Marriage 201, Lecture 389: Hoist on my own petard; and what is a petard anyhow?

This post was going to be all about how SH is so disorganized and keeps things forever and moves crap from California to Milwaukee including old newspapers like his mom and dad who have Pittsburgh newspapers from five years before they moved to Florida in their guest room closet and the papers aren't even from some special occasion but just random newspapers and one of my big fears is I will have to clean out all that stuff and this post is still going to be about that but it is also about the fact that I am not as organized as I thought I was.

So.

SH, after three days of not shaving (See: Men who work at home and wear the same boxer shorts three days in a row and the women who love them but don't LOVE them if you know what I mean), decided he might give growing a goatee another try. He had one years ago when the color of his face hair matched the color of his head hair, but then his head hair became gray and his face hair did not, but now his face hair has caught up so why not have a beard again? It looks good on him.

But having a goatee leads to its own grooming problems. One must trim a goatee with a special goatee trimmer, an item that SH owned in the past and was convinced that he still owned. But where was it? He knew where it was when he lived in the apartment. It was in the bathroom. I had packed the bathroom. Where had I put it when I unpacked the bathroom boxes? Where? Where?

I don't know. I am logical. I would have put it back in the logical place. I would have put it back into the bathroom.

SH tore apart the downstairs bathroom.

The upstairs bathroom. The bathroom closets.

Where WAS IT? IT WAS ALL MY FAULT!

Not my fault. I don't lose things. I have never, for example, lost my keys. Never.

Then he started looking downstairs. In the boxes. The boxes full of crap he had brought from California. Crap including phone bills from 1997. Receipts for Marissa's (stepdaughter #1) college tuition. She graduated years ago. Is married. Has a career.

I went down to supervise and feel superior as I watched SH pull the following out of just one box:

• A geode jammed into an N-Able Tech coffee cup
• A BMW model car cardboard display box. No car. Just box. Torn.
• Two cowbells that say "Rice" on them
• A Phi Beta Kappa magazine. From 1995.
• San Francisco newspapers. From 1996.
• A See's Candies metal Santa
• 1997 benefits package and org chart from a place SH no longer works
• Brochure: Sexual harassment hurts everyone
• An empty box
• Macintosh parts
• BMW mousepad, torn
• NOT an empty box. It has an S Vision microdisplay chip!
• Three dried oranges
• Earthquake preparation guide
• Wrapped Dilbert 1998 calendar
• etc. etc.

As I was standing around, I started poking in the random bin. You know the bin I mean: the one you have somewhere in your basement where you throw the stuff that has nowhere else to go. In my case, it contained the neighborhood association membership applications I had entered into a database last fall, a toaster to use on top of a gas stove that a friend brought back from Peru because I couldn't find one in the States, the Peace Corps Morocco t-shirt I got when we visited Steve and Megan, a jigsaw puzzle we have to return to SH's mom and dad (please don't make me borrow stuff when we live 1,000 miles apart unless you don't want it back), a bag of financial documents to take to the next shredding day, an old hairbrush, and what's this weird thing?

Oh.

It's the beard groomer thingy. Sitting in the bottom of the random bin.

And guess what else is there? In the bag of stuff to be shredded?

The box of checks we couldn't find last month when we ran out of the first book and were tearing apart SH's office looking for them. We found the box of non-duplicating checks that the printer sent us by mistake, but the duplicating ones that they sent as replacements? Those are the ones I threw in the shredding bag. Not the non-duping. I was the one who misplaced them. Not SH.

I. I, who do not lose things, lost BOTH OF THESE THINGS. IT WAS MY FAULT.

But.

There is a silver lining.

SH got rid of four boxes of junk and labeled the remaining boxes. I am willing to take the fall for this to get rid of some of his stuff.

Chats du jour: The drama continues

I may have to get that kitty pheromone stuff that Maureen recommended. We had a cat peeing incident last night. Or this morning. This was not an accident. This was revenge. It was in MY FLUFFY SOCK.

The irony in all of this?

Isn't SH the sexiest?

I am not the one who did the thing that caused the peeing. So why my sock?

We think the reason that SOMEONE peed in the sock was because SH put SOMEONE out of the bedroom this morning at 5:00 a.m. to keep SOMEONE from waking us up at 6:30 a.m.

