RECENTLY I RECEIVED a postcard from my vet’s office saying that my cat Daisy was due for her annual rabies shot this month. Being a conscientious and dutiful pet owner, I called and made an appointment for today. I was just about to start the ordeal of getting Daisy into her carrier, something she despises and with good reason, since it never means anything fun will happen, when I stopped and thought about it for a minute. Daisy just turned 20 and barely sets even one paw outside these days. Just how the heck would she get rabies?

A quick Google search netted dozens of horror stories about older cats and reactions to rabies vaccines: This one died right away, that one got a horrible tumor and then died, another got deathly ill for months incurring hundreds of dollars in treatment, besides that’s how vets make most of their money, it’s a scam, blah, blah, blah. While some of it was nonsense, a lot of it sounded legitimate. What to do?

I called the vet’s office and spoke with a technician who said it was true that my cat didn’t actually need the vaccine at this point in her life but still, if a rabid bat entered our house and bit her she’d be toast. I said if a rabid bat came into our house my primary concern would not be about whether or not Daisy would get rabies — after all, she’s already outlived the average feline lifespan while I am actually hoping to go a few more years without foaming at the mouth. Also, a bat inside my house? I would have to move.

I postponed Daisy’s appointment pending further deliberation, but now I’m wondering how bats get inside houses anyway.

— Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid. 

HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED to know: Watching Ridley Scott’s latest film, “The Martian,” is tons of fun, and might even warrant a second viewing. (Next time I’m going with the 3-D version.) Except for a gruesome scene early on where he performs surgery on himself, actor Matt Damon is his usual cheery self despite horrible odds in this fairy tale about an astronaut who mistakenly gets left behind and presumed dead on Mars.

Matt Damon channels Clint Eastwood as he surveys his new digs on pretend Mars.
As Mark Watney, a brilliant botanist facing four years alone on the red planet until the next scheduled NASA mission could possibly rescue him, his preposterous problem-solving abilities would put physicist Stephen Hawking to shame. In addition to his surgical skills, Watney figures out how to grow food and make water, thus staving off certain death. (Chances are if he had enough time he’d figure out how to remove a rib and make himself a woman.) And besides saying the F-word several times, he maintains a positive attitude throughout that is almost too hard to believe. But then so is the whole movie, where everything always works and if it doesn’t, a little duct tape fixes it right up. (Smiley face!)

Never fear, there’s more to this story than life on Mars. Back on Earth, a puffy-faced Jeff Daniels as the head of NASA leads a team of kooky, nerdy scientists bent on bringing Watney home after a random ping on a computer alerts them to the fact that he’s still alive. And led by a dour Jessica Chastain as their boss, his original crew mates, now heading home on their super-cool Lego spaceship, scrappily jump at the chance to participate in Watney’s rescue, even though it means another 500-plus days away from their families. But hey– no problem, what with all the video chatting, time literally flies by.

There are lots of floating astronauts, giant computer screens at NASA headquarters and enormous panoramas of a desolate landscape that looks like a cross between certain parts of Utah and a video game. And despite an underlying feeling that something bad is about to befall our hero, it doesn’t. Complicated equipment that has been buried under the sand for years springs to life in minutes; all you gotta do is dust everything off and plug this tube here into that hole there, and voila–it’s a Martian miracle! Nope, it’s just Hollywood at its finest, and definitely worth the price of admission.

–Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.

I RECENTLY RECEIVED an email from a friend offering all sorts of reasons why we could not get together. It ended with the promise, “I’ll try to call you tomorrow.” This got me wondering how one would go about trying to make a phone call. Would they get near the phone but not pick it up? Maybe start to enter my number but not finish? Or enter the entire number and then hang up before the first ring? How, exactly, could one accomplish it?

“Try” is a funny word. In some cases it implies huge effort, as in, “I tried to summit Mt. Everest but I ran out of oxygen halfway up.” Or, on a lesser scale, still implying desire but defeated by an inherent weakness, “I tried to move the refrigerator to clean behind it, but it wouldn’t budge.” For many people, those three little letters offer a delicious way out, as in, “I’ll try to come to your art opening.” Again, imagine the scenario: The person dresses for an evening out, leaves home, enters the car, inserts the key into the ignition, and then what? The car won’t start? There’s a flat tire? A pit bull hiding in the back seat lunges forward and rips off their scalp?

