I’ve lost lots of things in my life – keys, money, keepsakes.

I once lost the year I was 25.

During a casual conversation, a co-worker realized I was wrong about how old I was.

“You’re the same age as me,” she said. “You’re 25.”

Slowly, I realized she was absolutely correct.

I’m not good with numbers or math but, this time, I knew my math skills had to be part of my DNA because I’d made myself older instead of younger.

This deficiency is because I was born a right-brained person, more interested in the arts and creative thinking.

Right-brainers daydream, something I still do. Usually I’m saving the day because in daydreams, one can be Tarzan, Wonder Woman or Batman.

We right-brainers also have a rich imaginative life. I used to imagine I was graceful.

As a teenager, hours were spent in my bedroom walking back and forth on an imaginary line, pretending I was a gymnast like Olga Korbut who dominated gymnastics in the 1970s. This fantasy was to make up for the reality that I was a complete klutz.

My left-brained husband never spends a minute straightening out a closet because he always puts things where they belong unlike on the floor like me.

Said left-brained husband never finds himself questioning the extra hardware after putting together a shelf because he counted all of the nails and screws and compared them to the supply list before he started.

That’s opposite to his right-brained wife who dives in without reading the directions and then wonders why there’s three screws left over.

Both of us have recently picked up our cameras and are taking pictures for fun. We both enjoy nature photography, but we approach our hobbies quite differently.

I was showing him some pictures I’d taken at a park, and he asked me some technical questions about the images.

“What f-stop did you use,” he asked.

“Not a clue,” I replied

“What was your shutter speed,” he asked.

Same reply.

He started talking about the mathematical relationship of the aperture opening and the camera’s ISO and I started thinking about what I was going to cook for dinner.

It wasn’t that I didn’t care what he was talking about – I honestly didn’t understand most of what he was saying.

When I’m taking pictures, I’m looking at lighting and my subject.

I don’t look at the numbers on the back of the camera – just how the image shows up after I snap the shutter.

I look at the gas gauge on my car and, when the gas gauge points to the half-way mark, I top off the tank because I don’t want to run out of gas.

Left-brained people know how exactly many more miles they can drive before they have to stop and refuel. That’s because they read the car’s manual and know that function actually exists.

Left-brained people measure before they hang pictures on the wall and only leave one hole in the sheetrock.

We right-brainers eyeball where we want the picture to go and leave at least four holes in the wall before we find the right spot.

Left-brained people seldom forget their deodorant or socks at home when on vacation.

We right-brainers know a trip to the dollar store is in our future whenever we’re out of town.

We right-brained people often get lost, but we don’t get mad. We figure the detour is a chance to explore somewhere new, and we’re open to seeing something unexpected.

Besides, we get lost a lot.

Right-brained people drive left-brained people crazy because we’re unpredictable, impulsive and believe mistakes are a chance to try something new.

If we’re lucky, though, right-brained people appreciate the logic and calm left-brainers bring to our lives.

Life is all about balance and appreciating that sometimes you have to get out of your comfort zone.

We right-brainers are walking examples that a wrong turn can actually become an adventure.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

 

Eating healthy is usually at the top of my resolution list. Ditch the Doritos, toss the Twinkies and fill the fridge with fruit.

The key to limiting fat and calories is healthy cooking. But as a girl raised in a Cajun kitchen where fats are the main ingredients, learning to cook without butter is practically impossible.

Last year, our son gave us an Instant Pot for Christmas. I oohed and aahed and said I couldn’t wait to use it.

In reality, I could wait to use that appliance because having a mini nuclear reactor in my kitchen was scary.

I’d heard that an Instant Pot is an updated pressure cooker. My mom had one, and I remember her locking the lid and telling us to move back.

Taking the top off, she said, would cause the food to explode all over the room.

Visions of beef stew dripping from the ceiling was a recurring nightmare.

That was then, this is now, I told myself as I read the Instant Pot directions. Technology has probably made pressure cooking a lot safer.

Maybe. Maybe not.

