Klowns in my Koffee

What a fabulous and beautiful weekend! And this week looks like it's going to be even better. We remain raccoonless, in a state of raccoon deprivation, sans raccoon, raccoon-free, menos un mapache.

I'm getting a lot of weird email from companies who want me to be things like insurance agents. I suppose that's the byproduct of publishing a resume online. There are many things in life of which I am unsure but my determination not to be an insurance agent has been constant from the womb.

I've been playing with lists this week. I'm a listmaker at heart and we LM's always flock together and feel comfortable with our own kind. An LM can spot a clipboard at 100 feet. I have lists for daily chores, groceries, charitable donations, and what to plant in my vegetable garden. I have goal lists by day, week and year. Yes, it's sick (in the bad sense, not in the cool, goth kind of way).

Yet some lists can be fun and provocative. I was thinking about the George Gobel quote: “Did you ever get the feeling that the world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?”

Maybe George's observation can be stretched to include those circumstances where everyone else seems to hear the sizzle except you. Or where the build-up is so intense that the occurrence itself is underwhelming. Y2K and (fortunately) SARS and H1N1 come to mind. Here's my personal list.

Ten Things Over Which It's Hard to See the Fuss

1) Prime rib
2) Killer bees
3) Robert Frost
4) diamonds
5) long fingernails
6) the Electoral College
7) escargot
8) doing anything until you vomit
9) sushi
10) "Catcher in the Rye"

To come completely clean, I have to admit that I miss the brilliance that other people freely ascribe to Ernest Hemingway, Andy Warhol and Lady Gaga but concede that the problem might be me so they didn't make the list. I also left off Chris Farley out of deference to my husband who really liked him. One person's fat, sweaty, obnoxious drug addict is another's comic genius, I guess.

I reread Catcher in the Rye about every five years on the premise that there is bound to be more than I'm seeing if people try so hard to censor it, but the thin novel merely seems more wart-like at each repetition. When I was a teenager, I didn't like Holden Caulfield; now I despise him. That's progress I guess.

So, please inform me of the error of my judgments. Or comment on what else on everyone's hot list leaves you cold and wondering what the fuss is all about.