Our theory: We let the cats sleep with us. They are good most of the night, but once it's light, they want to be out. So to prevent their knocking the blinds out of the way to get into the window, or scratching at the door, or climbing on the dresser and knocking over photos, or crying to be fed because they are starving, or whatever they do because they are AWAKE and BORED, we put them in the basement when one of us -- usually SH -- gets up for the 5:00 a.m. constitutional.

This seemed to work just fine for most of the summer, but Laverne does not like to be in the basement. She wants to be with us. So for the past month or so, the routine has been to throw Shirley down the stairs and then chase Laverne around the bedroom, into the kitchen and around the island until she is trapped by the table and surrenders with a pathetic sigh and defeated look, which is when we grab her and toss her into prison.

Laverne trying to get out of the basement.

Maybe today she decided she just wasn't going to take it anymore, darnit. Maybe today she thought, "It's STILL DARK. I'm MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS! I'm NOT BOTHERING ANYBODY! Can't a cat SLEEP IN PEACE?" And then she thought, "I'll show them. I'll PEE IN THE FLUFFY SOCK. HA!"

Marriage 201, Lecture 34: Inventory

SH: We need custard.

Me: No we don't.

I can't find the photo I was seeking so I'll post this one instead. I wanted the one of me licking an ice-cream cone but it must be on my old computer somewhere. Oh well. My mother likes this one.

SH: You don't pay enough attention to my dessert needs.

Me: What?

SH: You made those weird crackling cookies today and those bacon cookies last week.

Me: In the past few months, I have made several pear tarts, pear bread, chocolate chocolate-chip zucchini bread, chocolate tart, and chocolate chip shortbread cookies. These are all desserts you like.

SH: We need custard.

Me: No, we don't.

SH [opening freezer]: Oh no! We have only ONE PINT of custard in here! And it's NOT EVEN CHOCOLATE!

Me: So what?

SH: We should always have custard.

Me: Why?

SH: It's one of the few advantages to living here. Oscar's has Death By Chocolate. I'd better go.

Both photos courtesy of The Big Factotum.

Chats du jour: Shirley the mighty huntress

SH didn't wash the baking sheet as well as he thought.

Marriage 201, Lecture 288: Science vs Superstition

Contents of SH's "I don't TAKE drugs" medicine chest:

• Airborne
• Echinacea
• Zicam

Contents of my "Drugs are my best friend" medicine chest:

• Imitrex: oral, nasal, and injectable (never used because I have never been in that much pain to overcome my fear of giving myself a shot)
• Relpax
• Aspirin
• Motrin
• Tylenol
• Sudafed

• Three leftover Valium from some outpatient thingy in 2002 that I am saving for a special occasion. I discovered I really like Valium. Too bad I didn't know this when I lived in Chile and could have gotten it over the counter.
• Vicodin, which not only does not get rid of my headaches but does not even get me high and how ticked off am I about that?
• A few leftover Mefloquine (was that the one? or was it Larium?) that I took when I came back from Chile over land and the Chilean pharmacist told me to take the dose that you take for if you already have malaria, not the dose you take to prevent malaria and let me tell you, taking the curative dose is not what you want if you do not have malaria because it makes you feel really, really awful and you think heck, I think I'd rather just have malaria instead and then the owner of the pension where you are staying in northern Argentina asks How much of that are you taking? and you tell him and he says That's crazy! You shouldn't be taking that much! The guys who worked for me cutting down trees in the jungle in Paraguay didn't take that much and then you realize that the pharmacist in Chile, where they DO NOT HAVE MALARIA, did not know what he was talking about
• Dramamine just in case SH wants to drive on winding mountain roads or I get on one of those little ferry boats that goes between the Greek islands (not the ones that carry cars -- they are stable) and belches petroleum fumes and everyone around me is throwing up
• Ex-Lax from that one time.
• Tums.
  

Naughty Shirley licking the grease from the cookie sheet. I made crackling cookies, which were not as good as the bacon chocolate chip cookies I made last week. Both recipes were a little too sweet. I would just use an oatmeal-chocolate-chip recipe next time and throw in a handful of bacon. The bacon choc-chip cookies were better because they were a bit saltier. The crackling cookies came from my grandmother's church cookbook and you know how those are: recipes from a bunch of ladies who know how to make whatever in their sleep and they don't need no steenkin' recipe so if you ask them to write it down, you get something that is sort of like what they make but might not be because they make it by feel, not by measure. I tried to find a recipe for crackling cookies online, but could find nothing. Well, I could, but not for this kind of cracklings.

