Where I’ve Been, And Why

  So, in the middle of December, last year, I suddenly stopped posting on this blog. Absolutely nothing for over 3 months. I basically avoided any updates on Facebook, although there were a few drive-by snippets here and there. I didn’t throw anything out on Twitter, although, to be fair, I never really got invested in the Twitter thing. (There’s something about the 160-character thing that just irks and inhibits me.) My Pinterest boards went silent, I apparently stopped perusing books according to Goodreads, and Google Plus became Google Minus.

  Last month, the silence on this blog was briefly broken, with three half-ass posts, not my best, then the tumbleweeds started rolling again. I essentially went AWOL from social media, and I gave no reason why. But today, with the arrival of a certain something in the mail, I decided it was time to chat a little bit about what’s been going on.

  Despite the concerns expressed by a few people who emailed me privately, I did not go into a depression. Rather, I went into a distraction. Two of them, actually. My creative juices did not dry up. Instead, the juices were squeezed into different containers than this one.

  The first container was one of my other blogs, “Backup Dancers From Hell”. At some point late last year, something I did, or perhaps something someone else did, caused a huge spike in hits on that blog. I went from an average of less than a hundred hits a day to over a thousand a day. And the spike held strong, continuing for weeks. It eventually abated somewhat, but I still regularly get 500-600 hits a day.

  Granted, an analysis of hits is rather mundane and boring for people who aren’t writing an actual blog. But if you are a blogger, any time you see a spike, you do the best you can to recreate or reinforce whatever caused that activity. Trouble is, I couldn’t figure out what was causing all the commotion, what  might be the source of the influx, because the tallies of hits on the individual posts did not add up to the overall total that Blogger was reporting for that site.  And I still haven’t figured it out, even after I went to the Blogger IT people. They were just as flummoxed as me about the discrepancy, but they confirmed that the overall total was a valid and wonderful thing.

  Hmm.

  Bottom line, something or somebody somewhere was paying attention to that blog. And the only way to guarantee the attention was to keep posting. So I have been. Which means less time for this blog.

  The bigger container for my juices (that sounds a bit naughty, but I’m keeping the phrase anyway) had two fundamental ingredients. The first was the abysmally low number of hits for this blog. Although I like ALL of my blogs, at least those that are still active, this one is my pride and joy. This is where I have the most fun, where I don’t limit myself, and where you can get the truest glimpse into what I’m really trying to do. But nobody was coming to visit, despite my promotional efforts on social media.

  And that’s ingredient number two, social media. I had been spending an enormous amount of time on the various outlets, from Facebook to Pinterest to lesser-known vehicles that might generate some visits, especially repeat visits, which is crucial, to my blogs. Yes, some of my time, especially on Facebook, was purely social in nature and I do enjoy that angle, but a big chunk of my efforts were concentrated on the business side.

  And it really is a business, for me. I love writing, don’t get me wrong, if The Fates decree that I am never to earn a penny from my writing, so be it, I will still continue. But I would like to earn some pennies from it, many pennies, to be blunt. I would like it to be my career. Scratch that, I dream nightly about it being my career. It’s the one thing I’ve always wanted, since day one when I first composed a sentence as a young child and thought, wow, that felt really good. More, please.

  But we all face obstacles when approaching  fervent goals, and mine are currently these: I have a soul-sucking day job that takes up a tremendous amount of time. (And most of us do, I realize, I’m just listing my grievances to present a better case in court.) I’ve been spending a lot of time on social media promoting my material, instead of producing my material. (And as I’ve mentioned, that promoting doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere.) And I have a tendency, on this blog, to create hugely-epic, multi-part posts that only attract my few hard-core readers. (The average visitor drops into the middle of this mess, immediately gets confused about what is going on, and leaves.)

  Those are the lesser-evils. The biggest impediment? My using the above excuses to justify and explain why I’m not getting anywhere with this blogging thing. It was time for me to suck it up, get real, and do what I’ve always wanted to do, which is write books. The blogs are fine and dandy, for what they are, and I’ve had many fine moments where I’m overwhelmingly proud of what I’ve done, even if only my hard-core readers pay any attention.

