Category: Humor - trish hermanson

My Kind of Cookbook

5/24/2019

I love writing so much I’ve sometimes forgotten to eat. If it weren’t for my husband, a great chef, I’d turn into a scrap of dried leather. (He thinks I compliment his culinary skills only to keep him in the kitchen, but I relish every meal he creates - especially because I’m not making it.)
     It’s not that I’m a bad cook. It’s that I’m distracted. My mother used to concoct a twenty-four-hour salad - prepare it a day in advance so the flavors meld. I never start it until it’s nearly time to eat, so I call it my twenty-four-second salad.
     I’m not the only writer like this. C. Robertson says her poetry is “a disease, a sort of recurrent itch that keeps me awake nights and makes me burn the bacon and causes my husband to use unholy adjectives.”
     I’ve set some burnt offerings on the table, but I call them “blackened.”
     Author Virginia Greene Millikin says that just as loaves of bread won’t rise without yeast, stories don’t rise “without that piece of your very heart that you have put into it.”
     So that’s my problem. I don’t put my heart into cooking. Maybe if I…oops, gotta run. I need to have a meal ready in fifteen minutes so we can get out the door.
  (Did I mention my husband is a great chef?)

You Talk Like a Sumerian?

4/25/2019

Do you talk like a Sumerian?
   That ancient civilization developed humanity's first written communication through pictograms. But our ancestors soon discovered that pictures weren’t enough to get their point across, so they created a code for words - the alphabet. With that, communication spread onto clay tablets, papyrus, and paper, then exploded through printing presses, typewriters, copy machines, and emails.
     But everything was TL;DR (too long; didn’t read), so dialogue imploded into one-sided tweets. And now we’re back to pictograms through emojis, which makes me wonder whether we’ve regressed 5,000 years.
     TBH (to be honest), IDK (I don’t know). I’m SMH (shaking my head) about this.
     But my granddaughter’s messages do make me giggle.

You, Too, Can Kazoo!!

1/25/2019

Our country desperately needs some levity these days, so let me encourage you to rush out to a music store and pick up a kazoo to celebrate National Kazoo Day on January 28. Then if you can hum the semblance of a tune, you can jam on this nifty little American instrument that’s been around since the 1840s.
     If you can’t buy one by the 28th, no worries, because the date for celebrating occurs anytime near the end of January - whenever it’s convenient for kazoodaphiles. “We have to be flexible,” explains Chaplain Willard Rahn, founder of the Joyful Noise Kazoo Band at Homewood Retirement Center in Williamsport, Maryland.
     And if you’re a closet kazooist, now’s the time to fling open the doors and form a kazoophony. Embellish your music with this distinctive instrument as did Eric Clapton (“San Francisco Bay Blues”), Pink Floyd (“Corporal Clegg”), and Dionne Warwick (“This Girl’s in Love with You”).
  For a hilarious history from hardcore kazoologists, visit here.
    Happy kazooing!

What to Do in Case of a Situation

1/11/2019

This sign cracked me up because we used to react to emergencies, but now we create “Situational Action Plans.” Please, if I’m ever in an emergency, don’t call it a “situation.” Just get help!
     Other signs I’ve observed recently have been more straightforward, like the South Dakota bill board that poked fun at just about everyone - “Eat Steak, Wear Fur, Keep Your Guns.” Another, advertising a western store, told me, “Use Your Head When Buying a Hat.”
     A sign in a Denver plumbing parts outlet informed me: “You Will Spend Seven Years of Your Life in the Bathroom. You Will Need a Good Book…and a Good Look.”
     A T-shirt in Colorado made me read carefully: “Legalize Marinara.” Another, perhaps related, said the wearer was “Overly Meditated.” A third came across with the authority of Scripture: “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll sit in a boat and drink beer all day. Fish 24:7”
     Then there are the companies that select unforgettable names. A tax accounting firm: “Go Figure.” A shoe repair store: “The Sole Man.” And my favorite, a hair salon: “Curl Up and Dye.”
     All this whimsy makes me wish we could trade in the divisive political talk around us for a bit of humor. Perhaps then we’d discover, as Louis Armstrong sang, what a wonderful world it is. Listen to Armstrong here.

How I Survived a Woman's Worst Disaster

10/5/2018

The worst disaster in womanhood befell me. My purse wore out and I couldn’t find a replacement. That’s the-end-of-life-as-we-know-it for women, because we depend on a well-organized handbag as the repository for all we need to make it through the day.
     For years, I’ve relied on fanny packs, one after another, slung over my shoulder to hold everything I needed to survive. But when I visited my usual vendor to replace my bag, the clerk informed me: “We don’t carry those anymore.” At another store I found only one model, but it was the size of a cooler. I drove home and consulted with my style-savvy daughter. “Fanny packs? The world has moved on,” she said.
     Nobody warned me.
  My life with handbags has always been checkered. As a young tomboy, I couldn’t imagine why I’d want such a frilly box. Finally when I was 10, my mother decided it was “time” and forced me to carry a pink atrocity to school. All the way there, I swung it around my head. The thing didn’t survive.
Somewhere along the way, I fell in step with the rest of girlhood and selected my own tote. But never one of those little clutch bags like the Queen of England rests on her arm; that’s not me. I owned a cavernous basket-weave when I was single. When my date arrived to pick me up, it wouldn’t fit in the front seat of his VW Beetle. That relationship didn’t last. Through the years, whatever bag I carried, it carried my purse-onality, as comedian Anita Renfroe says.
     With my recent purse crisis, my style-savvy daughter knew of a brand that fits my quirks, so I snagged one the next day. I organized everything into all the little pockets and exhaled that my life could go on.
  You see, I can’t organize or control the world around me, but now at least I can find my lipgloss.

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