Attack of the toddler terrors

Over the holidays, it is always our hope to have the company of our four preschool grandchildren. And after they leave, it is always our hope to someday get all of our electronics working again.

Looking for Mr. Calm

I think I can sum up my husband, Olof’s, and my different styles by the funeral instructions our estate attorney had us write when he set up our trusts. Mine went on for three pages. Olof’s were all of six words: “I don’t care. I’ll be dead.”

Winston the Wonder Dog returns

Winston, our beloved but massively high maintenance grand dog, is back in residence again for one of his prolonged visits to Camp Grammy and Grampy. My younger son, Henri, and his wife, Erica (Winston’s owners) and my husband, Olof, and I are all besotted with Winston. But we are especially besotted with him when he’s at the other party’s house.

Olof swears off medical care forever!

The older we get, the harder it is for me to get Olof to medical appointments.
Olof maintains this is because at our age, there’s just no good news to be had.
Do they ever say, “Wow, you look so much younger!” he queries? Or, “You really should be drinking more Scotch?”

Game on!

At the San Diego Press Club Journalism Awards in 2010, the first year that my column in the Light was eligible, I won second place in the Humor division after Laura Walcher, who writes for the Presidio Sentinel. Sensing (correctly) that she would continue to be my chief competition, I hunted her down, er, looked her up, and invited her for coffee. Annoyingly, she was incredibly nice, and as she had been in the column biz a lot longer than I had, even shared some hot tips.

The best neighbor in the world

Sixty-five years ago, an obviously inebriated architect chose to ignore the collective 19,000 square feet of our two lots and build two houses a mere 10 feet from each other. Worse, the houses are oriented so that rather than being parallel, our houses face right into each other. I’m trying to even imagine how any of this worked before 1955 when a six foot fence and a Japanese privet hedge were installed that created at least the illusion of any privacy.

Let Inga Tell You: Please just keep it to words of one syllable

Before my engineer husband tries to explain anything technical to me, he says, “I think you might want to get the yellow pad.”

He, of course, means an 8×11 lined legal pad that we buy by the kilo, since he also asserts that when I die he’s going to insert a multi-pack of them into my coffin for my use in the hereafter.

Trick or treat or trash your house

Halloween is approaching again — one of my most and least favorite holidays. But before we go further, let me make one thing clear: no matter what your teenager says he or she did on Halloween, they’re lying.

Airline pre-boards have gone, well, overboard

Now that coach travel on airlines has deteriorated into abject misery, everyone is looking for a way to raise themselves above the fray, however briefly. The airlines, recognizing that we all want to feel special (and since they have absolutely no intention of making us feel special once we’re in the air) are throwing us crumbs in the form of opportunities to go through the First Class security line, or to get priority boarding. An aisle seat has become a coveted prize, and boarding early is not only a status symbol but a way to up the chances one’s bag will fly free in an overhead space and better, arrive at your destination when you do.

Spending the night in vampire land

I’ve never been wild about night time in remote areas and all these vampire movies aren’t helping. Normally, of course, it’s not an issue because I live in the nice, safe, crime-ridden city. If this hesitation about rural living sounds unreasonable, I would like to point out that with a few exceptions, like King Kong (who was a reluctant city dweller), four out of five monsters, UFOs, vampires, amorphous masses, psychos and parapsychological phenomena on your moviescreen prefer isolated country settings.