  So that’s what I’m going to do, write actual books. More importantly, I’m actually doing something about it instead of just wishing and hoping. I’ve started on the first book (in this decade anyway, more on that later) and things seem to be going okay. It’s a reworking of the “Paris Chronicles” series from this very blog, which originally ran at the tail-end of 2009. I’m chopping and shifting and adding and subtracting bits of those 52 posts so that they read in a smoother narrative flow, so that it proceeds like an actual novel and not something that was invented on the fly, as it was, one post at a time.

  Why revisit something that I’ve already done? Why plunder that which was once writ? Well, because I think it’s worth the recycling, and the opportunity to revisit “old friends” has been rather fun, both the good (“oh, I like what I did there”) and the bad (“holy cow, that sucked”). Over the years and all the various blogs, I’ve amassed a huge number of posts. If you lay them out end to end, you probably couldn’t circle the world, but by sheer odds alone there’s going to be a nugget or two worthy of rescue.

  To put it another way, here’s an excerpt from what is now the opening chapter of Screaming in Paris, a working title that suits me now but is obviously subject to change. In this bit, I address those well-intentioned folks who ask why I’ve never written a book…

  In the years since, as my blog-work wandered through a range of stories and experiments (some efforts producing pieces of which I’m proud, other efforts calling into question the severity of my alcohol intake), there was one thing which remained constant: People were always asking me when I was going to “write a book”. (Because, as the snooty authors with actual “hard-cover” trophies on the mantel loved to point out, a blogger just isn’t a “real” writer, he’s only playing in his own little sandbox.)

  But the truth is, I have written a book. Three of them, many years ago. None of them were exceptionally brilliant, and all of them were soundly (and probably wisely) rejected by publishing houses back in the day. (The first effort no longer exists, the worn pages having been lost at some point as I moved between houses and cities and states. I believe there might be a copy of the second manuscript in a box in the attic, but I haven’t tried to find it in years, fearing that it, too, may have joined its older sibling next to a manual typewriter in the sky. The third and last child is neatly tucked in a cardboard box and shoved to the back of a shawdowy, rarely-used drawer in my desk, patiently waiting for me to love it again.

  There was a dark period where I wrote very little, a lost decade or two, running in place and even slipping back down the stairs from time to time. But I never stopped paying attention, observing, filing away images that planted seeds, quietly distilling a new approach to my writing. And then this magical concept of “blogging” came along, a new playing field where you can get real-time reaction from readers, and you realize rather quickly whether or not an experiment is working. My seeds now had plenty of water, I just had to keep fertilizing them.

  My farm, over time, exploded. At one point I had nine separate blogs, each constructed around completely different concepts, using various writing styles. The years of pent-up non-expression came pouring out of me, two or three posts a day. I don’t think my fingers ever stopped moving in 2010 and 2011. It was a glorious, wonderful release. But there was a potential price. “You’ve got to slow down,” warned my more-seasoned blogger friends. “You’ll burn yourself out, you’ll get all cranky, and people won’t invite you out for cocktails anymore.”

  And they were right, of course. The little engine that could can only cover so much track before the scenery starts to get a little too familiar. I transferred my engine to a smaller network of tracks, one with fewer departures and a more relaxed schedule, and I spent some time reviewing the logs to see just where my train had been.

  My overgrown garden is now full of thousands and thousands of pages. Bits of this, long stretches of that, weird snapshots of whatever, planted hither and yon. THERE are my books, the new and preferably better ones, the books I actually have been writing during the years when people thought I was just playing. It’s time to get out my trowels and shovels and pruning shears and, yes, the dreaded axe, harvesting the good stuff and sadly sending the not-so-tasty produce to the compost heap so they can help feed next season’s crop.

  And there you have it, a snippet of the future, at least for me, one wherein I focus on writing books and not so much on my blogs. There’s a bit of pain with that, because I like the immediate response of comments on my posts. But it’s clear at this point that I’m not doing whatever is necessary for the blogs to become a source of income. I can’t keep pointing fingers and hoping for something magical. I have to take concrete steps.

  And one of those firm steps involves what I hinted at earlier, the arrival of something in the mail this morning. This package contained finalized documents between me and the county of Dallas, state of Texas. Officially, I am now a publishing company, Bonnywood Manor. (A name which should come as no surprise if you have followed me for any length of time.) It cost me a little bit of money to do so, not overwhelming, but still, it would certainly cover the tab of several consecutive happy hours at my fave restaurant, Ojeda’s.