To more fully understand my point, go ahead and try to pick up a pencil. Don’t pick it up; just try. There you go. There it is, right there. That’s trying.

–Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda is the author of The Daily Droid blog. 

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MEDITATION AND MINDFULNESS are all the rage these days. A year ago the big push was for sustainability. There was sustainable toilet paper and sustainable laundry detergent for sale in all the sustainable markets. But now that’s old news; this year the flock is striving to be mindful. And meditation is huge, mostly because it’s so good for you. “Meditating regularly can not only help shift negative thought patterns—it may even slow the loss of brain cells.” I read that somewhere, can’t remember where but it’s everywhere these days, so it could have been on my cereal box this morning.

This week while mindfully waiting for my acupuncture appointment, mindfully hydrating myself at the same time,  I picked up a magazine that is actually titled “Mindful.” It talks about all the ways you can be mindful and all the things you can do mindfully. Turns out you can do almost everything you already do, but if you just pay attention while you are doing it you are suddenly very trendy and highly evolved. You can make a mindful sandwich and then eat it mindfully. There’s even a recipe for mindful pasta primavera. You can drink mindfully and drive mindfully, although I am pretty sure you cannot drink and drive mindfully at once.

Wanting to be as mindful as possible, I decided to take a six-week course in mindfulness to be taught by a local respected mindfulness expert. Two months ago I mailed her a $150 deposit check but never heard back about it. I recently emailed her to see if the class was still scheduled to start in September and if so should I pay the balance due, and she wrote back asking if she had cashed the check because she couldn’t find it and wasn’t sure if she had spent it, but maybe she had.

I decided not to take her course.

For a more serious take on mindfulness and meditation, read Well-Being Editor Mary Carpenter’s previously published posts.

— Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.

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WOW, AM I BEHIND THE TIMES.  I am just now finding out about a new concept in dating that is apparently becoming quite common. It’s called “ghosting,” and it means just disappearing without a trace. According to Wikipedia, “Ghosting is the act of cutting off all communication with a person whom you do not have any romantic feelings for — or whom you no longer have feelings for. What makes ghosting different than, say, just not talking to said person after dumping them, is that ghosting isn’t something you announce. The cutoff just happens, and the person being ghosted is often left wondering, haunted by uncertainty and sending text messages into the ether in hopes of getting a response.”

Yup, that’s exactly what happened to me about three years ago, only I didn’t know it! My closest friend Richard, a gay male, and I had been attached at the hip for about 15 years when we lived in the same city. Then when he moved across country we were attached by the telephone, talking several times a week at the least. There were visits in between, with each of us flying to see the other. Our last visit was great, and we spent four days together in Seattle, catching up on old memories and making new ones.

I returned home, and then nothing. Dead silence. No response to phone calls. Naturally I thought he died or was at the very least in a coma. I asked everyone we knew in common, but few people had kept in touch with him. I called and left messages. I cried. I was stumped, stymied and stunned. Finally, after learning he was alive and well, my best guess was that his new boyfriend had been threatened by our deep bond. Anyway, there I was thinking Richard had totally lost all his marbles, when all the while he was on the cutting-edge of a trend that is now sweeping the nation. How cool was he?

Maybe by now he really is dead, but that is no longer any concern of mine.

–Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.

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ROSANNE ROSANNADANNA was so right: It’s always something. You’re skipping along singing a song and a bus runs over you. Okay, not literally, but you get the point. Your back finally stops aching and you blow out your knee. The same day your kid gets into Harvard your best friend’s son flips over his handlebars and ends up in the ICU. I could go on but why.

My husband swears that every life has 50 percent happiness and 50 percent sadness, no matter who you are, from the richest king to the lowliest untouchable. Then again, Mitch is what is commonly called a “cockeyed optimist,” so I wouldn’t plan anything big based on his formula. A surer bet is that every life has the potential for happiness locked inside an internal storage room of the brain, if only we can find the key.

My latest key involves drinking a 16-ounce glass of warm water with two tablespoons of fresh-squeezed lemon juice first thing in the morning, then not eating anything for 15 minutes. It supposedly wakes up your liver and flushes out nasty toxins, and who wants those? One bona fide nutritionist claims, “This simple yet powerful beverage stimulates your gastrointestinal tract—improving your body’s ability to absorb nutrients all day and helping food pass through your system with ease.” My friend Louise who has been doing it for the past 18 months and told me about it swears, “It gets your engine started.” She does look better than ever, I must admit.

