Spring is here. In Texas, spring usually lasts about two weeks and then we dive straight into summer for the next seven months. But it’s technically spring and one of the rituals of spring, besides driving around looking for wildflowers, includes spring cleaning. Growing up in the North, our spring cleaning meant airing out the house after months of the house being bundled up against the snow and sub-zero temperatures. Windows were included in the spring cleaning ritual as were putting away heavy coats, scarves and gloves until cold weather returned. 

            My mom tackled the chore with a vengeance. She’d vacuum the rugs and carpets and fill the clothes line in the back yard with freshly washed curtains, drapes and blankets.

            So whenever I hear “spring cleaning,” the old tapes start playing in my head, and I start making a list of things to clean. I looked online for some tips, and good ole’ Martha Stewart graciously provided a printable spring cleaning list.

            Immediately, I can scratch at least half of her items off my list. We don’t have window screens, nor do we have storm windows. She also recommends waxing wooden furniture with paste wax. Sorry, Martha, but spray-on Pledge has worked just fine for 40 years.

            She does mention dusting the ceiling fan blades. Since ours seldom stop spinning and they’re so high up, it’s hard to see if there’s dust on there. However, that could be an item I’ll add to the list. I’ll get to that task right after I find the ladder.

            Which brings me to Martha’s recommendation for cleaning out the garage. My husband is extremely organized and neat, so there’s no need to add that to my spring cleaning list. And since the garage is so neat, I’d hate to mess it up by dragging the ladder out.

            So I suppose the ceiling fan blades can wait.

            Vacuum and shampoo rugs are next on the list. I’ll vacuum but our carpet isn’t that old, so I’ll defer that chore for another five years.

            Martha also recommends washing comforters and drapes. We don’t really have harsh winters so there aren’t heavy blankets to wash and hang out on the line. Besides, we don’t have a clothes line and I don’t have a clue where to buy clothes pins other than an arts and crafts store. So I quickly scratch those off the list.

            As far as washing curtains, I have the perfect excuse – we don’t have any. Thanks to allergies, I took down all the curtains years ago. Faux wood blinds do quite nicely, but I have a feeling there’s a nice layer of dust on all of them.    

            I took a closer look and, yep, there’s a layer of dust on every single blind. But if I start cleaning those, I’m only going to stir up a lot of dust and that’ll send my allergies into overdrive. Maybe it’s best if I just leave that dust there as a sort of protective sealant.

            Same goes for dust on the furniture. That fine layer of dust protects the wood, or so I’ve convinced myself, so I’ll just overlook that particular spring cleaning job.

            Scanning Martha’s list, I find I can cross a lot of things off without a second thought – clean the refrigerator coils – I don’t even know where those are – and defrost the freezer. Once the words “no-frost” came into my vocabulary, I’ve never looked back.

            The chores I will put on the list are updating the first-aid kit and tucking the warm-weather clothes out of the way. As a Texan, that’s about three items of clothing in my closet. Easiest job on the list.

            So there’s my spring cleaning list. Now I think I’ll get out there and enjoy those milder temperatures before the 98-degree days arrive. That should be in about a week.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 

             

            “Fly the friendly skies” may be the most ironic slogan in the airline industry these days. Two major disruptions happened on United Airlines flights recently. In the first, Dr. David Dao was dragged off an airplane after he refused to give up his seat so crew members could board.

A couple, on their way to their wedding, were told to get off an airplane because they were in seats other than the ones they reserved and supposedly refused to go back to their purchased seats.

             In both instances, the circumstances become a “he-said-she-said” fiasco where one claims the other was belligerent, obstinate and caused a disruption.

            We learned quite a few lessons from these two incidents. First, nobody at United Airlines seems to have paid attention in the “Customer Relations 101” course. Secondly, they let incidents get out of control and then made wrong decisions to rectify the fiascos.

            Maybe the folks at United Airlines need to talk to kindergarten teachers about class management because the parties involved exhibited behavior similar to 5-year-old children.

             A typical kindergarten scenario: Child A sits in the blue seat where Child B had been sitting until he got up to get a drink of water.