  What does this mean? It means that I can retain complete ownership of anything that I publish, and that seems rather important to me even if it really isn’t in the long run. It also means that, someday, once I’ve figured out the hazy maze of getting things published, I have an umbrella to hold up, where I can reach out to others who type endlessly into the night and dream during the day, and help them share what I hope to share. Baby steps now, strong strides later.

  But first I have to finish my first/fourth book, make it festive and enticing. Which means, somewhat sadly but also encouragingly, that this blog will transition. I’ll still be using this site to post original material, especially when I need input on tricky bits where I’m needing critical insight. But it won’t be what it once was, which was a repository for my literary whims. Instead, it will become a sounding board as I reflect on life, liberty, the pursuit of publication, and a never-ending quest to find the perfect queso to compliment a margarita.

  Or, as some purists will say, it will become an actual blog, a hitching post for what is happening in my life. This scares me a little bit, because I have a tendency to hide the real me from the spotlight, after years of being misunderstood and defaulting myself into obscurity. I initially named this blog “The Sound and the Fury” for a reason. I’m going back to that reason, and I hope you’ll join me.

  But there will always be my stories, either here or somewhere else, that I promise.

  Stay tuned. Please.

15 Updated Adult Beverages to Help You Cope With Modern Society

1. The Surly Temple

  This drink was originally created to placate people who confused their uptight religious upbringing (no demon alcohol!) with their natural social inclination to have a good time with their less salvation-based friends. Sadly, because the Surly Temple has no actual alcohol and did nothing to make prudish people relax their sphincters, the ordering of a Surly Temple by restaurant and/or bar patrons became a clear signal to the service staff  that  “this is somebody who is not going to tip well because they have issues, skip the dessert presentation and get them out of here.”

2. The Marge Or Rita

  This is the drink you should order when the bartender hollers “Last Call!” to help you determine who you get to share hangovers with the next morning.

3. Gin and Chronic

  This will help you live with all those recurring body aches and pains that mysteriously and suddenly appear at the very second you turn 40. (You know, those things you tell your doctor about but he gives you a dismissive “get over it, bitch” hand wave, because you’ve reached that point of personal-decay where a simple sneeze can throw your back out. Then the doctor bills your insurance company 700 dollars for the three minutes he spent pretending to examine you.)

4. Rum and Cope

  Have one of these before attempting to drive on any major freeway, because it’s inevitable that some dumb-ass is going to do something completely dumb-ass that jeopardizes the life of everyone except the dumb-ass. And you really don’t need to be aggressively forcing said dumb-ass into the Ditch of Retribution until you have met your insurance deductible for the year.

5. Sex on the Reach

  This is the perfect cocktail for those times when your current bed partner just isn’t managing to make the earth move under your feet. (“Honey, while you grunt and sweat and impress no one but yourself, could you hand me the TV remote?”) And yes, it’s perfectly acceptable to mix one of these up during the theoretical love-making. After all, you need something to do whilst waiting for your clueless lover to find your F-spot.

6. Cosmopolitician

  Whip up a big ole pitcher of these the next time the planets cruelly align and you are forced to watch a presidential debate. Take a swig every time a Republican lies or a Democrat hedges on calling the Republican a flat-out liar. You’ll be drunk before the third question is asked.

7. The Booty Mary

  This is the required drink any time you head to a shopping mall, because you know damn well you are going to run into a pack of those horrid women who mistakenly believe that Spandex was created to showcase butt-crack and camel-toe. It is suggested that you have several drinks before you even get out of the car, because one should never have to encounter The Walking Spread whilst sober.

8. The Man Had One

This is the official drink of Lorena Bobbitt.

9. The White Rush In

  Served in upscale, old-money, Presbyterian pubs where over-privileged socialites named Leona and oil-company executives named Dick whine about possibly having to pay the same tax rate as the little people. The drink is served with a silver spoon for stirring and a listing of Cayman Island banks for perusing…

10. The Mar-Teeny

  This is the courage-inducing drink that will allow you to seem convincing when notifying your significant other that you have once again wrecked the car, but “it’s only a tiny little scratch!” (Even though you have busted both axles on said car, destroyed part of the town square, and caused structural damage to an important and historical bridge.) In some parts of the country, this drink is also used to console sad people who have just had sex with someone so cosmically under-endowed that they are both technically still virgins.

11. The Mo He Toe

  This is the favorite beverage of foot fetishists everywhere, and that’s as far as I care to go with the explanation. (Sometimes a click on the Internet can take you to places that never need to be mentioned again.)

