Random Thoughts - Holiday Edition 2018

Can someone please explain to me what happens to the bottom of the hamburger bun?  I eat the burger and try to keep the top and bottom buns in perfect harmony, but invariably the bottom bun starts to disappear while there is still plenty of top bun to go around.  So, I end up (so to speak) flipping the burger over and eating it upside down, which, I will admit, does not change the taste of the burger one bit.  Forget the old commercial cry, “Where’s the beef?”  The real question is, “Where’s the bun?”

This is the only time of the year when the Christmas Tree Shop is correctly named.

My BFF recently shared an article with me about the reduction of tuna fish consumption, especially among millennials, who apparently find opening a can too much work!  Please!  You can buy tuna in a pouch and rip it open with your bare hands.  As someone who once ate tuna fish sandwiches for lunch for two years straight, I find this attitude incomprehensible.  Granted, I probably have enough mercury in my system to be a human thermometer, but tuna is TOO MUCH WORK?  These kids today…

I have recently learned the joys of the dollar store.  A new Dollar Tree opened in my town and I stopped in to check it out.  Everything costs a dollar.  Really.  I find that amazing.  It is as advertised, hundreds of items, all for a dollar.  Or less.  Some things are two for a dollar.  I bought a three-pack of little serving size containers for soup that was a Betty Crocker brand, PABA free, and just – that’s right – a dollar.  I bought $3.99 Hallmark cards also for a dollar (are you getting the theme here?).  Those pretty Christmas bags I needed were 2 for $1.  I’ll never go anywhere else again for aluminum foil pans, etc., after discovering the joys of the dollar store!  Side note:  I managed to spend $24 in total.

Have you ever wondered how many manicures you can get out of one bottle of nail polish?  (This is not a math problem or a joke.)  I wonder how often the salon has to get new bottles, because it seems to me that one must go a long way.  I have one that must be at least 15 years old and it still contains polish (at what consistency, I don’t know). I have also wondered who comes up with the names for the colors of polish – “Midnight desire,” “Hypnotic,” etc.  And how does one get that job?

It is never easy being me.  I can’t help but notice when street or highway signs change their fonts, or if the typeface on the TV looks different.  I find typographical errors in books and magazines and hear grammatical mistakes on the radio and TV.  I once contacted my beloved New York Yankees to inform them that there were errors on the plaques of Roger Maris and Elston Howard in Monument Park.  Even though I sent my letter to George Steinbrenner himself, I never got a reply.  Much later, the errors were pointed out in an item in Sports Illustrated, and THEN they were corrected, but the Yankees said they had no idea.  Well, if you had read my letter…As I said, it isn’t easy being me.

Here’s an example of the “new math:” My toilet paper package says its 6 giant rolls are the equivalent of 36 regular rolls.  I’ll grant you that they are huge – they barely fit in the holder – but is each one really 6 times the size of a “regular” roll?  If that’s true, the regular ones would have to be changed daily.

What exactly does “dilly, dilly mean?  I do not understand that commercial.

Do you get that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you attempt to access an app and that dreaded screen comes up calling for your password?  Oh, please, be the right password, you utter to yourself, hoping you remember it!

Just for the fun of it, I ordered new ink cartridges the other day while still in bed by telling my Amazon Alexa to place the order.  Scary easy to do if you are reordering. How to spend money without even getting out of bed or touching a device.

I cannot read a magazine without ripping out those annoying reply cards and the ads that contain those perfume strips.  I also cannot throw those perfume strips out.  I save the strip part so I can throw the samples in the garbage can or the linen closet, and I have even used them to improve the air in my car!

It doesn’t matter what type of skin cream, lotion, etc., that you buy or how much you pay for it.  It will not work if you don’t use it regularly.  In my case, that means slathering the stuff on morning and night.  My normally dry skin gets much worse in the winter, so frequent moisturizing is a must!

They say that nothing lasts forever, but I still have and still use the two-piece Corningwear set I bought with my first apartment in 1975.  I use it to store and reheat leftovers at least twice a week, and it is still in pristine condition.  I should look so good after decades of use!

After nearly losing my credit card on a recent trip, I have now loaded Google Pay on my phone.  I won’t have to take the card out of my wallet at a store (not sure how this would work in a restaurant), I still get points on the card the transaction is charged to, and my card number won’t be shared.  I will admit that I was more than a little excited when I tried it at CVS (the drugstore, not the Rutgers Women’s basketball coach) and the vibration went off, indicating that the transaction went through.  Yes, kicks just keep getting harder to find.

I must admit that when I get a cold, it is a doozy.  It starts with a sore throat, and then it generally goes north to my head.  My eyes water, my nose runs, I sneeze, cough, blow my nose and look like 10 miles of bad road.  Those symptoms are typically followed by having the cold move to my chest, where the cough gets very loud and scary, because it will either become bronchitis or pneumonia.  I try to avoid the latter.  And no matter what, it will last two weeks – or more.  This time my ears clogged so badly that I couldn’t hear for several days and no amount of trying to blow them out would work.  All this was compounded by the fact that I had a 6-hour plane ride and would be away for a week.  Try sitting up on the open top level of a sightseeing bus so you can take pictures of British Columbia on a rainy Canadian day.  That was probably not what the doctor ordered – if I had had time to see one.  Instead, I traveled with every kind of over-the-counter medication that CVS sells and sniffed, coughed and blew my way through the week.

For some unknown reason, I have been getting emails offering me jobs in the grocery field in the Manasquan, NJ, area. Although I grocery shop all the time, even I don’t stray down to Manasquan for that purpose, and I’m not looking for a job of any kind.  Odd, isn’t it?  What kind of faulty algorithm determined that I had any interest in a career at ShopRite?

You know that screen on the back or side of your hair dryer that gets full of lint?  I clean that.  Yes, I clean that by poking a pair of tweezers through (not while plugged in!) until I can remove that lint.  Am I the only one?  I would not be surprised.

I have a long list of shortcomings.

This year, for the first time, I ordered my Christmas cards already pre-printed.  I don’t even have to sign my name.  And for extra money, Shutterfly would have been happy to mail them out for me, too.  Ah, the sprint of the giving season is upon us. 

My aqua aerobics friend was telling us recently about the New Year’s Eve party she attends with her Senior Club.  It is held in a beautiful restaurant filled with lovely holiday decorations, serves great food, and there is music and dancing.  And they are home by 4 because it starts at 11:30 AM!  Does the ball drop at 2?  Hey, it’s midnight somewhere, right, and you get home before dark, or, as I pointed out, you can avoid the crazy drunks out for the evening.  She insisted she still had time for them, and that was fine with her.  I see my future, and it begins at noon…

May you enjoy the warmth of the holiday season – which, in my case, means flannel sheets on the bed, towels in the towel warmer and pajamas in the microwave.  Happy holidays!