I’ve been doing the lemon juice thing for the last five days and have not yet noticed anything different, but I intend to stay with it because these things take time. And if we are what we eat, which we are, of course, than the thought of warm lemon juice rolling around inside me first thing in the morning certainly sounds virtuous, much better than hot chocolate with marshmallows, a shot of tequila or even a steaming cup of black coffee.

–Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid. 

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THE LONGER ONE LIVES, the greater one’s wisdom. This is sad since many people die so young. Imagine how smart the world would be if our leaders lived longer, or if old people were given a shred of the respect they deserve. Instead, when someone like Bernie Sanders decides to run for office, the cry goes out, “He’s too old!” Maybe he’s smart, but so what; youth is everything in these superficial times.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. Wisdom is. I am getting to the point where some of the things I deemed boring or silly when I was younger, busy earning a living, listening to acid rock and smoking pot, have become the crutches I use to support my crumbling interior. Prayer, meditation, yoga and that silly “Om” chant are effective tools for dispelling bad moods and extinguishing fear, both common situations we all experience every day and which are the root cause of every addiction: overeating, smoking, drugs, alcoholism, anxiety and depression. I include depression because I think it is addictive: the more depressed we allow ourselves to be the more depressed we become, deepening those ruts in our brains. And everyone knows, getting stuck in a rut is bad. You’ve got to work really hard to get out, and sometimes you might need to call for help.

Early this morning, feeling that tightening in my head that signals anxiety, I listened to a guided meditation on my cell phone by a psychologist and teacher of Western Buddhist practices named Tara Brach, whose podcasts are available for that very purpose. Sitting quietly, eyes closed, feeling safe, breathing in and out: Now that’s a good time! She even got me to put my palms together and say “Om,” along with the hundreds of people who were there with her in person.

Om has its own Wikipedia page, but roughly it means “the totality of sound, existence and consciousness.” Saying it aloud felt good. Much better in fact than hearing the bleak news of the day delivered by those silly morning news teams. I think I’ll try it again tomorrow.

–Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.

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JULY 3 MARKED the 47th anniversary of my grandfather’s death. I remember it well because I was with him at the time, the only person present as the rest of the family were all out at a wedding and I opted to keep him company since he was ill with lung cancer and not feeling well that day. Thinking of him, a true saint who walked among mere mortals, I was reminded of his wife, the devil incarnate. They say opposites attract, and I guess that was true for those two.

I grew up in a dysfunctional family, and that’s being kind, believe me. The leader of the pack was my grandmother, whose patchwork rules were directly responsible for my mother’s closet bacon addiction. While Hitler was busy going after those six million Jews, my grandmother somehow managed to escape. Arriving in New York City from Poland as a young girl, Sarah never learned to read or write English. Yiddish remained her chosen language, and even if I didn’t know what she was saying half the time, her inflections got the point across.

Sarah was unpredictable, vacillating wildly between her old-world morality and her desire to see me safely married. When I didn’t have a date on a Saturday night, common enough to be called a pattern, she’d sympathetically pat me on the head and advise me to  “let the boys kiss you and touch you whenever they want.” But if I went on two dates in a row, she’d scream to my mother, “What is she, a floozy?”

Nothing escaped her critical eye. No fashion plate in her frumpy cotton housecoats, stockings held up at the knees with rubber bands, nevertheless she always had something to say about what I was wearing. The first time she saw me in something new, it was, “Another outfit? What, is your father made of money?” The very next time she saw it: “Again you’re wearing that schmatta?” Concerning makeup: “Go, put on some lipstick, you’ll never get married.” But if I did put on lipstick, and maybe, God forbid a million times, eyeliner and mascara, she’d shriek, “Like that you’re going out? All of a sudden you’re Elizabeth Taylor?”

My food addiction is directly traceable to her sugar cookies, for a dozen of which this very instant I would join ISIS. There were many nights when I’d sneak downstairs to the kitchen to gorge on those cookies, which she baked literally by the hundreds and brought to us unceremoniously packaged in a large brown-paper grocery bag filled to the top. Who could tell if eight, 10 or maybe 12 were missing? Granny, that’s who. Somehow I was urged to eat, eat, eat, but yet not get fat, fat, fat. One minute she might say, “Enough already, stop with the cookies,” and 10 minutes later she’d implore me to “eat something, look at you, you’re skin and bones.” (I have since performed this service for myself on a daily basis.)