12. Absenth

  Drink enough of this kick-to-the-head and you will have no problem calling in sick at your place of employment. For several days. Until you stop believing that you are a Bohemian in turn-of-the-century Paris and remember that you have actual bills to pay. (But that nice little fever-dream where Nicole Kidman danced with you at Moulin Rouge was kind of fun, eh?)

13. Cape Clod

  This elixir is traditionally served to people who think they are superheroes, but they suck at it and everyone with an I.Q. above “2” is aware of their sucking, even though the fool in question ignores the suckage-outrage and continues to suck. (See: Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, Westboro Baptist Church, anyone working for Fox News, anyone named Kardashian, current governors of Texas, and people who still don’t understand how to use an ATM machine after 30 years of having ATM machines.)

14. Long Island Iced Flee

  This is served to calm the nerves of tourists who have fled the island and are still trying to figure out what people were saying to them, what with that crazy accent and all. (And the hairdos. Why do some Long Island women of a certain age feel it necessary to tease and jack their hair to a point where it has its own gravitational pull?)

15. Tequila Surprise

  Anyone who has ever spent a splendid evening enjoying tequila-based cocktails will agree that this is a true statement: At some point during the night’s festivities, perhaps wedged in between the moment you fell off the barstool and the moment you screamed along with Meatloaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”, you will find yourself wondering “What happened to my underwear?”…

10 More Signs That Your Body Just Isn’t What It Used To Be

1. You wake up in the morning and you aren’t really sure who you are.

  You crack the seal on one eye and look around. Something seems to have disturbed your slumber, but it’s not really clear. After perusing a few questionable things around you (Did I really eat yogurt in bed and then throw the container on the nightstand like I don’t have any sense? How did the remote for the TV get wrapped up in my underwear?), your lone functioning eye spots the alarm clock, which seems to be rudely wanting attention, with unwelcome noise and such. This is clearly the sign of the devil at work.

  But still. If the alarm has been set, and it has subsequently gone into Def-Con 4 alert, there’s probably a good reason. We should probably figure that out, despite the incredibly alluring possibility of just going back to sleep. Am I supposed to be somewhere important? Do I work today? Have I done something that requires me to appear in court, denying everything while my lawyer does his best to keep from laughing? Am I living illegally in whatever country this might be?

  A person really shouldn’t have to figure these things out on such short notice. It’s just not right. Why isn’t there a helpful attendant standing beside the bed and handing me an itinerary and some orange juice? Or adjusting my morphine drip.

  Then it all comes back to me, there IS something very important that I need to do. I take a deep breath, gather my strength, and reach out with one wobbly arm to slap at the button marked “SNOOZE” on the devil-box making noise. The gestapo siren ceases, albeit temporarily, and I fade into darkness within two seconds.

2. Things hurt that shouldn’t.

  After 712 snooze sessions, where you have 30 seconds of air-raid terror and then 9 more minutes of jerky slumber, you finally give up all dreams of happiness and attempt to claw your way out of the burial chamber. This takes way more time than back in the day, when you could leap off the floor of the frat house, splash some water on your face, and be fully-prepared to take a calculus exam in five minutes.

  Now? Simply peeling the comforter off your aching body takes all of the strength you can muster. By the time your jelly-flesh has been fully exposed to the world, you’ve broken out in a sweat and your muscles are trembling. It’s at this point that all of the various status reports start coming in from the far locales of your body. This one thing over here is really itchy, this other thing seems to be spasming, and this third thing is super stiff, and not in a good way. Initial diagnosis? You need to have a good stretch and those things will settle down and cooperate.

  But the stretching thing is a leftover remedy from the days when you could still find your toes without a GPS. Stretching, post-40, is a dangerous road that one shouldn’t travel unless they have been adequately and mentally prepared. There’s a chance that stretching could feasibly result in all uprisings being quelled so that you can go on about your day in a pleasant manner, humming a tune about sunshine and the juiciness of pomegranates left out in the sun.

  But, more likely, stretching is ill-advised. You might work out some of the kinks, but this accomplishment pales in comparison to the new disruptions you trigger by contorting your body in a feline way. Previously complacent parts of your anatomy, bones and muscles that were quite content until you stupidly attempted to disturb them, will now add their grating voices to the chorus of disapproval that is more heinous than the stupid alarm clock which you have broken in two and thrown under the bed. And the usual end result is that you feel something pop that shouldn’t be popping, making you wonder if whatever popped is covered under you increasingly-dwindling insurance plan.