            Child B returns and begins to whine that someone is sitting in their blue seat. Child A stays in the seat and ignores the whining until the child starts tugging on the chair.

             At that point, a war has started, and the referee – the teacher – has to decide who’s right – the blue seat was technically Child B’s or Child A took advantage of a situation.

               In the adult world, we’d call Child A an opportunist.

                We’d call Child B out of luck. For grown-ups, possession is 9/10ths of the law.

                     But we’re talking kindergarten, a place children go to learn and conflicts are handled a little more delicately.

                     The teacher might ask both children to state why they think the chair belongs to them. Then she might suggest they take turns in the chair, and both children would immediately start whining that the chair belonged to them.

                       The teacher might then try distraction to see if she could get one of the children to lose interest in the chair by offering up a different prize. That could be the empty dress-up play center or to be the special helper, a title always tempting to a 5-year-old.

                          If those tactics don’t work, then the teacher might say neither child is sitting in the seat which gives her two crying children instead of one. Ultimately, she makes a deal where both children might not get exactly what they wanted but they walk away happy.   

                      Back to United Airlines. They lost track of the kindergarten rules. Unhappy children make for an unhappy class. Unhappy passengers make for an unpleasant flight and instant notoriety on social media.

                    Biggest mistake — United didn’t offer a big enough incentive for the passengers to either leave the plane or move to another seat.

                 People on airplanes want to get to their destination. They want to sit in the blue chair. But when something shinier, the dress-up play center or $500 cash, is offered, most people will take the prize and everybody walks away satisfied if not entirely happy.

                    I was on a Southwest Airlines flight when the attendant announced that the plane was overbooked. She began offering cash, but she did so while hamming it up like Monty Hall on “Let’s Make A Deal.”

                    By the time she got to $300, she’d also thrown in some, in her words, “cheap” airline blankets, a box of airline peanuts, a photo op with the captain and a voucher for free drinks and burgers in the airline bar. In 15 minutes, people were laughing, but some took the bait and the flight quietly proceeded as planned.

                   She made giving up the blue chair, in this case the airline seat, worthwhile.

                 So, United Airlines, if you want to solve your customer relations problem, start talking to some kindergarten teachers.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

          Easter is a religious holiday to celebrate the Resurrection. But there’s an evil part to the holiday, one that lurks on the store aisle dedicated to everything Easter – Mini Cadbury Eggs. These devilishly delicious treats are solid milk chocolate covered with a crispy sugar shell. And not cheap chocolate either. Mini Cadbury Eggs are rich, velvety chocolate with a just-right thin candy shell covering decadent chocolate, and they’re Easter’s answer to crack cocaine.  

          Sure there’s other Easter candy, and they all have their own merit. There’s jelly beans in every color and flavor. As kids, we seldom thought to wonder about the flavor of the jelly beans, but every once in a while, we’d eat one with our eyes closed and guess the flavor. Cherry or strawberry was easy – those were red. Lemon jelly beans were yellow and coconut or pineapple — two flavors we ignored when there were red strawberry jelly beans to inhale – were white. The licorice candies were immediately swapped out of my unsuspecting little brother’s basket for all his red and orange ones. Grape turned out to be, surprise, the purple ones, and orange was, well, orange. But the green ones were a mystery.

             We couldn’t think of a green fruit, so, to the Hebert siblings, green jelly beans tasted green, and that was the flavor we assigned to all green jelly beans.

              The Easter Bunny always included a chocolate bunny in our baskets, tucked into green plastic grass along with the Easter eggs we’d dyed the night before. Nestled in with the jelly beans were handfuls of M&Ms and assorted chocolate balls wrapped in colorful foil. Those chocolate balls always had a waxy taste, so I’d toss those into my unsuspecting sister’s basket while stealing her orange jelly beans. Not the green ones, though because those tasted, well, green.

               The Easter Bunny learned our preferences over the years and adjusted accordingly. My sister didn’t particularly like chocolate, so the bunny left her a white chocolate rabbit. I preferred peanut M&Ms over the plain M&Ms, so the Easter Bunny knew to dump more of those in my basket than my brother’s.