Thursday updates

UPDATE to the update
Source: http://artfiles.art.com/images/-/Arnold-Schwarzenegger---The-Terminator-Photograph-C10104138.jpeg

This photo and joke are to go with the funny comment that LPC left. She wrote, "Oh no. He's EE? That isn't an engineer. That's an engineering Terminator."

A line from the movie: "Your clothes... give them to me, now."

A joke that goes with that line that makes perfect sense to anyone who knows and loves engineers:

Two engineering students were walking across campus when one said, "Where did you get such a great bike?"

The second engineer replied, "Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what you want."

The second engineer nodded approvingly, "Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn't have fit."


1. You've all probably been wondering what's going on with SH's infected incision. Did he drop dead? (No.) Was his leg amputated? (No.) Did he go to the doctor? (No.)

I emailed my sister the neo-natal practitioner and Ilene the Bodacious Redheaded Pediatrician who used to blog but has stopped alas because she is hilarious and asked their opinions. They both said for SH to go to the doctor, but he ignored their advice, along with Maureen the Nurse's advice, and declared he was not going to no steenkin' doctor or urgent care center, even though I had called our doctor, gotten a referral, called our insurance company, gotten confirmation that urgent care was indeed covered for just a tiny $20 copay (we have great insurance so Obama, you better not mess it up) and then gotten the address of not only the urgent care centers near SH's Dallas hotel but also the center near our house, which is within walking distance.

SH said that he was just going to let his stupid leg heal on its own. Which it has been doing. He has a hole in his leg. A hole that is healing from the inside out, pushing a little bit of gunk out every day.

He whines and complains and insists this is all my fault for making him go to the doctor in the first place. He is also very annoyed that he has had a COMPLICATION because of course in his perfect world of electrical engineering and chip design, Input A always leads to Output B and if it doesn't, it's because the inputter screwed up and not because medicine is as much art as science and every body is different and heals differently and guess what? people get sick and die EVEN WHEN DOCTORS DO EVERYTHING RIGHT.

2. The cable box heard my threat to take it in to be exchanged and has miraculously healed itself, much as my car used to heal itself when I would turn up the radio so I wouldn't hear the odd noises it was making. Let that be a lesson to you, cable box.

Marriage 201, Lecture 291: Seek and destroy

Me: Another thing* we can give to the refugee family is all those beer glasses.

SH: What?

Me: Come on. We have two dozen Lakefront Brewery glasses sitting in the basement. Wouldn't you rather they were being used?

Another photo from the parade by where I read to the little kids.

SH: But what if we want to use them some day?

Me: When?

SH: Suppose we want to have a party? People could drink beer from them.

Me: I have known you for four years. We have never had a party**. Every time I suggest having a party***, you don't want to.

SH: You just don't like having stuff. Don't you get any pleasure from having possessions?

Me: From giveaway glasses from a brewery? No.

* I have seven sets of old sheets staged on the guest room bed right now, ready to take to church for the Burmese refugee family the church will be sponsoring. Seven. Seven sets of sheets that we can give away. We have enough sheets to keep, too, including sheets that have never been opened. Enough for the guest room bed, our bed, and the pull-out sofabed in the basement. Apparently, neither SH nor I are capable of throwing away old sheets, although I think only two of the seven giveaways are mine.

** Actually, this is not true. We have had a party. But it was my party at my house in Memphis shortly after I met SH. It was a successful party despite the lack of beer glasses. Indeed, all the parties I threw in Memphis -- and there were a few -- were successful (my two party fears: 1. nobody will come, 2. There won't be enough food) despite the fact that I HAD NO LAKEFRONT BREWERY BEER GLASSES.

*** I wanted to have a housewarming party. I wanted a mid-winter party. I wanted a Peace Corps potluck. Noooooo! Even when we had our families here for our wedding, which meant nine guests here over 14 days, including three nights of meals for 11, we did not use the extra Lakefront Brewery glasses. Yes. Extra. We have seven that are in our cabinet right now that we use for water and I use for diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper.

