the night, the weathermen will remove their sport coats, loosen their neckties and roll up their sleeves to better indicate their tireless efforts to bring us the news that "no tornadoes have yet been spotted on the ground, but folks we've got a long night ahead of us." My feeling is that these guys are all reciting voodoo incantations in front of their radar, praying for the worst to happen.

Snow and Ice
As exciting as a tornado is, nothing quite gets the juices flowing for an Alabamian like the threat of winter precipitation. This is of course because we rarely get any significant snow or ice and even the smallest amount will close schools and interstates and any state office, because God knows a bureaucrat will look for any excuse not to work. The most interesting thing that happens is the Bread and Milk Run on the local grocery stores where old ladies will tussel like mud wrestlers over a loaf of rye that they would never normally ingest. For some reason, people in the South feel that any winter storm can be weathered as long as one has enough bread and milk. I've always thought that if one is to be snowed in for a week and possibly frozen to death it would be more enjoyable to have lots of soft drinks, snack cakes and bacon. You know, something worth having for a last meal. Whole wheat and 2-percent just doesn't fire me up.

I don't watch the weather. I don't have to. I can walk outside to see if it is hot, my mother will call me at 2 a.m. if there is the possibilty of tornadoes, and if I walk into the Piggly Wiggly to find all the bread is gone I know that somebody mentioned snow. So I buy Twinkies.

Birthday

In a little over a month, provided I live that long, I'll be 39. I'm not particularly looking forward to it, though I'm not really dreading it either.

What is a birthday? I was excited to turn 16, but it was because that was the age for a drivers license. I was excited to be 18 because that meant I could vote. Typically, I was excited to be 21 because that meant I could legally buy alcohol. Beyond reaching those landmark years of increased privilege, birthdays don't really count for anything significant other than the passage of time.

This doesn't mean you don't notice them. When I turned 36 I fell into a significant depression due to a number of things, but as the year progressed I realized that a big part of it was that I dreaded my 37th birthday. I wondered why. Even turning "the big 3-0" hadn't bothered me at all. Perhaps it was because, at 36, you can still claim to be in your mid-30s, but at 37 you have moved into the late 30s area. And then there was that damned Marianne Faithful song, The Ballad of Lucy Jordan: "At the age of 37, she realized she'd never drive through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair..." Lucy ended up in the nuthouse, which is probably where I need to be half the time, but the good news is that once I actually turned 37 I was over it. As it turned out, it wasn't such a big deal after all, Paris notwithstanding.

So now here comes 39. People seem to put a lot of stock in this one. I have an aunt who used to tell people for years that she was 39, even when she was 60. "Thirty-nine and holding," she'd say. I think I may take the opposite approach and tell people that I'm FORTY-nine, so they'll be compelled to say, "My God, you look so fantastic!" and I can reply, "Thank you, yes I do."

Orange and Blue (Really, Really Blue)

While there is still hope for my Browns to find a decent new coach in the off season, all hope is lost for my Auburn Tigers. Talk about a blue Christmas for us.

Our esteemed athletic director Jay Jacobs (the man who built the Olympic-size swimming pool a foot too short so Auburn can't host any events in the sport in which we hold the most national titles) and our dear old meddlesome asshole booster Bobby Lowder have given us a new coach. Gene Chizik, a man who managed to make Iowa State worse in his two years there, ending with a 5-19 record as a head coach.

Now, in fairness, Chizik was Auburn's defensive coordinator during the 2004 undefeated season. But he was also the defensive coordinator in the previous 3-9 season. He left Auburn and went to Texas where he also was defensive coordinator on an undefeated regular season. I don't discount his knowledge of defense. However, both Auburn and Texas continued to thrive after Chizik's departures, while Iowa State got worse the second he arrived. It begs the question: how much of the success at Auburn and Texas should Chizik be credited with? Or should most of the credit go to the head coach and the rest of the coaching staff as well as Chizik? And does being pretty good on the defensive side of things make you a head coach? Ask Romeo Crennel.