Her reputation as a cook spanned two continents. There was a waiting list for her Passover seders, which were attended by no fewer than 25 people on both nights. Julia Child couldn’t have drawn a bigger crowd. (It was the matzo balls that kept them coming: Perfect spheres, they were dense but, at the same time, light. How did she do it?) When she finally died, her funeral was attended by scores of people, each one desperately seeking the recipe for one of her famous dishes. As the rabbi fabricated stories about what a wonderful, loving person she had been, he could barely be heard over the frantic cries of the mourners:

“Oy vey, Gut in himmel, I’ll never have her apple cake again.”

It went on like that, young and old alike commiserating over the eternal loss of their favorite foods. Sarah was most noticeably missed at the gathering following her funeral, the first family affair that had to be catered.

But while cooking was Sarah’s heart and soul, human relations were her Achilles’ heel. In a nutshell, she disliked everybody and everybody disliked her. “Zust nor voxen a trolley car in boch!” which meant something like “A trolley car should grow in your stomach,” was her favorite insult, hurled daily at anyone from the butcher to the mailman to her brother-in-law.

She divided the world into three groups: those who should Live and Be Well, those who should Only Drop Dead and those who should Rest in Peace. These phrases actually became part of a person’s name, and chances are they stayed that way for a lifetime. You never heard her utter just a name. For example, if she liked the person: “Uncle Benny, he should live and be well, is coming for dinner.” Defying logic, the phrase would remain positive, even if she was angry with him, as in, “Uncle Benny, he should live and be well, should burn in hell forever!” More amazing was the fact that even when she hated someone she could still acknowledge their inherent goodness, as in, “Peska, she should only drop dead, is a saint.” (Peska, by the way, was my grandmother’s sister, a fact I didn’t fully comprehend until well into my teens, since the most negative of insults always accompanied her name.)

In the case of a corpse it was anything goes, as long as it remained undisturbed, as in, “Charlie, he should rest in peace, was a cheap son-of-a-bitch bastard.”

Death was a big topic with her. When speaking about the unspeakable, she would open with, “God forbid a million times, it should never happen, if I die.” I would always remind her that death was not an “iffy” thing, but it seemed to have no effect. And since my grandfather was one of 13 children, the chances were pretty good that one of our zillion relatives was at death’s door, or at least the front curb, at all times. When Sarah called each morning for her daily family briefing, my mother would usually answer the phone with, “So, who died?” Sarah always came through with the suspected tumor, confirmed diagnosis or actual demise of someone remotely related to someone related to us.

For my grandmother to actually like you, you had to be one of three things—Jewish, rich, or a doctor. Obviously, all three in one person represented nirvana. When, in college, I started dating a non-Jew, she was miserable, wailing, “Oy vey, I should only drop dead!” However, upon learning his parents had money, her cry changed to, “Oy vey, what a doll, I could eat him up.” I eventually married the guy, causing Sarah to plead, “You couldn’t wait a minute, maybe you’ll meet a doctor?” Years later, overjoyed at my divorce, her only comment was, “God willing, I should live so long, next time you’ll marry a Jew.”

She didn’t, but I took her advice. I figured it couldn’t hurt.

–Andrea Rouda

Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.

Got a story about your own granny? Leave a comment. 

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IT’S FUNNY: HERE I AM with Washington at my doorstep, and all I want to do is hang inside my air-conditioned hotel room and write a blog. To be fair, I did venture out earlier to a nearby Starbucks for a hit of caffeine and a smattering of the local feel. Settling down among the well-heeled city folks, all on iPhones or iPads or computers, I leafed through a copy of Politico, a local newspaper dedicated to politics, natch. I read a lot about Hillary finally giving a speech, coming out with pithy things like, “I will do whatever it takes to keep America safe.” Wow, that is wild–whatever it takes! Imagine. It’s gonna be tough to top that. I guess a savvy Republican opponent could always say, “I’ll do whatever it takes, and then some, to keep America safe.”

