Summer (A)Musings

Robin Williams — Wow.  You just never know what someone is feeling.  How someone who made so many people happy could be so sad himself is a tragedy.  RIP. 

I don’t know who Pearl is, but today I am wearing her mother’s earrings.

I notice that I am becoming more indecisive lately.  I can't decide what music to listen to on my walks, what clothes to wear or even pick out socks without pondering the decision — as if anyone would know or care.  Are you indecisive?  Yes and no.

Why is it that when I yawn, my ears always seem to pop?  They don't seem clogged between yawns, so I can only conclude that my brain is leaking out through my ears.

What could be more ignominious than having either a rest stop or a women’s prison named after you?  There’s a good news/bad news scenario.  “Congratulations, Lombardi Family.  We’re naming the Turnpike rest stop after Vince!”

I watch “Jeopardy” every night, and I just have to say that Alex Trebeck is a bit of a “know-it-all.”  I guess that makes him a wise guy.  By the way, if you record “Jeopardy” and skip the commercials and Alex’s meaningless little chat with the contestants, you can watch the whole show in about 20 minutes.  Don’t tell the sponsors.

Do you ever drive past a construction site, notice that a building has been demolished on a lot you pass all of the time and you have no idea what the building was?

No one seems sadder than Ted Allen when he has to tell one of the contestants on “Chopped” that “You’ve been chopped.” 

For someone who sees as many movies as I do, it is amazing how few “blockbusters” I watch.  I eschew action-adventure for the most part, shy away from anything remotely scary or bloody (which leaves out all those vampire movies) and anything with fantasy in it (I just cannot suspend my sense of reality).  That means when the list of Top 10 Box Office movies comes out, it is likely that I will have seen none of them.  Yet I manage to watch 150 or so movies a year.

If I stick the left earpiece of my headphones in my right ear, what happens?  Will I hear things in the wrong order?  Does it matter?  Will the audio authorities come after me and box my ears?

It is a wonder I can see at all sometimes with all of the schmutz that's on my glasses.  

July marked the 25th anniversary of the TV sitcom "Seinfeld," a show about, well, basically, nothing.  And who didn't love that? Waiting for a table in a Chinese restaurant, Vandelay Industries, Kramer, Elaine's manic dancing...all classic TV moments.  I watched from the first episode of what was originally called "The Seinfeld Chronicles," and enjoyed every episode except the finale, which was God-awful.  Still, overall, a great show.

My DVR has a perplexing habit.  When I turn it on, it sometimes flashes a read-out that says “DUI” before it give me the time or channel.  Do you think it drinks while I’m not watching?  I can’t come up with a logical translation for DUI.  Suggestions?

It amazes me how we have to nurture our plants and flowers and yet weeds can grow in cracks in the asphalt and thrive despite drought, cold and every other condition thrown at them.

As a walker, I am grateful for those electric fences that persuade dogs to stay in their yards and not attack me. 

My BFF suggested that I pick up the pace a little when I walk to get more out of the experience.  But wouldn't that potentially jeopardize my standing as the dead-last finisher in the Resolution Run/Walk on New Year's Day?  I have held the title for 2 years and don't want to give it up now, not when I can go for the three-peat.

Isn’t it odd that you can walk along feeling fine when suddenly you get a pain in your ankle or shoulder or elbow for no apparent reason, think you’ll never walk again, and then it goes away?

Last walking reference:  I try to walk for health and fitness, yet now I am developing bunions.  It seems to me that the punishment doesn't fit because walking is no crime.

After our horrible winter, I promised I wouldn’t complain about the summer heat.  So I’m not going to complain about the summer heat.

I know we need rain, but can’t we just get regular rain instead of torrential downpours that overfill my pool?  I’m tired of getting flash flood warnings on my phone every time we get another deluge.

One of my BFFs retired as a teacher.  Now I can call her anytime, because she has no class.

I used to have to straighten out those twisted cords on all of my phones.  I was always untangling them in the office — even in other people’s offices.  Now that we all have cordless phones, that’s one habit I have dropped.  Instead, I’m fixated on keeping the headphone cord for my iPod free of twists and kinks.  I guess I’ve just transferred that OCD characteristic from one thing to another.  Blue Tooth is a good thing for me!

Don’t you just love to find a book that you absolutely cannot put down, that you want to finish but don’t want to finish because you will be sad when you are done reading it?

I have some habits (actually, too many to mention) that really annoy me.  One is that I will write down a phone number but not the name that goes with it.  Later on I find the number but have no idea whose number it is. 

I need to go to bed earlier.  I don’t sleep well anymore, what with at least one stop in the bathroom after which I have trouble falling back to sleep, so that means I am usually up early after 5 or so hours.  Maybe if I went to bed earlier I could erase those Samsonite bags under my eyes.  I really don’t think I look my age (going on 64), but those bags!  You could go on a trip around the world with smaller bags than the ones under my eyes!  Maybe it’s time to see the wizard on Park and 73^rd.  Or just go to bed earlier.  That would be cheaper and far less painful.

The very idea that a dab of concealer under my eyes could possibly disguise the bags is optimistic at best — or just plain foolish.  Maybe a vat of concealer, applied with a trowel, would make a difference.  I just bought a lighted make-up mirror, a concession to the fact that I need a lot of light to see.  I didn’t quite understand how BIG an 8 inch mirror was until this enormous looking glass arrived.  It also magnifies my face 7 times, so my head now looks like it could be on Mount Rushmore, and my pores look like the craters of the moon.  But my lipstick and eyeliner (yes, I do wear eyeliner — as infrequently as possible) will look great.  I’ll just have to get over the scariness of my face that big.

I don’t mind cooking, but cleaning up is a giant pain.  Since I live alone, both the cooking and the cleaning up are my responsibilities.  But at least I get to eat whatever I want to eat.  So there’s that.

These days, I measure the effectiveness of my brain by trying to recall every word of “Love Child” and “Along Comes Mary.”  When I stop remembering the lyrics, I’ll know trouble lies ahead.

You can’t tell me that my nails don’t grow faster in the summer.  I mean, you can tell me, but I won’t believe it. 

My bottle of nail polish remover has an expiration date.  Really?  What happens when nail polish remover “goes bad?”  Will the bottle itself disintegrate?  Just wondering.

Does anyone actually go on line and take the survey that Kohl’s asks you to take every time you purchase something?  We could save plenty of trees if they would stop handing out that little slip with the website on it.  Besides, most people go on line just to complain about service, and at Kohl’s I find everything to be more than acceptable.  Except that they keep asking me to take the survey!

What’s the point of ordering a load of mulch, having it delivered and then letting it sit in your driveway for the entire summer?  Not me, but several houses I pass have done just that.

Alert the media:  I actually finished two magazines this month in the same month they arrived!  Aside from my weekly People magazine, which takes only 10-15 minutes to absorb (if that’s an accurate description), I normally skim magazine articles first and put the magazine aside for later, in-depth reading.   That means I will soon be done looking at holiday recipes for Thanksgiving and Christmas from last year’s Better Homes & Gardens.  Yet I cannot recycle my magazines unless I have at least gone through them once.  Why do I continue to subscribe, you (reasonably) ask?  Well, I wouldn’t want to miss something interesting now, would I?

And speaking of magazines, I have subscribed to TV Guide since 1974, and notice that they seem to send out a lot of “double issues” now, which makes me wonder — with a subscription that will probably outlive me, do I get half as many issues as I used to get?  Is a double issue counted as two issues?  Oh, the weighty concerns on my mind!