The “do nots” far outweighed the “dos.” No deep frying, no noodles or spaghetti and, in big letters, do not open the lid before the timer goes off.

There’s 16 keys on the front pad, the instruction booklet requires an engineering degree to decipher and big red “danger” warnings were on almost every single page.

So the mini nuclear reactor went back in the box.

Our Aggie son and his wife went for another healthy gift this year – an air fryer.

Great, I thought. Another appliance to hide whenever they’re coming over.

But wait a minute.

Our son wants us to eat healthier, and he’s given us a great tool. How hard can it be to use an air fryer?

I decided to be open minded and at least give it a try.

At least there were fewer buttons on the front than there are on the Instant Pot, and the owner’s manual wasn’t 100 pages long.

Best of all, there were dozens of air fryer videos on YouTube that looked easy – especially the ones cooking hot dogs and fries – so I decided to overcome my anxiety and cook some chicken I’d purchased.

I have a fear of undercooking poultry so our baked chicken is always tough and rubbery.

All the YouTubers I watched said poultry is juicy in the Instant Pot and I only had to cook the meat for 10-12 minutes. That’s a lot less than 45 minutes, so maybe this air fryer was a good thing.

I seasoned the chicken, rubbed some oil on top and pushed the tray into the air fryer.

The control panel lit up, dinged and made me feel as if I’d started the space shuttle.

For 10 minutes, the air fryer hummed along, and when the timer went off, I thought I’d pull out succulent, juicy chicken.

Wrong.

I pulled out chicken that was still raw. So I flipped the meat over, set the timer for 10 minutes and pushed the tray back in.

I seriously underestimated the power of the air fryer to cook in nanoseconds.

Ten minutes later, the chicken breasts were done all right. They were the same texture as if I’d overbaked them in the oven.

The next night, I tried fish in the air fryer. Despite following the directions to the letter, I could pick up the fish and eat it with my hands like it was a beef jerky.

I’ve learned my lesson. No more sacrificing chicken. No more cooking fish in the air fryer so it resembles the bottom of my tennis shoe.

From now on, I’m going to use the Instant Pot for its primary directive – cooking rice – and the air fryer for its primary mission – hot dogs and french fries.

And put healthy eating on the calendar for January 2022.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

A friend posed a house-cleaning question on Facebook – how often should one clean baseboards.

Most people posted once a month.

Some dusted every time they mopped the floor.

I posted that the baseboards were clean when we moved in eight years ago. Nothing much has changed since then so I figure leave well enough alone.

Maybe people are staying home due to covid or they’ve got spring cleaning fever, but I’m seeing a high number of posts asking for help in cleaning out closets and general housekeeping.

Some writers have easy advice. Others go full commando on dirt.

One video showed how to remove the toilet seat so you could take a toothbrush and scrub underneath the hinges.

If someone is looking underneath the hinges on your toilet to check for residual soap scum, that person has a lot more lacking in their life than you can fix with shiny porcelain.

Another hack was to take the oven door off so you could get your head in there to get the oven really clean.

This hack fails on so many levels.

An oven door probably weighs 50 pounds, so who wants to remove that oversized hunk of metal to clean something no one will ever see?

Besides, when you take the door off, the chances of dropping it on the floor and cracking the tile or ripping a hole in the vinyl becomes a reality. Then you have to somehow reattach the door.

I see a broken toe in this scenario.

Baking soda and vinegar are popular cleaning champs. They’re good for unclogging a sink, getting the skunk smell off your pet and removing soap scum.

Supposedly, a paste of these two will dissolve all the baked-on muck on a cookie sheet and, a few hours later, you have a cookie sheet that looks brand new.

Sorry, but the baked-on grease on my baking sheets is decades old and there’s no way a foaming baking-soda volcano is taking off those layers.

Kitchen condiments are often mentioned as cleaning wonders from using mayonnaise to repair scratches in your furniture to using ketchup to shine a stainless steel hook.

These hackers don’t mention that your clean household items will probably turn sticky and rancid and attract ants. But your hooks will be shiny.