When I first came to Washington as a college student in 1964 you could drive right by the White House, even pull over and park in front to snap some photos. Pennsylvania Avenue was just another street. Last night, as we drove around the city to see how it’s changed, we were somewhat appalled at the Kremlin-like feel of the area surrounding the Presidential Palace today. Gates and concrete barriers prevent cars from passing by the front or the back for several blocks, and parked police cars, their red roof lights blinking, hang out at every corner in all directions in the general vicinity. (How anyone would want to become president and live in that milieu is beyond me.)

What were once considered “bad” neighborhoods full of druggies and hoodlums and rapists have been transformed into spanking new “good” neighborhoods full of high-rise condos, trendy natural food markets, spiffy bistros, cool shops and of course affluent white people. I do wonder where all the former inhabitants have gone in search of new bad neighborhoods further out from the city’s center, and just how and who got them to leave.

Visually, things are awry right now in this usually beautiful city. The formerly grassy Mall looks like a giant’s sandbox as work proceeds on installing a new irrigation system underneath it. An enormous new museum currently under construction directly in the shadow of the Washington Monument is in a particularly hideous stage, although I’m betting that when it’s completed it will be just as hideous and even more enormous. And the lovely Capitol dome, that symbol of freedom we all know and love, is having something quite serious done to it and now resembles an adorable sixth-grader with head gear and a mouthful of braces.

The good news is that most of my best friends live here and I’ve been having a blast seeing them. For me D.C. truly is a great place to visit, but considering the daily afternoon thunderstorms almost phony in their intensity, like computer-generated special effects in an end-of-the-world movie, and the bumper-to-bumper traffic crawling from anywhere to everywhere else, and the recent influx of 150,000 yuppies who’ve arrived to join the government and devise new ways to spend our tax dollars, upping the housing costs to ridiculously unaffordable while they’re at it, I’m pretty sure I no longer have what it takes to live here.

–Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.

TWIZZLERS WERE HANDS-DOWN my favorite movie candy as a kid. They don’t melt, they don’t make noise, and there is plenty of them to share without having to break anything in half. Out of 1,815 people voting in a recent survey, Twizzlers ranked sixth among favorite movie candies. I always preferred the black ones, believing they were licorice. Several decades ago that was true, and since I am more than several decades old, back then I was right. But today’s Twizzlers have nothing to do with licorice, yet the perception remains. Ask anyone you know, and they will immediately say Twizzlers are licorice. But now you know better.

Actually, this is a good thing since real licorice is bad for you. Eating it can cause dangerously high blood pressure and dangerously low potassium levels because of something called glycyrrhizinic acid, which “sets off a chain reaction of biochemical events in the body that increases blood pressure.” This is not likely to happen to a normal person, since you’d have to eat a ton of the stuff in one sitting or eat it every day for a couple of weeks before the acid builds up enough to become dangerous. But if you do that, or take daily herbal pills containing licorice, overdosing is certainly a risk.

It takes about 15 hours to make a real Twizzler, although there are several YouTube videos online that show you how to make them in your own kitchen in about half an hour, so who knows what the heck goes on in that Twizzler factory in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. (I guess they get paid by the hour.)

The ingredients are corn syrup, flour, sugar, cornstarch, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, salt, artificial flavorings, citric acid and potassium sorbate. The cherry and strawberry flavors include red dye #40; the black ones have licorice extract. Clearly they are not what you would call nutritious. Not that I eat Twizzlers anymore. I no longer do anything that’s bad for me, which is one reason why getting old sucks. On the plus side, I’m healthier than the average teenager.

— Andrea Rouda
Contributor Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.

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AFTER MY FIRST FORAY into acupuncture yesterday afternoon, I am officially finished with Western medicine. It’s not going to be easy shaking off 60-plus years of constant indoctrination that took place on a daily basis, installing the belief that the Men in White are smarter than the rest of us. In fact, among the older Jews they are likely still seen as Gods. But now I know for sure: they are merely diligent students who got through med school, mostly from their lack of imagination and ability to blindly follow orders.

My personal bumblers include the chief of pulmonology at a major metropolitan hospital who diagnosed me with lung cancer and insisted I have surgery immediately, which I did, only it was a bacterial infection that would have cleared up on its own. There was the orthopedic surgeon who insisted I needed a new hip, but then I went to an “alternative medicine” practitioner who recommended I eat a lot of salmon and the pain disappeared. (I still have my old hip.) There was the anesthesiologist who couldn’t quite get the epidural right, so after three tries it turned out I would be having natural childbirth after all. The list goes on, including a 100 percent wrong surgery, a completely unnecessary breast lumpectomy and a doctor who said “Uh-oh,” when he realized too late that my supposed boil was really a cyst. (Turns out you can’t lance a cyst.)