3. Your bladder has been secretively removed and replaced with a defective piece of crap made in China.

  Remember, back in the day, when you could feel a tiny little twinge that you might need to pee, but you knew that you could ignore it for hours while you continued to leap about on the jungle gym or play kickball in a vacant lot in the neighborhood? That is no longer the case. Now, when you need to pee, you need to pee. There’s no discussion and this is not something that can be tabled for the next committee meeting. You stand up, the various fluids and organs in your body are repositioned, and you suddenly have to pee like the hounds of hell are nipping at your heels.

  You can’t ignore it. You can make a weak attempt to, say, go kick off the coffee maker or fire up your laptop to see who might have said what about you in social media, but these are fool’s choices. Because if you insanely try to overlook the requirements of ancient plumbing, the need to pee will become so intense that you are suddenly dancing a jig that would get very high scores from Olympic judges but does nothing to delay the inevitable result. You’ve got to tinkle NOW or you’ll be pulling a Linda Blair in the hallway.

  So you give in and race to the bathroom, knocking startled relatives and pets out of the way in your mad scurry. You slam the door to the privacy chamber, practically rip off any clothing you might be wearing and slam your ass down on the Porcelain Throne of Release. Then you let go with gusto.

  And there’s a tiny trickle. That’s it. End trans.

  What? That can’t be right. You squeeze all the appropriate muscles, and all you get is the plink of another drop or two. Well, damn. You tidy things up, then stand up, and there it is again. Fluids want out. Now. You squat back down, more weak dribbling, and then silence. Seriously? You slowly start to rise, and there it is again, the knocking on the pee door. What is going on down there?

  Two days later, you finally leave the bathroom.

4. Coffee = A Will to Live.

  Some people can blithely flit through life, without ever needing a morning jolt of caffeine. I’m happy for them, I really am. But I think there’s something seriously wrong with those people. Coffee beans are grown on this planet for a reason, and to deny the functionality of the coffee bean is to deny the evolution of mankind. We are supposed to drink it, because it helps us cope. The drinking of coffee is the sole reason why this planet did not go up in flames centuries ago.

  Having said that, drinking coffee has different implications for different age groups. When you are young, the java simply helps you deal with a pesky hangover, helps you reply coherently to questions in your starter-job interviews, or helps you participate vigorously in daily exercise or athletic sports that you will not be able to participate in once your bladder is stolen by Chinese officials.

  For someone my age? The coffee stops me from taking your life when you ask an otherwise innocent question about how my day is going. End trans.

5. The Horror, Part I – Taking A Shower

  I like to be clean. I really do. But lately I really don’t care for the process of washing away my sins and preparing for another day where I am supposed to accomplish things of at least minimal importance. I’m still able to get in the shower and turn the water on, so far so good. But I am no longer able to reach parts of my body that were easily within my grasp mere seconds ago. The business with the upper-section is fine, I can usually lather away with the precision of a doctor. And the private bits? Got that covered. I can always find the time to faithfully attend to landmarks on my body that are responsible for pleasure, or at least the memory of pleasure.

  But those feet down there? Holy cow. They’re so far away now, and not in a poetic Carole King kind of way. You really have to work to get to those things. If I don’t bang my head on the shower wall, because coordination is whisked away about the same time as your fully-functioning bladder and your ability to eat vegetables without turbulence, then I get light-headed because I’m bending over and this jacks up my time-space continuum. I’m actually sweating (in the shower!) after attending to my feet, and I have to slump against the wall and catch my breath, heart pounding. It’s just not right.

6. The Horror, Part II – The Mirror after the Shower

  Remember how, when you were young and vibrant, that you could hop out of the shower, wipe the steam off the mirror, and you could review yourself looking all dewy and fresh? That doesn’t happen anymore. Now all you see is curdled pudding plastered on ancient infrastructure that should have been condemned long ago. Is this what it’s come down to, that I look like a floating corpse that somebody has fished out of the water on CSI: Shady Pines? Jeez.

  On the flip side, if you stand really far away from the mirror, and squint your eyes just right at the foggy glass, you can get a flashback to that time when you could eat a slice of pizza without your hips instantly expanding wide enough that you could stop a cruise ship from entering port.