Marriage 201, Lecture 887: The Rememberer

Me: If you'll unhook the cable box tomorrow, I'll exchange it on Friday.

SH: It's too early to remind me. I'll never remember.

Me: I thought you were The Rememberer.

A drummer on the drumline at the parade yesterday in front of the place where I am a reading volunteer to little kids.

SH: I am.

Me: But you can't remember that.

SH: It's low on my priority list.

Me: Yet you can remember baseball lineups from before you were born.

Marriage 201, Lecture 212: You won't do it right

Scene: SH tried to get a piece of plywood 60" x 80" this weekend at Menard's, but they won't cut plywood to order and the standard size is not what we want. (We need a mattress-firming piece -- it is our compromise to buying a new mattress, which I think is unnecessary, but SH is a man who likes to shop, that is, A Stuff-Buyer. And a Blanket Folder, but that is another story, but I will say this: who cares if the blanket on the sofa in the basement is obsessively folded into a perfect, neat rectangle and lined up squarely with the edges of the cushions? I'll give you a hint: Not I.)

Me: I just called Home Depot. They will cut plywood to order.

SH: Good.

Me: Want me to go get it after the gym?

SH: No! [Because I have so much free time* that I can waste it going to the hardware store and besides, how can I be sure you would do it right, even though you owned your own house for eight years, indeed, were within $300 of paying it off when you sold it, and did almost all your own home repairs and pretty much ran your life OK until I met you when you were 42?]

* That would be so much free time that he has been up until 2:30 a.m. working for the past two nights.

Marriage 201, Lecture 783: Paper or plastic, or, The Saran-wrap waster

SH: When I got up, there was no milk.

Me: I know. I bought some.

SH: So I did this. Just to make you mad.

To rake or not to rake

The leaves in our front yard are not at the optimal point for raking yet. There could still be more that could be captured with one pass of the rake. Too many and you have to rake more than once, too few, you waste rake strokes.

But. Today is a nice day and it wouldn't be bad to be outside. Who knows what the weather will be like later? Do I want to rake in the cold and/or the rain to get my leaves to the curb before the last leaf pickup?

These are the constraints I face. Good thing I did well in my operations analysis and management science classes in grad school. There is undoubtedly a formula for this somewhere.






In the end, we are all dead. So it doesn't really matter.

Chats du jour: I fart in your general direction

Question: What would cause a cat to poop in the middle of the bedroom rug (which covers less than half of the wood floor and which you bought in Morocco a few years ago after some exhausting bargaining with Fez rug merchants who know a sucker when they see one so you paid twice as much as you should have) at 2:00 a.m.?

This has never happened before. The cats sleep in our room at night and have never indicated a desire to leave the bedroom to see a man about a dog.

There has been no change in their diet except that Shirley has started to eat grass.

SH says Shirley might be mad at me because I keep throwing her in the basement because I am sick and darn tired of getting up every two minutes to remove her from the sink, the stove, the island.

The good news is that I did not step in the poop as I was returning to bed from my own late-night bathroom visit. The poop area is marked by the little bowl. Note that it is right in the middle of the rug, right in the middle of where I walk to get back to bed. I didn't step in it, but I sure smelled it.

But if this was a revenge poop, it required a lot of planning. And I don't know if it was Shirley. But Laverne, aka "Lovergirl," doesn't have a mean bone in her body. Shirley, on the other hand. Well. She is crafty.

Chats du jour: Finally earning their keep

SH [as he is blocking Shirley with his foot and she, undeterred, is hopping over it]: No! Shirley! Stop!

Me: What's she doing?


SH: She's trying to catch this centipede.*

Me: So? Let her catch it.

SH: She might eat it!

Me: So?

SH: WHAT IF IT'S POISONOUS?

Me: Cats have been eating bugs for a long time.

SH: We have to do the research on this.



* I did not know we had bugs in this house, although Shirley spends a lot of time staring at the basement carpet, which got soaked in June, thus creating a moist environment perfect for the growth of vermin.

Marriage 201, Lecture 54: He who does not work shall not eat

SH: I'm tired of working.

Me: Do you want me to get a job so you can quit?

SH: No. I just want to complain.

Marriage 201, Lecture 412: Save Big Money at Menard's

Me: What is all this crap?*

SH: It was a good deal. I'll have rebates.