But that is all ancient history. Most recently, and for the past six years, I have been suffering from a disease called labile hypertension, or vacillating high blood pressure. It has brought with it varying degrees of anxiety, depression, headaches, fatigue, dizziness, fainting spells and constant fear and loathing. A parade of doctors have tried in vain to ease my symptoms, each using his one and only weapon: The prescription pad. Every new drug has had its own crummy side effect, that tiresome litany we all know so well from seeing drug ads on TV. Yet not one pill — or doctor, for that matter — has helped in any real way.

As a last resort, I followed the advice of a counselor who I see to help me deal with this dreary situation and tried acupuncture. Skeptically, I made an appointment with a local practitioner, ready to laugh it off as a silly experience, but an experience nonetheless. To say I was unprepared for the result of my two-hour visit, one spent with needles stuck in various parts of my body, is an understatement: For the first time in years I felt great. I felt normal. Like my old self. I had energy. I was in a good mood. “This too shall pass,” I told myself as I drove home, assuming it was a temporary high.

But it wasn’t. I felt great for the rest of the day and all night long. Now it’s tomorrow and I still feel great. My blood feels richer. My breathing is purer. It’s like magic, only it isn’t magic; it’s simply another kind of medicine. The kind that works.

–Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at “The Daily Droid”

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IF YOU ASK ME, suicide gets a bad rap. Sure it’s sad when someone chooses to die, but at least it’s their choice, and all we can do is respect the decision and hope it was carefully considered in advance. When it succeeds, it’s what they wanted; when it fails, it offers an opportunity for change and betterment. Death, on the other hand, is a lowly scumbag assassin. It comes along whenever it damn well pleases, often at the most inopportune times, never consults with the intended target and always shoots to kill. It is truly suicide’s evil twin.

No, I’m not standing out on a ledge somewhere or holding a gun to my head. In fact, I am not feeling at all suicidal at the moment, despite all those times the thought crossed my mind. But thinking and doing are two different activities, which is why I can enter a bakery, sniff around for awhile, leer at the goods tucked safely behind glass and leave without buying anything. No harm done; in fact, I’m stronger for it. I’ve stared into the hearts of the mocha raspberry tortes, lusciously layered chocolate babka, fluffy meringue pies and, the most evil of all, those perky Magnolia Bakery cupcakes, each one murmuring, “Choose me, choose me!” (Only I can hear the murmuring.) Triumphant, I’ve sniffed and leered and laughed, then turned and walked away, shouting, “Take that, you pathetic, fattening losers!” (Only I can hear the shouting.)

It’s the same with suicide. I’ve considered it from all angles in my darkest hours, but rejected it because dammit, I want to live! In fact, I want to live forever, if you must know. I am having these thoughts owing to my flagging health right now. My fluctuating blood pressure, a.k.a. labile hypertension, is quite scary, and there seems to be little I can do about this current episode but hold on and ride it out, hoping that it doesn’t actually blow any pipes. Waking up in the middle of the night and seeing numbers almost twice as high as they should be is horrifying, yet my doctor’s prescription to “relax, take a hot bath, listen to classical music or meditate” is tough to fill when I’m busy planning where to keel over when the stroke comes.

It’s odd that the fear of death is universal, yet just here in the United States about 105 people opt for it every day. Personally, given the choice, I choose choice. Given a different choice, I choose eternal life, but only if I can eat that stuff in the bakeries without any ill effects. Especially those Magnolia cupcakes, which, if all else fails, might be reason enough to go on living.

–Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid. 

THERE IS A CERTAIN level of society that has elevated food to a status symbol. Sadly, I inhabit that level. I say sadly because while I like having enough to eat, I dislike having it while others have none. There seems little to do about this besides donating to those charities promising to send food to the needy, and so I do this every so often to assuage my guilt. Otherwise, I keep pace with my peers by dining out frequently and cooking up a storm at home.

Meg Ryan

As for the status symbol part, lately I have noticed that the once-ignored and universally eschewed Brussels sprout has apparently gotten a new agent and is now the literal superstar of sides, showcased front and center on every menu from the crummiest diner to the snootiest restaurant, Maine to California. And the price extracted in the pursuit of its fame is downright criminal.