                 But no American Easter basket is complete without a package of iconic marshmallow Peeps tucked behind the chocolate bunny.  For those who’ve been living on a desert island, Peeps are a blob of marshmallow covered with bright yellow sugar in a shape that somewhat resembles a small chick. But they’re more than a replica of a cute Easter icon. Peeps are required in an American Easter basket, even if you don’t like them. But adore them people do.  One Website claims that 5.5 million Peeps are made every day, and they’re still hard to find on the shelves the closer we get to Easter Sunday.

                  Peeps originally came in bright yellow because they were supposed to resemble chicks. But modern candy lovers have a variety of colorful and creative Peeps to choose from, including coconut or blueberry Peeps dipped in chocolate, vanilla Peeps dipped in white fudge and there’s even a suggestion to pair strawberry Peeps with moscato rose wine for the grown-up Peeps connoisseur.

                   This year, there’s one variety of Peeps that could give my Mini Cadbury Eggs a run for their money – chocolate mousse Peeps dipped in creamy milk chocolate.

                    Here’s hoping the Easter Bunny drops both in my basket this year. That way, I can answer the age-old question – which came first – the Peeps chick or the Cadbury egg by eating every one of them the bunny leaves in my basket. Happy Easter!

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

            On Thursday, I started watching the weather radar for the Houston area. We were planning a trip to see our son and his family, and I wanted to keep the weather in mind. Spring is a fickle time in Texas, so I was hoping I’d see a forecast of sunny days and no rain.

            That wasn’t the case.

            The weather channels called for a 100 percent chance of showers with two to five inches of rain over the weekend.

Words like “Armageddon” and “shelter-in-place” were featured along with big red circles of damaging rains and winds radiating out from the middle of Houston almost all the way to San Antonio.

            I prayed, I bargained, I made a pact with the powers that be to change the forecast. During a conversation with my son, I told him we might not be able to come if the weather was bad because I didn’t want to drive through a torrential rainstorm with his four precious children in the car.

            For two days, I fretted and worried and watched the weather channel. On Saturday, my son and I decided the weather was going to be too bad so we’d get together another time.

In a way, I was relieved because we wouldn’t have to face the flooding and treacherous conditions on the roadways.

            On Sunday morning, I awoke to some sprinkles.

            “The worst is yet to come,” I thought as I looked at the weather radar for the hundredth time that morning. There was a huge line of squalls to the west of us, but nothing to the east.

            Breakfast came and the sprinkles stopped. Lunch came and the sun came out. I thought about going out and running errands, but the weatherman’s promise of Armageddon kept me inside.

            Throughout the afternoon and evening, I’d look out the window and kick myself for letting fear put the brakes on my plans.

             All my life, I’ve let the “that might happen” stop me from doing what I wanted to do. I’m not talking about driving to the beach when a hurricane’s blowing in from the Gulf. It’s the threat of “that could be bad” that always gets in my way.

             The next day, I saw a post on Facebook that my sister’s house in Alexandria, La. had flooded. The storm that bypassed us hit them like Thor’s hammer, and they unexpectedly got over three inches of water in their home.

               Surprisingly, Diane said they were lucky – they’d have to replace the floors and the carpeting, and she needed new floors anyway. There’s a photo of Diane and her husband in their front yard wearing rain boots, standing in ankle-deep flood water with big smiles on their faces.

                They were smiling through the catastrophe because, as my sister said, there was nothing they could do about what happened. She said crying wasn’t going to dry up that water or get her carpets pulled up and she had to look on the positive side.

                  After hearing her laughing that they could still run the air conditioner and sit on their couch – even though there was an inch of rain underneath their furniture – made me ashamed that I’d worried myself out of time with my family because of a “what if.”

                   The “what if” happened to her and she accepted what happened, rolled up her sleeves and got to work without whining or complaining.

                   I’ve always thought my sister was incredible, and I’m convinced she’s more than that. She’s also a realist who taught me a valuable lesson – when life gives you lemons, cut those babies up, put them in a pitcher with a little bit of medicinal vodka and crank up the music.

                   And keep on living.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.