Ever More Random Thoughts, November 2014 Edition

My GPS got lost sending me to Walgreen’s the other day.  It turns out it isn’t really on the corner of Happy and Healthy.

Why is it that every time I have an appointment with the eye doctor that requires that my pupils be dilated, that day is the brightest, sunniest day of the week?  I exit the office nearly blinded by the light and proceed to attempt to drive home.  I guess this question is the converse of why it always seems to rain when I put out massive amounts of newspaper and junk mail for recycling.  Speaking of which, here is the rule:  If you put out the recycling the night before the pick-up, it will be picked up late in the day.  But if you forget to put it out the night before and drag your recycling can out on the morning of the pick-up, you will have missed it because the truck came early.  Am I right?

Isn’t it ironic that when you go to the doctor you become the patient, but when they leave you in the examination room in that flimsy paper gown for 30 minutes with magazines from 1997 to read you become impatient?

They used to refer to James Brown as the hardest-working person in show business.  I think the title now belongs to Flo for all those Progressive Insurance commercials.  That woman is everywhere!

I am so tired of making my bed.  I mean, I do it every day (the only exception being when I am sick enough to stay in it all day), but it is the same routine every day.  I wouldn’t think of NOT making it, but I am tired of the routine.  Just saying.

I saw a sign on the corner the other day advertising a garage sale.  It occurred to me that GARAGE and GARBAGE are the same except for the addition of the letter B.  Ironic, considering how much GARBAGE you see at GARAGE sales.

I am available to star in a sequel to the movie “This Is 40” and call it “This Is 64.”  I wonder if Hollywood would be interested.

So I see that big butts are all the rage in music and videos.  This couldn’t have been the case before I lost 80 pounds? 

Do you put something on your To Do List after you have done it just so you can cross it off?  I thought so.

We all have the best of intentions.  When we designate a special, cozy spot for a chair and a lamp so we can read and quietly enjoy a cup of tea, we actually think we will find time to do that, but how rarely does that happen — if ever?

As women, we will come up with whatever excuse we find necessary to justify buying a new handbag or pair of shoes, but, if you are like me, you probably continue to use those old, stained potholders you have had for 20 years.  Come on, they are potholders.  You can replace them without feeling guilty about spending the money after, say, maybe 10 years.

I am sure you clean up before the cleaning lady arrives — like I do — but I also stomp around the living room so she has to vacuum it and doesn’t think I never go in there because you can still see the marks from the last time she vacuumed.

What happens when a woman with a hyphenated last name marries a man with a hyphenated last name and she wants to use her name with his?  Sarah White-Jones Baxter-Burnside?  Good luck to THEIR kids.

I’ve reached the point in life where, when I find a sock with a hole in it, I toss it out and save the other sock, which then gets paired with another solo sock, whether or not they match.  Caution, this practice works best with white, athletic socks.

Speaking of sox, I’m always perplexed when I spot one gnarly-looking sock lying in the street.  I picture the sock’s journey to this escape from the washer or dryer into the sewer system and wonder, is this what happens to a missing sock?  Do they really go all Andy Dufraine and find a way out to “freedom?”

Don’t you hate it when you cannot find something and you keep looking where you just KNOW it will be and it still isn’t there, but you keep telling yourself, “It will turn up,” because that’s what your mother always said, and it is still missing?  This is my way of saying that the hydrocortisone cream I had in the pocket of my sweatpants escaped and remains a fugitive in this house.  Someday, when I move, I KNOW it will be located, but by then it will be too late.  You have been replaced, relieved of your duties, Mr. Hydrocortisone.  But I still think if I look under the chair for the 38^th time you will be lying there in wait. 

I watch a lot of HGTV programs where people are renovating houses.  On “House Hunters Renovation,” the people who have just bought a house end up completely redoing it.  There are “Bath Crashers” and “Kitchen Crashers,” where the hosts lurk in the aisles of Lowe’s until they find someone willing (and smart enough) to agree to have their bathroom or kitchen renovated for free by professionals — in what they claim to be three days.  Who would be stupid enough to turn down such an offer?  And now I note a plethora of celebrity renovation shows.  Vanilla Ice renovates homes for Amish people.  As unlikely as that seems, “Beverly Hills 90210” alum Jennie Garth is renovating her own home on her own TV show.  William Shatner has a renovation show — renovating the Starship Enterprise?  And Daryl Hall of the duo Hall & Oates seems to have a lot of experience in rebuilding old homes.  Even Olympic ice skater Brian Boitano is a designer.  Or is his a cooking show?  I’m getting confused with the Food Network now.  The point is that it seems anyone can have a chop saw, a nail gun and a TV show these days, and you don’t have to be the Property Brothers.