It’s like what happened to Meg Ryan: Once she was adorable and genuine, perfect and pure and so very pretty, truly “America’s sweetheart.” Then she got her face “done” and now she’s a total mess, so much so that she quit acting and hides from the public, spending her days indoors, likely baking cookies with her children and watching reruns of “Sleepless in Seattle.” This is surely where the Brussels sprout is headed, although right now it is enjoying its day in the sun, ever-so Botoxed and lifted and tucked, sliced, diced and chopped in a myriad of creative ways.

Last night, out to dinner with my husband, we ordered the poor thing in hopes that it would arrive still tasting like itself. But alas, no such luck; in place of the plump, juicy, nutty little morsels we love, we were served a mash of chopped greens awash in butter, adorned with bacon bits, with a hint of orange essence and a lump of runny blue cheese that one could disperse at will. If you closed your eyes and concentrated really hard you could pick up a hint of the original flavor of a Brussels sprout, but it wasn’t really worth the trouble. Also, it looked bad.

A couple at the next table was gorging on a huge bowl of something unrecognizable. We asked the waitress and she explained they were “truffle-oil-infused cheese fries topped with Parmesan cheese.” I wanted to take a picture but Mitch thought that was rude.

–-Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at the Daily Droid. 

HERE’S MY DILEMMA: I really want a new handbag but I have about 15 of them already, piled on a shelf in my closet. Each one has had its day, but now none of them make me happy. My hope is that the next one will fulfill that empty place inside and keep me from eating half a tub of ice cream before dumping the other half down the garbage disposal, but I doubt it. I want, I need, I must have . . . something. Or else why am I so frequently sad, despite having full use of all four limbs and a functioning brain? Why else am I desperately hunting for a new house that will cost a fortune in a city crowded with grasping politicians and violent criminals and road- and artery-clogging traffic when I presently live in a virtual paradise that Henry David Thoreau would envy?

You have likely guessed that what I want, need and must have is peace of mind. Too bad that’s not for sale, certainly not on the Internet which is where you shop when you live in rural Maine. So, always seeking, I am reading yet another book on meditation. This one, aptly titled “Meditation,” claims that it is the only path to inner peace, self-actualization, a calm and quiet and productive mind free of depression, anger and anxiety and a robust body radiating health and energy.

Stressing the importance of having a mantra and repeating it as often as you can, author Eknath Easwaran insists you choose one carefully since you musn’t change it or it won’t work as well. The mantra will totally determine what happens to you and in what direction your spirit turns. Like if you say “Jesus” or “Hail Mary” over and over you will become Catholic in your ideals. No thank you. I’m sort of leaning towards a “Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Rama Rama, Krishna Krishna” kind of thing since that’s my favorite song by dead Beatle George Harrison, but I worry that by concentrating on it constantly my spirit may become too Liverpudlian.

Honestly, I find the whole meditation thing slightly scary. After all, hanging out in one’s subconscious is not exactly a walk in the park. And I’m not sure I even believe in all of it; how can repeating a word or phrase in my mind make my life better, eliminating all fear and need for Ben and Jerry’s, at the same time opening my heart to give and receive unconditional love? But it’s worth a try since all I’ve got now is an empty bag of tricks, none of which have worked since natural childbirth 27 years ago. That was truly a stupendous experience but it never happened again — God’s choice not mine — and since then it’s been the same old, same old.

Now here’s Easwaran promising that if I follow his “Simple 8-point program for translating spiritual ideals into daily life,” I will feel that same excitement again. Okay, I’m in. I just have to choose my mantra and get started, and soon enough I will be a better person, and who doesn’t want that? “Om mani padme hum” has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? It says that whatever our humble beginnings and whatever mistakes we have made in the past, we can purify our hearts and come to dwell in spiritual illumination. That sounds good to me.

–Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at “Call Me Madcap!”*

*In an e-mail, writer Andrea Rouda notified MLB that the name of her blog has been changed to Daily Droid.

IT IS 7:30 IN THE MORNING and my husband is noisily exterminating ladybugs with his Shop-vac. Everyone thinks of ladybugs as so cute, adorning such things as baby quilts, knee sox and Vera Bradley quilted bags. At our house they adorn just about every surface, including outside and inside all light fixtures, around doors and windows, on the toaster, inside the microwave oven and even on the top of my head as I write this. As soon as Mitch clears away a cluster, more of them show up. What fun!