7. The Clothes Closet

  There’s not a single thing in there that you can wear anymore. (Well, you could wear them, but it would look like you were in a sausage casing that hasn’t been properly reinforced.) This isn’t fair. We worked hard to be able to buy those clothes. (We’ll ignore the fact that if we had worked just as hard at getting off the couch and actually performing some minimal exercise, we wouldn’t have to shop at Hank’s Circus Tent Emporium.)

8. The inability to enjoy anything on the menu at your favorite drive-thru restaurant.

  So you finally get out of the house, wearing an outfit that has more yardage than most football games, and the whimsical side of you opts to zip into one of those fast-food places for a bit of nosh. Sadly, as you stare at the menu board, you realize that nearly everything glowingly displayed has a greasy fat content that could decimate an entire neighborhood with one bite. In your previous life, the one where you pulled into places like this at the tail-end of a drinking binge, you could suck down a burger or two and be good to go within seconds, fresh-eyed and bushy-tailed.

  That is no longer the case. Now it’s a matter of deciding between something that will have you running for the restroom every three minutes, or something that will have you running every five. Your body has declared a war on greasy input, refusing to quietly process the systemic clogging of your body flow, and you are the hostage. Everything you eat has repercussions. There is no middle ground.

  And even if you have a moment of epiphany and select the one healthy choice on the menu (because that’s all there usually is, one), you will have to face the wrath of the drive-thru attendant, who doesn’t get any bonus points on her evaluation card if she lets somebody slip by who doesn’t order something from the oinker line of products. Might as well ask for the Big Boy Country Breakfast and save yourself from any heated discussion at the pay window.

9. The amazing gazelle-like qualities of some of your co-workers.

  You finally get to work,  strenuously lugging the grease-dripping bag from “What-a-Porker”, and you lurch into your cubicle, plopping into that stupid chair of yours that hasn’t been comfortable since your ass went from “hey, girl, hey!” to “crime scene”. As you squirt 17 packets of mayo onto your deep-fried omelet burrito, you notice that most of your younger work-mates are doing attention-getting cartwheels and talking very loudly about nothing important.  This means your boss has arrived, and he  soon moseys his way down the aisle, pretending to care about the brown-nosing but really just wanting to get to his office, with the impenetrable double-lock  on the door, behind which he can swig from the industrial-sized bottle of bourbon he keeps for emergencies. Like days ending in “Y”.

  You realize that you should probably participate in the self-promotion extravaganza that the youngsters insist on performing, but you’ve been seriously tired since before they were born. (Besides, once you get situated in your chair, it’s a really risky move to get back out of it.) So you ignore the blatant sucking-up of the children (I have spreadsheets older than you!) who still have a lot to learn about how it really plays out, and you quietly gnaw at your breakfast burrito with teeth that stopped doing a decent job in 1993.

10. In the end, we’re all in this together, come hell or high diapers.

  Everyone generally experiences the same relative journey down the Avenue of Aging, encountering the same structural and processing issues to one degree or another. (Except for that small handful of people who magically seem to get better with age, defying the laws of nature by somehow becoming more attractive as they mature and/or running marathons without breaking a sweat. But we don’t really care for them, and we seek petty revenge by starting rumors about them “having work done” or organs transplanted.)

  So it helps that we have a network of similar-age people to support us in the darker hours, offering bits of wisdom to one another (“never get down on the floor unless it’s the weekend, because you might be down there a really long time”) or swapping war stories (“It took me three whole hours to realize that my panties were on backwards”). These people make us feel loved and cherished, despite the increasing cobwebs in the brain (“Why did I walk into this room? What did I need in here?”) and the growing pharmacy in your bathroom (“I have to take pills to counteract all of the other pills that I have to take”).

  And the ultimate sign that someone has your aching back in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Elastic Pants? The person who knows when to say the right words, and when not to say any words at all.

  This person remains calm when you have a sudden burst of that horrifying medical condition wherein you sneeze and toot at the same time, aka “the snoot”. This person does not make rude commentary or draw attention to the fact that you have just inadvertently crop-dusted. Instead, they calmly reach down (slowly, so that nothing snaps that shouldn’t) and retrieve the knitting needles that you dropped when you temporarily lost control of your entire body. You gratefully accept the proffered needles, and then both of you get back to work on your afghans, rocking in your chairs on the sun-dappled porch of the Happy Valley Home for the Tired and Tooty….