At Weight Watchers recently we discussed posture, and how maintaining the correct posture helps keep your core muscles strong.  Good luck to the next generation, I say.  The only strong muscles they will have are their hand muscles, as they walk slumped over, clutching their smartphones and rarely looking up to see if cars are coming.  I’m no better, by the way.  I slouch, though I try to remind myself to walk erect, but my excuse is I have to keep my head down so the brim of my hat keeps the sun out of my eyes.  This excuse does not work for me on a cloudy day, I must admit.

I recently had a long-delayed reunion with a dear friend with whom I worked back in the 1970s.  We have always stayed in touch but have only seen each other sporadically.  It is amazing to me how it does not matter how much time has passed between visits, because we pick up the conversation as if we just spoke 10 minutes ago.  If you have people in your life like this, you are lucky.  You know who you are.

I have acquired the (well-deserved) reputation of being a grammar freak, as evidenced by the number of posts on Facebook that point out errors and mention my name (not for making the errors, but because these folks know I will be in full-on twitch mode when I see them).  That reputation is not to say I don’t make the occasional error myself (though it is more likely to be a typo than a grammar mistake).  My sister thought it was odd that after I retired I bought several new grammar books.  After all, she reasoned, I wasn’t working anymore, so I wouldn’t need them.  But I’m still writing, I explained, and I still want to do it right. 

Lately, I’ve been going through old pictures — actual photographs and even slides —  weeding out the thousands of pictures I have taken of trees and flowers and ducks on a pond, and especially going through the wedding pictures of people whom I no longer see and who aren’t even married to each other anymore.  In the process, I have come across plenty of pictures of myself that made me say out loud, “What could you have been thinking when you picked THAT outfit?”  I hope I don’t do that in the next picture purge, looking at today’s clothes with the same degree of disdain in 20 years.  Assuming I’m still around in 20 years and know how to purge, that is.

A friend told me a story about buying something recently at Kohl’s for $55 that was on sale for half price, AND she had Kohl’s cash, AND she had a coupon, AND she had some other promo, so, when the cashier rang her up, the item was down to $6.30, AND she still asked the cashier for a scratch off coupon, all while her daughter looked on in total embarrassment.  My hero!

It is deer season here in Hillsborough, so you never know when you might — God forbid — literally run into a deer on the road.  I have noticed that they seldom look before bolting across the street. They also seem illiterate, since they rarely read the signs that say “Deer Crossing” and just cross anywhere they choose.

My superstitions have become “stupid”stitions.  Last year I designated certain pairs of socks, certain underwear and certain shirts to wear to Rutgers Women’s Basketball games.  If they won, I kept these items in the rotation, but if they lost the game, the garments were banned.  When I hit the road for the WNIT Championship, I had to keep washing the shirt I wore to the games since the team kept winning, even though there was barely time to get home and throw in a load.  So I showed up at the Championship game in the winning shirt only to see the team wearing black uniforms for the first time all season.  I guess their uniform color didn’t matter, and I’m hoping this year my choice of the aforementioned items won’t either.  Then, maybe, I can tackle my issue of parking in the same location so as not to jinx the team.

One of my sister Douglass alumnae contributed this random thought for this month’s blog, and I have to say I am with her 100%:  She says she dislikes being in a store and being rung up at the register while the cashier carries on a full conversation with one of the other nearby cashiers.  What is the proper response to this situation?  I don’t like when that happens to me, any more than I like the fact that the cashiers can barely make change on those rare occasions when they confronted with actual cash.  Any suggestions for a proper (or improper) response to the former situation will be graciously accepted for future use.

I turned on the Hallmark Channel the other day to watch an episode of “The Golden Girls,” only to find that the network has already begun airing those truly insipid holiday movies, most of which were made for TV and few of which are worth watching.  It wasn’t even the 1^st of November.  This morning I heard two Christmas songs on the Love station on Sirius radio, which I hope doesn’t mean that the station is converting to all-holiday, all of the time, already.  I’ll be sticking with ESPN radio or my iPod instead.

Happy Holidays to you…