Sadly, while he was distracted by the vacuuming, and having begun preparation of the morning coffee, Mitch neglected to put the glass carafe in place and so the coffee came streaming onto the newly installed white tile counter and bright white cabinets, all just painted and cleaned by a professional service, and dripped onto the newly installed wood floor where it settled in an oozy, black puddle of mucky grounds. And kept coming until paper towels and said carafe could be found, but of course they could not since “someone” had moved them. (We share this place.)

Arriving late last night in a driving downpour for a supposedly relaxing getaway at our vacation house in upstate New York, I’m pretty sure we made a wrong turn somewhere around Claverack and ended up in the Twilight Zone. Besides the ladybugs there are squirrels living in the walls and floorboards. This has been true since early fall, when we discovered black walnuts hidden all over the house, sort of like an Easter egg hunt for the criminally insane. Naturally we called Orkin to come and work their magic; it cost nearly a thousand dollars, but they did make the nuts disappear. Unfortunately better magic, which would include getting rid of the actual squirrels, costs more.

So we called Orkin again and they came last week, leaving a note on the kitchen table–also covered with ladybugs–that says, “Performed a thorough inspection and found two holes that were not found on the original inspection because the foundation was covered with snow. Captured and removed one red squirrel from multi-catch trap by back door. We will be back on Monday to rewire and rebait them.” So now we have several little prison boxes around the perimeter of our house with freaked-out squirrels inside, rattling the bars and squeaking, “Guard! Guard!” in their little squeaky language. If only I could tell them to relax, they are in a Catch and Release program and not on Death Row, I’d feel better and so would they.

The imprisoned rodents go nicely with the three dead fish we found first thing this morning floating on the top of the lovely little pond right outside the kitchen window, naturally covered with ladybugs. This is the saddest of all as we had come to think of them as our pets, feeding them and naming them. (The fish, not the ladybugs.) Now we have a lot to do to get this place in shape since friends are coming for dinner and the husband told me emphatically that his wife does not like fish, dead or alive. (We’re having chicken.)

–Andrea Rouda

Andrea Rouda blogs  at   “Call Me Madcap!”

*In an e-mail, writer Andrea Rouda notified MLB that the name of her blog has been changed to Daily Droid.

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LAST NIGHT I PLAYED BRIDGE. As the only one in our foursome who reached adulthood without learning this card game, I was at a distinct disadvantage. It’s sort of like being abducted by aliens and waking up on another planet where they all speak the same language and you don’t even know how to ask, “Where’s the bathroom?”

In fact, if you’re playing bridge, “Where’s the bathroom?” might actually mean, “I have five hearts and the ace of spades.” But only if you play that way. If you play another way, it could mean, “I have many clubs and no diamonds,” or maybe even, “Where’s the kitchen?” That’s the thing with bridge: Nothing means what it sounds like it means. (Of course, if you’ve spent your formative years indoors playing bridge, the ins and out of this private world are second nature to you. You can easily spot those people by their pallor.)

For example, I thought bidding “one club” was the way to tell my partner that I had pretty good clubs in my hand. But no! In bridge talk, I was unwittingly asking if my partner had hearts or spades, and had nothing at all to do with clubs!  Of course, if you play “preferential diamonds,” a bid of “one diamond” means the same thing. But that’s a big If, and the only way to know is to . . . ask them. You can do this in regular English, unlike the rest of the game when you have to talk in Bridge.

Silly me, I didn’t ask, and naturally I was the evening’s Biggest Loser. And to make matters worse, before I lost I was very, very vulnerable! Which doesn’t mean what you think it means, but has something to do with rubbers and scoring tricks and being either above or below “the line.”

For me, playing bridge is similar to, but more confusing than, arguing over abortion in Corsican. I’ll explain: I understand French, but in Corsica they speak a unique language, part French, part Italian. Many years ago, I was in Corsica and spent an evening with a group of people who were arguing over abortion, naturally in Corsican. It was all very complicated, but every once in a while I would hear a word or a phrase that allowed me to make some sense of it all.

I was more confused last night playing bridge with my husband and friends in my own home right here in America.  Which may actually be my way of saying, I love that game and can’t wait to play again.

— Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at “Call Me Madcap!”

*In an e-mail, writer Andrea Rouda notified MLB that the name of her blog has been changed to Daily Droid.