Abstract April Thoughts

I just found out that the development where I live has a kiln in the arts & crafts room.  Quick, someone warn Fern Leibowitz!  (And if you don’t get that reference, we may not be able to continue our friendship; it’s from “Animal House.”)

I’m looking forward to summer at my new digs.  For the first time in 8 years, I won’t be the one dragging 50-pound containers of chlorine to throw into the pool (the chlorine, not the containers).  At least I don’t think they will make me do that here!

I’m happy to live in an area where there are public parks and libraries, community theater and other amenities.  I just have to take advantage of these local perks.

On the day you go to the dentist, don’t you brush your teeth as if your life depended on it?  And then you come up with the fabrication about your daily flossing ritual.

I think nothing of blowing $100 on something that I want, or treating friends to movies or manicures, but I will squeeze the last bit of toothpaste out of that tube until it screams.

In just a few weeks, on April 28, Douglass alum Mary Norris ’74 will be delivering the Zagoren Lecture on campus as part of the AADC series.  Mary is the author of “Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen.”  As a punctuation enthusiast (who knew people had this interest?), I found her book highly entertaining.  I hope my Word Nerd friends will come out and enjoy this free and special evening with the author.

As much as I am a fan of technology – and dependent upon it in so many ways –I am puzzled by the random things that happen.  Losing the phone connection is probably the most common issue, but getting Netflix to load without the spinning wheel, having the wifi connection in the house suddenly disconnect itself, and pairing the phone and headset are just three examples of the problematic issues that we all seem to experience.  But the idea of being able to converse with someone via Facetime or Skype, to connect with family and friends and even to order things on Amazon in the middle of the night without human intervention make the problems seem small.  Unless you are in the middle of House of Cards and that damn Netflix keeps “loading.”

Entertainment has dramatically changed in my lifetime thanks to all of these electronic advancements.  Now I can watch Netflix (when it isn’t “LOADING”), stream movies on Amazon video for “free” (a privilege accorded to paid Prime members, and well worth the annual fee), watch things on demand AND see any of these things plus televised sports on my TV, tablet or phone.  Still, so often I think, “There’s nothing on.”

What IS on, and often on, are reruns of the “Gilmore Girls,” a delightful show about the special bond between a mother and daughter that I was “persuaded” to watch (arm-twisted) by my young Douglass alumnae friends.  Watching seven seasons of anything is a COMMITMENT, but I enjoyed it so much that every morning and evening when I am home I have the TV tuned to one of the two channels that airs reruns.  I keep it on in the background as I get ready for my day or make dinner.  The problem is that the two channels are on different seasons.  One evening last week I saw the episode where the great grandmother dies and then in the next morning's episode the great grandmother arrives for a visit.  I felt like a time traveler.  But it is so worth it.

I must admit that although Paul McCartney was my favorite Beatle, I have never liked any of the music he did with Wings.

Here’s the thing about doing housework: There is no reward in it.  You do a great job and it’s not like you can rest on your laurels, because before you know it, you have to do it again.  NOTE TO SELF:  Must find cleaning service…

I can easily do a 3.2 mile walk, but when I tried the elliptical machine for the first time recently, my thighs were BURNING after two minutes.  Just when I think I’m making progress, I realize that I have a long way to go.

My beloved nephew, Brandon, just turned 23 and lives in Chicago, where he works for Amazon.  Recently he said something to his mother that he has never said before:  “I have a conference call at noon.”  Can’t describe how proud I am.  Oh, and he bought his own Keurig coffee maker recently and his mother sent him a selection of coffees.  My little man is growing up.

I wonder at what point I’ll have to change the listing of my hair color on my driver’s license from brown to gray.  Not that I need to right now, but someday.  Do people do that?  What if you go from brown to blond and then back to brown again and then gray?  Does Uncle Sam care about your myriad of hair colors?  So much to ponder.

My house is always at its cleanest either when company is coming (apparently, just having me here is not incentive enough to clean) or when I have been on the phone for a long period of time.  That’s when the stove, the counters and the refrigerator get swabbed down.  If only I could vacuum while talking.

If you looked at my March Madness brackets for men and women in this year’s NCAA Tournaments, you would have to conclude that I know nothing about basketball.  I barely got any games right.  I should have bet money on UConn winning, because that probably would have resulted in a loss.

I’m confused about the way stores and companies describe things.  If you want a soda, you have to determine which name actually goes with the smallest serving.  Is it a “small?”  A “regular?”  In some places small is, in fact, NOT the smallest size.  I think that even applies to the great ice cream stand, Polar Cub, where you can order a “baby size,” which, by the way, is large enough to be a small.  Get it?

The same logic applied to my recent trip to the nail salon with my BFF.  I just want a regular pedicure, I explained to the technician, hopeful that the language barrier wouldn’t result in an upcharge.  “No,” cautioned the BFF, “you want express.”  I do?  It turns out that the express is one rung below the regular in cost and in time, meaning that they barely touch your cuticles, slap on some polish and get you on your way.  It also turns out that it was the worst manicure I have ever had.  I swear it started chipping as we drove home (the pedicure was passable).  So, next time, I’m going to upgrade to a regular.

Finally on this subject, the place where the description correctly reflects the end product is in the “Tiny Houses” programs I watch on HGTV.  The clients insist they are ready to downsize or to “rightsize” so they can drag their homes behind them by truck.  They are certain that a home no bigger than a garage will offer them plenty of space if organized properly.  They are certain of this until they first step into a tiny house, whereupon they take a look and admit, “This is really small.”  And this comes as a surprise to you, I ask?  I’m sure I have mentioned this before, but I just wanted to see if you were paying attention.

I just had a new passport picture taken.  In the pantheon of poor pictures, this one rates only slightly above Nick Nolte's mug shot.  The photographer wouldn’t let me smile and insisted I take off my glasses and raise my chin.  My eyes look red and I have no color at all.  This is what I am guessing the people in “The Walking Dead” look like.

It annoys me that we have to pay more to get people to do their jobs correctly.  I had to mail off my passport (along with the lovely new picture) and I decided I had better send it Priority Mail and with a return receipt just to make sure the Post Office is doing its job.  The last time I renewed my passport, I paid extra to expedite it, which is like saying “we’re not going to do the job you expected, so you need to pay extra to be sure we do.”  Recently a friend posted on social media about getting a bid from a contractor for some work.  He quoted her $1500 for the job, and about double that amount if she wanted him to stand behind his work.  Really?  So he can do a shitty job for $1500 and a good job for $2500?  Needless to say, she didn’t use him.  Where’s our pride in getting it done?  Even the big ticket items we buy are offered with warranty plans at an extra charge so when they fall apart, we will be covered.  How about making them so they work in the first place?  Remember the old Maytag repairman?  That’s the kind of quality we want, where the item never has to be repaired!

Passover is approaching and I just found matzo that is dipped in chocolate in ShopRite.  This is something I did NOT need to discover.  I won’t even walk down that aisle now.