The most disturbing and disappointing thing about our coaching search is that our leaders passed over Turner Gil, for whom the Auburn Family was salivating. The rumor is that it was partially because Gil, a black man, is married to a white woman. If there is any truth to that rumor--and many sources close to Jacobs and the Board of Trustees believe there is--then how can one in good conscience continue to support the program? Even if Jacobs worried that some backward members of the fanbase might not like it, a university is supposed to be above such things. It is supposed to bring enlightenment and broaden the culture. It is supposed to be a community leader. And from my view, in reading fan forums and listening to sports radio, the majority of the fanbase was screaming for Gil, didn't care about his or his wife's race, and never even mentioned Chizik. I'll withhold judgment because there is yet no proof, but should anyone reveal that racial issues were part of the reasoning behind this ridiculous hire, I will turn Tide faster than you can say "Hail Saban."

And speaking of Saban, his arrival in this state caused an immediate and catastrophic change in the demeanor of Auburn. Here we were, having beaten Bama five straight and on the way to the sixth, and having an undefeated season under our belts with a real argument for a national championship, and yet our leaders panicked. How else can you explain the ousting of a coach who averaged 9 wins a year during his tenure at Auburn and the hiring of a man who has to this point been a failure as a head coach? Jacobs will insist that Tommy Tuberville resigned, but then explain why Tommy got a $5.1 million payoff? Jacobs is either a liar or an idiot. Neither is good.

I'll be blunt. I don't like Gene Chizik. I listened to his press conference Monday when he was introduced as coach, hoping that my initial reaction of shock and dispair would be changed to one of hope and happiness. It did not happen. I have never heard such rambling arrogance from a coach before, not to mention that he used the phrase, "at the end of the day," about a dozen times. Well, Gene, at the end of the damn day that kind of swagger is best worn by people who have proven they can do the job of head coach. You haven't.

I predict that Gene Chizik will last no longer than two years at Auburn. My Tigers will be playing musical coaches for the next decade, and there will not be a Saban to pull us up and turn us a around. Thank you Jay Jacobs and Bobby Lowder. Your influences on the Auburn program can not end soon enough.

Being Brown

I couldn't have picked a better two years to become a Browns fan. I've learned so much, not just about the team's history and the NFL in general, but I've actually scraped the tip of the iceberg on what it's like to be a fan of this team.

2007 was my first season as a fan. It was great! We were 10-6 when nobody thought we'd win more than four. Young players had breakout years. Old players showed they still had the goods to compete. I followed every play as best I could, which is pretty hard in Alabama where the Browns were almost never shown in my television market. I relied on horrible bootleg video streams and the NFL Gamecenter graphics on NFL.com. When I was lucky, a game would be replayed on NFL Network and I'd get to see it after the fact. But it was all good. It filled me with hope for this season.

Longtime fans told me not to get excited, but I did anyway. They warned me I was destined for a fall, but I didn't listen. They knew, but I'm new. So I got more and more excited as the 2008 season approached.

But I wasn't the only one. The NFL was hopeful too. I was overjoyed when it was announced that the Browns would have FIVE nationally-televised, prime time games this season, including three regular season games on Monday Night Football. This was going to be a great year. We could win the AFC North. Everyone said it was possible and a few brave souls even predicted it outright. And we'd definitely make the playoffs.

With only three games left this year, playoff hopes long dead, and the organization in a dramatic shambles from top to bottom, we'll be lucky for real this time to win more than four. Our coach and maybe even our GM will be fired when the season mercifully comes to an end. Players who thrilled me last year and disappointed me this year may be traded, making way for new guys who may or may not produce. There is an awful lot of uncertainty in the air in Cleveland, and the sign on the door is about to say, "closed until next year."

It leaves me asking, "WTF happened? How did I get involved in this?" Well, that's neither here nor there. I am involved now. I've caught the Next Year Virus, a highly communicable disease spread by other fans who have been sticking it out with this team for decades. But it's OK. There are worse things to be sick with, and the treatment for this illness is actually pretty sweet. You get a dose of Free Agency, followed by seven rounds of Draft, a little physical therapy in the spring, and then you'll be fully renewed come August.

