I suspect that each of us has a number of activities which we secretly feel are not valid if they are easy. The results of our labors are valuable only if producing them is difficult, painful, or otherwise mildly unpleasant. Here’s one of mine.

This is the way Christmas shopping used to be:

First you went out shopping at the local stores. Sometimes you knew what you wanted to buy, and sometimes you went out there counting on divine intervention. Once you had purchased the gifts, you took them home to wrap. It was a bonus if they came already boxed; but many gifts, notably clothes and toys, arrived home scrunched up in the bottom of a shopping bag. Most basements featured a pile of boxes suitable for gifts because they were clean, presentable, and didn’t smell bad. None of them, of course, was the right size or shape for the just-purchased gifts, but you could usually find some that were pretty close.

Then it was time to wrap the gifts. You got out the wrapping paper, ribbon, cellophane tape, and gift tags. The dining table had to be cleared, because there were invariably some big packages. And no matter how you planned and cut, there were always several pieces of wrapping paper left over too small to wrap anything and too big to throw away. I always wrapped them back around the roll they had come from, confident that next year I would have a tiny package just exactly the right size for that 4-by-6-inch piece of paper.

Once the gifts were wrapped, some of them had to be mailed. Back to the basement you went, to the other pile of boxes – the mailing boxes. It was a sure bet that not one of them was the right size and shape for what you wanted to mail, so you had a choice – you could either pick one way too big and stuff the extra space with newspaper, or you could cut one down to the right size. Either way, the USPS expected you to show up with your package wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with string. The brown paper and string were in the basement somewhere over there with the mailing boxes.

All this had to be done by December 10 to ensure safe arrival by Christmas.

This is the way Christmas shopping is now:

Go to the website, pull up recipient’s wish list, choose something in your price range, click on it, choose to have it gift wrapped, enter recipient’s address and your credit card number, click “submit.” You can do that as late as December 23 if you’re willing to pay a lot for shipping.

It’s the easiest thing in the world, and the recipient gets what he or she wants.

So why do I feel so guilty?

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I have figured it out.

I am NOT overweight!

I have been using a shampoo that claims it will provide “more body.” Now, when I rinse my hair in the shower, the shampoo flows down all over me, and I am convinced that it is just living up to its advertised promise.

No, really. When I was a young woman, I always washed my hair over the sink and the shampoo never touched anything but my head. And I didn’t have anywhere near this much body.

This is not my fault! Blame the shampoo industry!

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Burger King has launched a men’s body spray called “Flame.” It’s billed as “The scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat.” $3.99 online.

Let us not forget that this is the home of The Whopper.

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For those who don’t recognize him, the central figure here is Topeka’s pride and joy, Fred Phelps.

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The equinox is not a day.  It’s an exact moment when the center of the sun is directly above the earth’s equator.  That happened this morning at 11-something o’clock, Topeka time.  On the day that happens, the sun rises directly east and sets directly west.

In Topeka, numbered streets — at least the ones south of 12th Street – run due east and west.  And so it was that, at 7:10 this evening, I was standing in the middle of 23rd Street making darn sure the sun was doing what it’s supposed to do on this day, which is to set smack dab over the middle of the west end of my street. *

Sure enough.

I find something magical about the absolute predictability of our little solar system.  People who know about that stuff can predict eclipses centuries in advance, for cryin’ out loud.  I have no idea how that’s done, but I am doing my small part by checking up on the sun every March and every September.

And if I ever go out there and the cosmos isn’t doing what I expected, I plan to write my Congressperson and see if they can’t make a law to fix that.

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* Lest any of you are concerned, 23rd Street is residential, with little traffic at that time of day.  And I gave up a long, long time ago being concerned about what people think of me.

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I’ve had this on file for a while, and cannot remember where it came from. 

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I don’t get it.

Why is McCain accusing Obama of playing the race car?  What does playing with a race car have to do with the presidency or the election?

Jeesh.

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WARNING – WARNING – WARNING

This post contains explicit descriptions of avian sexual activity. Reader discretion is advised.

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Mourning doves are just too dumb to live.

It’s dangerous to place a value on intelligence, especially in non-mammals. After all, a number of creatures that have survived the longest without finding it necessary to make any evolutionary changes are not known for their intellect. Crocodiles and sharks come to mind.

But, still, from what I’ve seen, mourning doves just don’t have the sense God gave a fencepost. Maybe it’s just the doves out back of my house. In any case, that is one stupid bunch of birds.

Oh, sure, they make that sweet little noise that sounds like they’re, well, mourning. And they’re very pretty – all plump and soft-looking. And one of their cousins is supposed to represent peace. And their name and profile have been adopted by a successful line of lotions and shampoos.

Nevertheless.

I have a bird feeder and a birdbath within a few feet of my patio door, so there are a lot of birds out there a lot of the time. I get sparrows and blackbirds, blue jays and cardinals, robins and doves. The squirrels make more-or-less successful raids on the feeder, and the rabbits pick up whatever falls on the ground.

