Meandering March Musings

Why is it we can refer to someone as “unkempt” when we never describe anyone as “kempt?”

At the holidays and all of the time, I am grateful for NOT having to lick stamps.  Imagine that there are generations of people growing up who never had to lick a stamp.  So yucky!

If I don’t see you for some time, I’ll just assume that you and your car have been swallowed up by the many potholes that emerge this time of year.

Doesn’t it seem that your car drives better when you get it washed?

I will drive out of my way to go to the post office in Belle Mead because the man at the counter there (where there are all of two windows) is always so pleasant to the customers.  He has a smile on his face, enjoys helping people and knows his job.  In comparison, the people who work at the post office in Hillsborough are surly and seem to resent working there.  So I will continue to do my postal business down the road, where they are happy to see me.

On the downside, have you looked for a mailbox lately?  I walk all around Hillsborough and there is not a single mailbox on any of my routes.  I don’t really like leaving mail in my mailbox for the carrier to pick up, so the only alternative is a trip to the post office. Beside the surly employees, the local post office doesn’t open until 10AM, so you have to cram your outgoing mail into the box outside the office, which, during the holiday season, is next to impossible.  Whatever happened to mailboxes anyway?  I guess this is just another example of “self-service” that we have to experience.  At the supermarket, you can find a shorter line if you are willing to scan, pack and pay for your items yourself.  Yet they have expanded the selection of foods that are already cut and ready to be cooked, like broccoli florets, sweet potatoes and even apples.  I guess the time we spend as our own cashiers is counter-balanced by the shortcuts in the kitchen, for which we pay dearly.

The sign entering Hillsborough should read:  Welcome to Hillsborough, the Land of Dead Deer.  Between walking around town and driving, I see them all over.  As the kid in the movie “The Sixth Sense” says:  I see dead deer.  Or something like that.

My arms are too short – not only to box with God, but to reach the cylinder at the bank drive-through window.  I have to take off my seatbelt, open the window AND the door of the car and reach out to grab it.  My arms are just too short.

Raise your hand if you thought Brian Wilson would be the last surviving Wilson brother from the Beach Boys.  Yeah, me, neither.

Every now and then I get a card from the local chapter of the Society for Financial Awareness, which goes by the acronym “SOFA.”  I see the postcard and immediately want to take a nap.  Of course, that’s not quite as funny as a store that sells sofas called “Sofa King.”  Go ahead – say it out loud and fast.  You’ll get it, I hope.

It’s funny how we associate certain smells with certain times of our lives or certain events.  To me, every hospital smells the same, and the memory is never a good one.  To this day, I can walk into a candy store/newsstand and smell the newspaper and the candy.  I have to try to get out without reverting to really old habits, which involve buying comic books (Superman in my youth) and Hershey bars. That smell just brings it all back.  And remember the smell of a luncheonette?  It’s all about the burgers, French fries and fountain sodas.  Yum.

Here’s how I assess my mental acuity:  I try to sing all of the lyrics to The Association’s song “Along Comes Mary.”  If I even come close, I figure I still have a decent memory – at least a long-term one.  Don’t ask me what I had for dinner on Tuesday.

Shouldn’t the expression “put on your shoes and socks” be, “put on your socks and shoes?”  After all, you have to put the socks on first, right?

I don’t know what bothers me more – finding spacing problems on this blog because I use the customary two spaces between sentences or trying to eliminate those spacing issues by using only one space.  It must be the latter, because I just cannot bring myself to stop using two spaces between sentences.  Can’t.  Do.  It.

In writing this blog, I never know when a random thought will occur to me.  Since I am afraid I will forget one of these gems, if I think of something while driving, I call my home phone and leave myself a message so I can write it down when I get there.  Then I come home and see the message light blinking and I think, “I wonder who called.”

Sometimes I put my left earbud in my right ear and I don’t bother to switch.  The music sounds the same in either ear.  Call me a rebel.

What’s the point of contractions anyway?  Look, if you use “can’t” instead of cannot, it’s not like you save a whole bunch of space, right?  I don’t get it.  Get it?

At the holidays, I baked cookies, a noteworthy event for me, and I was questioned by the doubters about whether they were “from scratch.”  That led me to wonder how that phrase came about.  Anyway, I opened a box, added required ingredients and put them in my oven.  All of that constitutes “homemade” to me, whatever “scratch” may be.