So I'm closing the door on this season. Not all the way. I'll peek through the crack to see if we pull out a win over Cinci, and peek again at the inevitable train wreck that will be the season finale in Pittsburgh. Oh, who am I kidding? I'll watch every second of this week's Monday night game and hope for an improbable victory. I'm fully contaminated at this point, readying myself for years and years of manic-depressive fandom. Others have survived it, and I can too.

Speaking of Connected

Not to diminish tangible, physical things, I had an interesting experience the other day resulting from an eBay transaction.

I ordered a pashmina shawl. Silk and wool blend in the loveliest shades of pink and lavender, it was a great deal for about $18 including shipping. It came from India, naturally. Just to make note, it was far better than the pictures suggested, with scattered beading and tiny jingling bells on the fringe. And so soft! But that wasn't the cool part.

The mail carrier brought my package to the door because I had to sign for it. It was in a large, white envelope which looked slightly unusual and when I touched it I knew why. It was linen. The envelope itself was linen. Upon close examination, it had been stitched together by hand, and the corners tacked with wax for extra durability. If you click the picture you can see it in more detail.

I sat on the sofa looking at it, and just became amazed. Someone I don't even know took time to create it so meticulously. My little purchase of less than $20 warranted this care. I felt a strange connection to this unknown person because I was holding in my hands something that had been created just for me by their hands.

Practically speaking, I know that it was a business transaction and the envelope was merely the way that seller packages his goods. It probably didn't give them a second thought. But for me, that extra work and care made an otherwise ordinary purchase into something more like a gift. It was a very interesting surprise.

Connected

We aren't connected to people the way we once were. Electronic communication via email, cell phones, text messages and the like keep us seconds away from contact with each other, yet often over vast distances. It also opens us to the possibility of new friends we would never have met otherwise.

Some people haven't yet embraced this phenomenon. They think it's downright weird to have friends you have never met person-to-person. They distinguish between "internet friends" and "real friends." I have come to make no distinction in value. Just this week an "internet friend" helped me begin solving a problem that not a single one of my "real friends" had the experience or empathy to address. If I didn't value that connection I would have missed out on his gift, and I am very grateful that I did not.

It's actually very old fashioned. In the days before planes, trains and automobiles, many a great and enduring friendship was conducted primarily through letters. Couples would court, fall in love, become betrothed, often before ever laying eyes on each other. It wasn't considered strange then because there wasn't a more efficient option. Just because there are options now does not diminish the power of written words to forge true connections with others. To limit the value of a friend merely due to lack of a physical presence is to limit the capacity of the heart and mind. If what we think and how we feel are the true essence of who we are as people, and those things can be experienced by whatever means available, the ability to split a plate of nachos becomes entirely inconsequential.

My White Christmas

About a year ago the day after Christmas my mother rang the house and said, "Your father is at Lowe's and he's found a sale. He wants to know if you would like a white Christmas tree."

She had to ask? I'm the person with pink flamingos in the yard and season-appropriate window clings on the car. I am the Queen of Tacky. Of course I wanted a white Christmas tree. Maybe she was asking rhetorically. In any event, the tree was purchased. Regular price was $48, and I think he gave six bucks for it. A true bargain.

The fact is, I like unorthodox Christmas decorations. The orange and black of my beloved pagan Halloween is being manhandled by red and green in the stores by mid-October these days. Enough!

Before anyone gasps, I did put up a perfectly ordinary green Christmas tree too, but it is hardly worth mentioning compared to the gloriousness of my white tree! Just look at it, shimmering in blue ornaments! I may forsake green trees altogether.

If only they made pink plastic Christmas trees. Then I'd really be in business.

Following...what?

Lo and behold, I click onto my blog and discover that I have followers. Three of 'em! That's one follower for every week that has passed since I last wrote anything.

I am shamed. The very idea, that there are people kind enough to declare themselves a follower, which is a very thoughtful affirmation for me, and yet I give them nothing.

This will not stand. I promise no brilliance, as I have been experiencing a distinct lack of inspiration and some writer's block, but I will forge ahead bravely. We'll see how it turns out.