I’m fully vaccinated now, so you should feel completely safe while reading this blog post.
We have now marked the one-year anniversary of COVID, or the point in time when I started counting off squares of toilet paper. The shortages seem to be over, but I can’t break the habit. I haven’t run out of toilet paper yet, by the way. Last year’s conversations centered around the availability of toilet paper. This year’s focus is on the whether people have had their vaccine shots yet.
I seldom have a conversation these days without asking the question, “So, how did it go?” This could refer to a doctor’s appointment, trying to get a doctor’s appointment, getting an appointment for the vaccine, or actually getting the vaccine. What will we talk about when this is behind us? I’m pretty much all out small talk these days.
I think of all events prior to 2020 as BC – Before Covid.
If you lose your lucky penny, I think it is safe to assume it wasn’t so lucky after all.
These days when I get up from a chair or walk down the stairs I sound and look more and more like Amos McCoy. Raise your hand if you know that reference.
The day you see my image on social media as one of those cutesy emojis that are supposed to look like me, you will know that I have been kidnapped and am being forced to use social media to assure people that I am OK but please know that I am not.
I start most Zoom sessions thinking about how much better my hair looked on the previous day – when I didn’t have any Zoom sessions.
Think of how many trees we could save each year if CVS cut the size of their receipts by half.
I was about five minutes away from having my pierced ears close up when I finally put earrings in last week.
Something to ponder – when did the first World War start being called World War I? It’s not like anyone knew there would be a World War II, so no one could have stuck that Roman numeral after it until at least WWII started, right? OK, I looked it up (thank you, Google) and learned the following: “The term ‘World War I’ was coined by Time magazine on page 28b of its June 12, 1939 issue. In the same article, on page 32, the term ‘World War II’ was first used speculatively to describe the upcoming war. The first use for the actual war came in its issue of September 11, 1939.”
I watched “American Idol” as the judges started eliminating contestants to get down to the top 24. At the rate they were keeping people, it looked more like the top 40 than 24!
I bought a new kind of shower cleaner under the brand name “Simply Great.” It wasn’t.
Good news! After a day being missing in action, my hairbrush magically reappeared, having tried to escape by clinging to the inside of my somewhat loopy bath towel. It was removed safely and I treated it to a spa day, plucking the gray hairs from its bristles and letting it rest in a warm bath to cleanse and rejuvenate it. All is well! Mystery solved. I thought this might be a Dateline story.
Amid all of the rampant unemployment in this country, there are plenty of people like “Dan” or “Rachel” who remain employed to call us incessantly to remind us that our car warranties have or are about to expire or that we have unpaid student loans – 50 years after graduation.
Why do we pronounce licorice as LICK-OR-ISH?
As we passed Easter, I thought of all of the times my co-workers and I grabbed a handful of jellybeans from the candy dish on Judy’s desk. And I cringed.
Speaking of which, I cannot imagine blowing out the candles on a birthday cake ever again. Germ City!
Sometimes I look at the clothes in my closet and wonder, “What could I have been thinking?”
I have had a problem telling the difference between black and blue clothes for a long time. Today I am wearing a plaid top that might be green and black or might be green and blue. I’m wearing it with black pants. I hope people in ShopRite don’t think it is blue and start talking about me behind my back.
Before my recent doctor appointment, I pondered what to wear, wondering if the top I had in my hand was one I wore last time I went to the doctor. And then I realized that literally NO ONE CARES what I wear to the doctor’s office and wouldn’t remember if I showed up in the same outfit every time.
Of all the things I have lost in the last year, the one that I miss the most is my seamstress. That woman could knock off a hem while I ran errands. She was quick, efficient, cheap and available. She retired right before the pandemic, and there’s a void in my life that no local dry cleaner will fill.
If I give too many people a piece of my mind, will there be anything left?
I’m trying to decide which I like doing less – peeling oranges or peeling hard boiled eggs. I just bought yet another new gadget, one specifically designed to use in peeling an orange. I haven’t tried it yet but stay tuned.
I wonder why the words influenza and influential are so similar.
I owned an HP printer for 5 years and just as I figured out how to scan documents, it died. I watched a video of how to repair or replace the printhead, which I was never able to find, and when I read the comments from one viewer who said he didn’t have either the special screwdriver needed or the blood pressure medication required to do the fix himself, I ordered a new printer. I hope it doesn’t take me five years to figure out the scanning feature on this one!
You know what gets me motivated to run? When I hear that loud noise coming from the laundry room that sounds like the washing machine is blasting off, then I RUN into the laundry room before it takes off.
On the second day of March, I left Somerset County for the first time since June 12, 2020. And I filled the car up at the gas station for the first time since December. When I say that I go nowhere, believe me!
Why do we always find the typos AFTER the email went out or the Facebook post is published?
I’m old enough to remember when Jimmy Dean was a country singer and not a purveyor of breakfast sausages.
When I am putting a burger on a hamburger roll or a fried egg on a bagel, I MUST put it on the bottom of the roll or bagel. And when the bottom starts getting smaller than the top, I just can‘t seem to flip it over and eat it upside down. Just another idiosyncrasy!
You don’t realize how long 2 minutes is until you are brushing your teeth with an electric toothbrush that vibrates after 2 minutes to let you know you’re done. That 2 minutes seems like an hour.
My parents were heavily influenced by having lived through the Depression. Their values came from gratitude for surviving a time of economic uncertainty, poverty and austerity and they taught me the importance of self-sufficiency and hard work. I wonder what lessons will be conveyed to the children and grandchildren of those people who survived life in the time of COVID and whether that next generation will appreciate what they have as much as I do.