Me: But what is this?

SH: That's a mat to put in the bottom of the oven so the oven doesn't get all dirty.

Me: I don't cook stuff that overflows and we have a self-cleaning oven.

SH: It was a good deal.

Me: It doesn't matter if it's a good deal if we don't need it.

SH: I'll have you know that that was $4.99 but is only 99 cents after rebate.



* Two toothbrushes. We already have seven in the bathroom closet.
Half a gallon of hand-wash refill stuff. We still have 1/5 of a container left and two new little unopened Softsoaps.
A new humidifier. We have one.
Tub sealant. We have some.
Other stuff we actually do need, like motor oil, silicon mats (guess what? you cannot put silicon mats under peppers when you roast them -- well, you can, but the mats melt at that temperature and then are no good for making cookies), canning jars, etc, etc.

Chats du jour: Stuck!

Things I never wanted to know #45

Even if you didn't wash your hair until 3:00 p.m. the day before, you can't go to church, Sunday school and lunch the next day without washing it again.

Marriage 201, Lecture 786: Til death do us part

Me: Of course I would remarry if you predeceased me.

SH: You would?

Me: If I could find someone as hot as you, yes.

SH: But it took you so long to get married the first time.

Me: It's not as bad as I thought it would be.

SH: That's a ringing endorsement.

This boy's friends were so sweet to decorate his grave.

Chats du jour: What? What? Did you not want me to sit here?

Yes. She moved the spray bottle out of the way. If only she would use her power for good.

Marriage 201, Lecture 533: You can't handle the truth

Me: You could tell them [X].

SH: But that would be a lie.

Me: So?

SH: You are against lying.

Me: Not when it serves my purposes.

Notes on a concert

1. "Shook Me All Night Long" is a cool intro song, although AC/DC and Kelly Clarkson? Something doesn't fit. But that's OK. AC/DC is a guilty pleasure. (And "Shook Me All Night Long" isn't even their best song, but it's your show.)

2. If the security guard tells you to move away from the stage, don't stand there leaning next to the stage and waving your hands over the stage but not touching the stage. You're not touching it. You're not touching it. You're next to it! Sheesh! Then don't stomp away, only to return five minutes later and stand three rows from the stage, waving at Kelly! Kelly! Here! Me! Because of course she has been waiting for a weird 16-year-old boy to make her life complete.

The Bolivian navy on Lake Titicaca.

Just as Robert Downey Jr was not waiting for me in Bolivia when I finished my Peace Corps stint in Chile and returned to the US over land. I just knew RDJ would be somewhere along the line making a movie and I would run into him and the crew and they would hire me as an interpreter because they hadn't thought of that before leaving the US -- who knew they don't speak English in Bolivia? -- and then he would fall in love with me and we would laugh and run along the beach (not in Bolivia, obviously) holding hands and eat at cute little cafes and people watch (also not in Bolivia -- maybe we ended up in Paris somehow except there is no beach there -- Greece! we ended up in Santorini) and then we would get married and live happily ever after, defying Hollywood odds. This was before all his heroin stuff came out.

But that didn't happen* and Kelly is not looking for a weird fan who finally gets kicked out of the concert.

3. The purpose of a seat is to provide a place to put your butt so you do not have to stand for 90 minutes. If you have paid good money for a ticket, why would you stand when you have a perfectly good seat behind you?

The sax player was the only appealing male in the band. The bass player was reptilian. The sax player is always the only appealing guy in the band. Unless there is a harmonica player, of course.

* I did, however, have more than one drunken toothless indigenous man sleep against me on the bus.

Marriage 201, Lecture 211: The Gift of the Magi

SH: I wish you liked to go out late with me.

Me: You have those coupons.*

SH: I know, but you don't want to go and I don't want to ask. I feel bad.


Me: I don't feel bad about making you go to salsa lessons.**

SH: Yeah, I'm still trying to get out of those.



* For Christmas last year, I gave SH four coupons for my going out with him whenever, wherever, until as late as he wanted.

** For Christmas last year, he promised he would take salsa classes with me.

Marriage 201, Lecture 402: Coming clean

SH: Where are the bath towels?

Me: I put them in the laundry.

Five minutes later.

SH: Oh no!

Me: What?