When I walk by the window or the door, they all scatter. The birds fly away, the squirrels jump to the tree, and the rabbits run. Even Twit, the baby rabbit who is inexorably destroying my impatiens, has the sense to fluff up his little white tail as a warning flag to the rest of his family, and hop away.

All except the doves, that is. They sit there, munching away, watching their cohorts head for safety, and looking confused. I swear, if I were a boa constrictor, I could slither over there, grab one of them, squeeze the life out of him, and have him half eaten before his buddies figured out anything was wrong.

“Hey, Gomer, look at that. They all left. Just leaves more for us, huh? Whaddya suppose that was all about, Gomer? Gomer? Where’d he go?”

During warm weather, of course, the birdbath lives up to its name. There always seems to be a bird over there, splashing and preening. In the winter, it serves only as drinking water.

The doves have the disconcerting habit of sitting there on the rim, facing away from the water, with their tails dragging in the water. In the summer, that doesn’t seem unreasonable. But in the winter I have seen as many as six of them, all facing outward, with their tails submerged in near-freezing water. I suppose they have no more feeling in their feathers than I have in my hair. But in mid-winter, my being outside with wet hair would have little survival benefit.

Earlier this year, I noticed a pair of doves on the patio, one of them being fed by the other. At first I thought it was parent and baby, but it soon became apparent that it was a mating pair, and he was offering her tidbits of food to get her in the mood.

Finally she decided the time was right, and hunkered down in what I have to assume is the approved gesture of receptivity. He strutted around to her backside, started to get himself in position – and fell off.

By then, my quasi-voyeuristic opportunity had turned into a raunchy Vaudeville act. As I left, he was following her around saying things like, “Aw, common, baby. Gimme another chance, huh? Really, that never happened to me before….”

Still, we do not lack for mourning doves. So some of them, somewhere, must be avoiding boa constrictors, keeping their tail feathers warm and dry, and mating successfully.

Just not, apparently, in my back yard.

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I have a hint for would-be writers: Learn to express yourself well with words alone. If you can’t get your idea across using only letters and spaces and a few numbers and other such symbols, then read some more and see how others manage it, or take a class.

I am considering asking for legislation limiting all writers to one instance of underlining and two exclamation points per month. And, by God, if you choose to use both of your exclamation point in one sentence, it had better be an announcement of the imminent Second Coming. Like in the next 5 minutes.

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Continuing the theme of blogs about my home….

In case anyone out there doesn’t know, I’m a libertarian. I bristle at concepts like “common good” and “collectivism” and “communal property.” It’s not that they are inherently bad ideas, especially for very small groups. It’s just that no two people can agree on a definition, and everyone wants to enforce his or her own definition.

Let me give you a trivial but telling example.

A surprising number of people expect libertarians to live out in the woods growing their own food and shooting anyone who comes on their property. Well, no. The concept of libertarianism is perfectly compatible with the idea of voluntarily giving up some of your freedoms by entering into a contract that suits your needs. I live in a condominium, and I pay monthly dues to the homeowners’ association to cover lawn mowing and other common-area maintenance, snow removal, painting, and roof repair. I have given up my freedom to paint my house any color I want in exchange for not having to paint at all. I can’t plant flowers in the common area, but I don’t have to mow or shovel snow. It suits me just fine, and if there comes a time when it no longer suits me, I can move.

The common area here is very pretty. There is a nice grassy area with trees and plantings. There’s even a little wadi that was put in to facilitate drainage when it rains. The land slopes, so there are retaining walls, and a little walking path.

And bushes. We have bushes.

Originally our homeowners’ dues included bush trimming. Well, not any more, they don’t.

I think it started when some of the homeowners began to consider the bushes up close to their own buildings their personal property, and not part of the communal property. Some of them even dug up the bushes, or replaced them with something else. According to the homeowners agreement they weren’t supposed to do that. But, hey, we’re not supposed to park cars permanently in our driveways, either, and my neighbors have had a pickup truck in their driveway for two years.

Once people started to see the bushes as their personal property, and considering that their dues were paying for getting the bushes trimmed, a number of homeowners decided they could specify whether, how, and when the trimming should take place. Some wanted the natural look, and didn’t want their bushes trimmed at all. Some claimed the bushes should be trimmed in the fall, and some in the spring. Some wanted the bushes cut way back, close to the ground. Others said that would kill the plants.

A few homeowners took to trimming their own bushes, and then demanded a refund of that part of their dues.

One fall we all got a mailing from the homeowners’ association board saying there would be no refunds, but we should let the homeowners association know whether we were each going to trim our own bushes or not. The lawn service company would then trim the bushes of only those who wanted the service. That mailing was remarkably patient and polite.

I can only guess at the response that generated. The next year, the board sent out another mailing saying we could all just trim our own damn bushes, and to heck with us. No reduction on dues, either. Screw us all. (I have taken liberties with the wording, but I could hear the tone.)

So now I own a pair of hedge trimmers, and I whack at the bushes outside my front door and beside my patio once in a while. We never talked about who would trim the bushes that sit exactly between our two houses, but my neighbor has taken to doing it himself, and he really does a good job.

I guess that makes up for the pickup truck.

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