Move over "bromance"...here comes "cangle"

There are many things I fear in life, most of which will never come true.

I’m pretty certain I’ll never be asked to perform a piano solo again. Not playing publically in almost 20 years has rendered my fingers, reach and memory woefully inadequate. Which is a good thing – very few situations leave me as entirely eaten up with fear as that experience.

Can’t remember the last time I stayed in a creepy hotel and I’m always certain to pull back the shower curtain, even in the nice ones,  looking for Norman Bates, so that’s eradicated as well.

It’s been years since I fell down a flight of stairs, but I have accomplished that feat more than once, which explain the tree-sloth slowness with which I now descend any staircase of more than three steps.

What I often dread, and actually did last Friday was lapse into “Lori-speak” at an inopportune time.  For those who don’t know, Lori-speak is the little known but curious language known only to myself and a few close friends and relatives.

I tend to make up words. Most likely it started with my incessant need to talk. I talk and walk in my sleep. I talk to myself. I talk to complete strangers. And it would make sense that for someone who talks all the time; inevitably you would run out of words.

So, last Friday in the middle of a staff meeting, surrounded by people I desperately want to impress and who I hope will eventually hold me in personal and professional high regard, I used the word “cangle.”

Cangle: a compound verb created when you combine carrot and dangle as in to “dangle a carrot” in front of someone or something to achieve a desired result.

I was recounting a conversation I had just finished with an information technology consultant who was wrapping a new web design project, when I stated something along the lines of “it was just the cangle I tried.”

All the heads around me cocked to one side, you know the way a dog does when you’ve been talking to it for too long, and I thought something was amiss, but couldn’t put my finger on it.

So I stopped and said to the woman across from me “What?” “What did I say?”

“Cangle?” was her response.

So I patiently explained the definition of a cangle.

About this time I heard a stifled giggled coming from the person in the chair to my left. Never mind that it was Marta Churchwell, former newspaper reporter. The same Marta Churchwell that I years ago placed upon a very tall pedestal where I hold her writing skills in the highest regard. Never mind that I had felt really confident about my communication skills that day.

I said cangle.

Oh well, I’ve decided to keep it. You may not be aware but, “bromance” and “walk-off” officially made it into the dictionary last year. I think there’s hope for cangle.

What a difference a year makes.

(The following is my Neosho Daily News column from two weeks ago - when we were still enjoying unseasonably warm temperatures.)

Just twelve months ago I was thrilled to be sleeping on the floor of my office eating whatever we had left in the vending machines. We were in the midst of a blizzard in southwest Missouri and I was one of only a handful of people working in the office. I was thrilled to be able to curl up on the floor to sleep because only hours earlier I had gotten lost in the storm driving from Neosho to Joplin.

The snow was so heavy and the wind so strong that the “green monster” van’s windshield wipers couldn’t keep up with the snow. I had no idea if I was heading up, down or sideways. When I finally gave up and called for help I was only twenty feet or so from the ramp to 32^nd Street but I might have well as been at 7^th. I was thoroughly and utterly confused and unable to find my way.

I got a text from a former co-worker that simply read “Remember where we were and what we were doing 12 months ago? What a difference a year makes!”

Last year we were praying for the temperature to get above 20 degrees and for the sun simply to tease us with its rays. This year we’re stomping around in balmy mid-sixty degree weather. Birds are singing and the breeze hints of spring. An even surer sign is the fact that my Okie toes have only been subjected to socks a half-dozen times. I even gave careful consideration to donning a favorite pair of sandals this past weekend.

I will never complain about warm temperatures or beautiful winter skies. Give me a calm Ozark’s winter any day. After the crazy rollercoaster ride of 2011 we’re due.

Karmic Laws of Laundry

I’ve never really believed in Karma as it relates to people.

For starters the thought of my needing to live over and over certain relationships and situations until I learn whatever lesson is involved sounds exhausting.   If I’m anything, it is stubborn. I think after the third or fourth reincarnation I would simply dig in my heels , set my jaw and get ready for a very long ride.

Also, I’ve always imagined God infinitely possible to create an infinite number of spirits and personalities. I’ve never thought about there being any limits to anything related to here and now or the next life.

However, I do though believe that there is a Karmic relationship at play as it relates to laundry. Just this weekend a very intelligent friend of mine posted an “after” picture of her laundry on Facebook. The image showed five different socks neatly lined up on top of the dryer after being laundered. She could have sworn each sock had a mate going into the wash, but upon removal from the dryer each was utterly alone; singles in a world of pairs.

This is one of my friends who one day soon I suspect will have a Ph.D. in something I can barely spell. She’s smart. Entirely capable of working out complex problems, yet cycle after cycle she struggles with learning about her socks’ desires to be on their own.

I have a particular sweater that wash after wash I keep following the same pattern. I repeat to myself the same mantra each time I prepare to wash it, “I will only dry this sweater for five minutes. I will only dry this sweater for five minutes.”  Each time I start off well-intentioned and each time I become focused on my own selfish needs, allowing my sweater to tumble about in a hot dryer for longer than planned.

Sure, every now and again I kick myself when I take out the finished clothes, hanging the now shrunken, knitted garment on a hanger. My remorse though is never fully realized until I put it on and find my wrists jutting inches away from the now shortened sleeves.

Maybe we’re destined to relearn those lessons we’ve been working at the longest. I’ve been doing my own laundry for almost 40 years. You would think that after four decades of practice I would be, by now, making some progress toward perfect. Instead, my laundry room and I are stuck in a recurring cycle of “Oh no! It’s you again.”

If the kitchen is the heart of the home, then the laundry room is the gut. Some days I just have to “gut it out,” repeat my clothes washing mantras and keep searching for the land of the lost socks. And until all lessons are learned and sock reclaimed, I’ll just keep rewashing that sweater and stretching the sleeves before I hang it out to dry.