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I just don’t understand lint.  I clean the lint trap faithfully, but the towels always look the same once they are laundered, so what causes lint and does it affect wear?  I know you need to get rid of it, but is it what really holds material together?  I need to consult with Dr. Sheldon Cooper and the bunch from “Big Bang Theory” to see if they have a “Lots of Lint” theory.

Irony is buying one of those fitness devices and then spending so much time trying to figure out how to work it that you don’t have time to exercise.

Phew!  I was worried when Dr. Oz stopped e-mailing me on a daily basis about his fat buster product, but he must have been on a break because he’s contacting me again.  But as for 21-year old Adriana who wants me to look her up on Facebook and contacts me nearly daily, I have this message:  Trust me when I tell you that I am not even remotely interested.

It is truly amazing how many grocery bags, gym bags, etc., that I can carry into the house at one time just so I can make one trip.  I’ll spend five minutes organizing it all so I can carry every package, bag, the mail, the newspaper and my purse at once.  I don’t care if it weighs 50 pounds or if I look like a Sherpa.  One trip is all I’ll make.

On the question of liquid laundry detergent vs. those drop-in “pods” (did someone actually have a question on this topic?  No, just me.), I never believed the label on the liquid that said the bottle was good for 32 loads.  At least with the pods you know exactly how many loads you’ll get since it is one pod for every load, unless you roll around in the mud a lot.  I also never bought into the myth of number of servings on the carton of ice cream, either.  If you buy ice cream on a stick, you’ll know exactly what you’re getting.  And try to stick to the recommended dose!

I just replaced my old Samsung Galaxy tablet with a new, 10-inch model, which resembles an iPad but keeps me in the Android family.  Verizon was running a buy-one, get-one sale, so I also picked up a 7” model.  Between the two tablets and my sSmartphone, and my two laptop computers, don’t expect to hear from me for a while.  I have plenty of loading and updating in my future.  Since each one has its own placement of on/off switches and controls, I am about out of control trying to hit all of the right buttons.  You can find me in the near future at some sort of facility for the technologically overloaded.

I was in Chicago recently during the time change.  Since I couldn’t get the clock on my Garmin Vivo fitness device to change, I stayed on New Jersey time until we came home, and then I had to set that clock ahead by one hour for daylight savings time, which made me lose two hours body time.  At least I think so.

Do you experience this problem in hotel rooms?  The housekeeping staff makes up the bed so tightly that my feet feel like they are in a strait jacket.  You have to deconstruct the blankets and sheets just to get into bed.  The opposite of this phenomenon is when characters in TV shows and movies are shown in bed.  They routinely grab all of the covers off the bed to go into the bathroom, ostensibly being modest but practically speaking to prevent the viewing audience from seeing them unclothed. Seriously, if someone did that to my bed and I had to remake the bed, I’d kick them out of bed for the foreseeable future.  Unless they changed the sheets for me.  I never see that happen on TV or in the movies.

I still have (and frequently use) my original set of Corning Wear containers that I got when I moved into my first apartment in 1975.  I have the garden design ones, not the original blue designed ones, and I’m trying to remember if I even owned a microwave at the time I got them, because that is how they are used now.

Here’s a generalization for you:  Nothing in an infomercial or “Seen on TV” product ever works as well in your house as it did on the commercial.  I can attest to that fact by virtue of my experience with a pasta maker, the Slap Chop, the Pocket Hose and others, though I will admit that my first such purchase, the Berner V-Slicer, is definitely sharp and effective (I almost sliced off the top of my finger once and had to go to the emergency room).  Now I keep seeing the Flex Seal, which supposedly can be used to seal the holes in a boat.  Not that I have a boat, mind you, but I am just skeptical of its ability to apply as neatly as shown on TV and especially in its ability to really prevent leaking.  Let’s just say that I wouldn’t try out the demonstration in the commercial, where the pitchman is in a boat with a screen door that has been sealed.

Lately I have rediscovered the joys of the much underrated TV sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati.”  The characters – Jennifer, Mr. Carlson, Andy Travis, Venus Flytrap, Herb Tarlick, Les Nessman, Bailey Quarters and Johnny Fever – are funny, interesting and consistently entertaining.  And oh, those 80s hairdos!

I’ve noticed lately that stopping at a red light appears to have become optional for many people.  Drivers don’t even bother to slow down in some cases.  They aren’t trying to beat the red light.  They just ignore it.  Please be careful and don’t assume that just because you have the green light that the lunatic coming the other way will stop because his light is red.  Let’s be careful out there, people.