SH: I didn't get a towel out before I got into the shower.

Me: But you just commented on the lack of towels. Why didn't you get a new one out?

SH: Because when I lived alone, I got a new towel as soon as I put the old one in the laundry.

Me: You knew there wasn't a towel! I thought you were the smart one.


Related story:

SH: Why did you put the towel in the laundry?

Me: Duh. Because it was dirty.

SH: But I was gone most of the week [and didn't use it].

Me: You wipe your dirty face on it.

SH: Yeah, I'm bad about just getting my face wet and then drying it.

Me: It makes the towel dirty quickly.

SH: It's your fault for having white towels. That's why I always had dark towels.

Me: That is disgusting.

Chats du jour: Curiosity, part 2

Someday Shirley will get a surprise when she jumps onto the stove.

She doesn't even like collards.

She does, however, like the whisk I used to make the blue cheese mac and cheese sauce. I thought I washed it well, but maybe not.

Chats du jour: Curiosity

I guess she doesn't know the aphorism.

Halloween

I was talking to a neighbor last night about Halloween. "I don't know what they're going to do this year, with Halloween being on a weekend," she said.

I was confused. "What do you mean?"

"Usually, the neighborhood has trick or treating on the weekend of Halloween."

"Why don't they have it on Halloween?"

"Oh you know. Safety. They have it in the afternoon."


Safety? Am I living in an unsafe neighborhood? My next door neighbor is a high-school coach and teacher. Other neighbor works in billing at the hospital. The two neighbors outside them are retired. Backyard neighbor is a maintenance manager; his wife is a teacher. Kids play on the street and move when a car approaches. We are one block from an elementary school, two blocks from a church, three blocks from city hall and an old folks' home. Old Chinese* grandfathers walk their grandchildren on the main street. Couples walk their dogs and babies after dark.

This is unsafe? So unsafe that children, possibly escorted by their parents, can't walk around from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.?

Good grief.


PS Don't even get me started on how they don't do the holiday on the holiday here. When does the City of Milwaukee have Fourth of July fireworks? On the third of July. Of course.


* Lots of Chinese postdocs at the medical center near here.

The Right Thing To Do

Random Morocco photos I haven't posted before.

SH got me some fancy soap for my birthday. It's organic. Nurturing. Handcrafted. Cruelty-free. No GMOs. No petroleum. No sulfates. (I am not making this up.)

And most importantly, it is Fair Trade. "Whenever possible."

Yes, those are their words. "Fair trade (whenever possible)."

I'm so glad they're not willing to compromise their principles.

Tuesday

Yes, I dug the peanut M&Ms out of the trash after my friend Gary suggested that I bag them and use them for Halloween. Even though the peanuts are stale*. Which is why I threw them in the trash in the first place. Is that wrong? They were on top of clean things.


SH and I think we will give out Halloween candy this year. We are not sure. We might go out to eat instead.

In Memphis, I gave it out only one year and then stopped. I was happy to throw chocolate at the kids in my neighborhood, the ones I saw skating and biking and playing on my street, but when I realized that families from other neighborhoods were driving their kids to my street and dropping them off, I got annoyed. Yes, it was sad that their neighborhoods were not safe and I guess I should have been more charitable, but I just did not want to spend $$ on kids I did not know. I know, I know. That was not nice of me. In my defense, some of these kids were older and really beyond trick or treating. I'm a sucker for a kindergartner in a costume. But once you're 12 or so? Give it up.

We have a lot of kids on our street here and they are nice kids. Plus SH wanted to try the dark chocolate Kit Kats that we saw at Wal-Mart a few weeks ago.

I love candy corn, but this gourmet candy corn looks nasty to me. What's wrong with plain old orange, brown and white candy corn? Must all traditions be re-invented?


* Peanut M&Ms bought on sale after Christmas do not last until October, even if refrigerated. The peanuts go slightly rancid. Not enough to stop someone desperate for chocolate (ie, me) to eat them. Just enough that they don't taste as good as they should.

Chats du jour: Didn't Obama just legalize this?

Shirley insists on hothouse, organic, cruelty-free grass grown by marginalized indigenous women.

I don't care if the cats do grass (I am a libertarian on drugs) as long as it does not affect their job performance.

Laverne prefers natural, wild grass.