One hacker believes those in search of clean floors should put double-sided tape on the bottom of slippers to dust the floor while you walk around.

The amount of dog hair on my floors would clog that tape up in less than 10 steps.

Organizing closets is a big seller on the hack channels. Let me offer the disorganized some hope – no one is going to go into your closet and grade you for how organized your shirts, shoes and pants are.

If they do criticize, it’s your fault for letting them into your closet.

The only time you need to clean out that closet is if you’re totally bored, can’t find your favorite jeans or there’s a cricket in the back of the closet and you can’t fall asleep until you find that singing insect.

To ease your mind, remember – no one is going to give you a medal if the ceiling fan blades are dust-free.

No one is going to type up a positive review if the inside of your pantry is organized and no one is going to post a glowing atta-boy on social media if you roll up the T-shirts in your drawer instead of shoving them in a drawer.

However, if you feel you must jump on the housecleaning bandwagon, buy a can of WD-40.

That spray will get rings off swollen fingers, remove gum from a child’s hair and will keep spiders away if you spray some on the window sill.

I think it’s a waste of time to mop a floor you’re just going to walk on 15 minutes later, but banishing spiders makes perfect sense.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

Our dog is terrified of loud noises. Whenever there’s a thunderstorm, she whimpers, trembles and has to be held until the booming stops.

Fireworks are especially tough. We get ready for the New Year’s Eve and Fourth of July meltdowns by taking Channell for her nightly walk before dark.

On New Year’s night while on her nightly walk, she growled when an especially loud firework went off. Once inside, she slept right through two hours’ worth of “Auld Lang Syne” noises.

We’d been wondering if our 13-year-old buddy was having trouble with her hearing, and her ignoring the fireworks was worrisome.

In the past, if we said the word “squirrel,” she raced to the back door and jumped up and down until we opened the door.

These days, we say the word “squirrel” and she doesn’t budge from her comfortable spot on the carpet.

I’d be more worried if she didn’t show signs of hearing what she wants to hear.

The rattle of the dog food bag.

Food accidentally hitting the kitchen floor.

The grandkids unwrapping a piece of candy.

Because I grew up in a family with seven kids, I conditioned myself to hear what I wanted to hear:  the ice-cream truck and hidden messages in The Beatles songs when played backwards.

In a three-bedroom house with nine people, one had to learn to listen for important sounds and to tune out the worthless noises like my sister banging on our bedroom door, demanding to be let in.

Being a mom fine-tuned my hearing. When the boys were babies, I woke up if I heard them turn over in their crib.

If they cried, I bolted out of bed and was picking them up in seconds.

As they got older, I learned to ignore most noises, including the refrigerator being raided at 2 a.m., the beeping Mario theme from the Nintendo system and full body-slam wrestling matches.

They ignored my yelling “cut it out.” They turned deaf ears to my final warning:  “I’m not taking anybody to the emergency room today, so if you get hurt, deal with it.”

The boys could find hidden money in my purse but they couldn’t find the commode when they were nauseated. I was an Olympic sprinter when I heard “I have to throw up.”

There were sounds I could hear in a deep sleep:  The sound of the window slowly being raised at midnight, a door being opened just enough to let a teenager squeeze through without setting off the house alarm and someone taking money out of my wallet.

Our sons never remember hearing me say “clean up your room.” They thought I said “live in a pigsty – it’s okay with me.”

They never heard the phrase “bring back the change.” Everything either cost the exact amount of money I gave them or I owed them $5 more.

I can’t blame them; they were simply being kids. In reality, they get their selective hearing honestly from their grandmother, my mother.

At the age of 88, we’re always watching for signs she’s slowing down. One day, I told her about needing to go to the grocery store. Later in the conversation, she asked me if I was going to the store.

“Mom, I already told you that. Do we need to have you checked?” I asked.

There was a short silence and then her answer.

“Denise, I’m not senile. I’m just not that interested in everything you have to say, so I don’t always pay attention,” she said.

That’s selective hearing at its best.

It seems Channell has picked up a few tips from the grand master.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.