Good Friday Bits & Pieces

I wish “skinny jeans” lived up to the promise of their name.

I have succumbed to the current Wordle craze where you have to guess a daily 5-letter word. You get 6 shots at it, and the game tracks how successful you are. I think of it as a brain exercise – the same reason I watch “Jeopardy” and shout out the answers (some right, others so completely wrong). One thing I refuse to do is to bore the rest of the world by posting my score. Why do people think the rest of us care? At this stage, I need to keep my brain sharp. I know the info is in there somewhere, but with layers of useless information clogging the file cabinet of my mind (all of the lyrics for “Along Comes Mary,” for one), it is harder to pop the right answers to the forefront. Maybe this helps?

I get periodic emails from Consumer Reports telling me that I am “eligible” to subscribe. “Eligible?” As in “send us the money and we send you the magazine?” Who would NOT be eligible? Do they think I feel privileged to get this offer? No, thanks.

You know you’re getting old when, following the mandatory medical discussion that takes place every time my friends and I gather, one of the women whips out a blood oxygen-pulse meter from her purse. BTW, I have a great oxygen score. All those years of not smoking was the right choice.

How can the voicemail box at my doctor’s office be full? I called to make an appointment, was bumped to voicemail without any options and could not leave a message. This is unacceptable. I don’t like it when a friend’s voicemail box is full, but not being able to reach my doctor is dangerous.

I no sooner got home from a medical exam when the survey about my visit arrived as a text on my phone. I don’t want to do a survey on my phone, if at all. Send it to my email, where I can deal with it on a full-sized keyboard. 

I wish the doctor spent as much time looking at me and checking me out as her office spends on sending me messages thanking me for making an appointment, telling me how much she is looking forward to seeing me and then, after the appointment, thanking me for showing up. I also don’t need email, text AND voicemail reminders that my appointment is coming up.

I noticed that the doctor’s office now divides pens into two categories – clean & dirty. But the clean ones are right next to the dirty ones, and I’m thinking the germs could mingle. Besides, are the pens labeled as clean actually clean? Who cleans them? How often? Or once that collection is gone, do they just move the so-called dirty ones to the clean pile?

And finally on the subject medical issues, the idea of seeing a doctor virtually when you need to be checked out in person is ridiculous. Mine had me feeling around and looking for things I could not identify. Isn’t that her job as my doctor? 

I found a container of Turkey Hill Ice Cream in ShopRite called “Mystery Flavor.” Does “Dateline” make ice cream?

I can’t believe that my 50th college reunion is coming up in June. I still feel like I am in my 50s (except for the falling apart medical stuff), so how can it be 50 years since I left the hallowed halls of Douglass? I must be having fun because time sure did fly!

I keep seeing promos for the new Kardashians show. Since I never watched one minute of the old show, this is one I’ll skip for sure. But what is the fascination with these people? Do I actually have any friends who watch their shows? Please self-identify so we can have a discussion about what is wrong with you.

Why is it that we can be overwhelmed or underwhelmed but we are never whelmed?

Why is there a South Orange, West Orange, East Orange and Orange in New Jersey but no North Orange? There is also New Brunswick, North Brunswick, East Brunswick and South Brunswick, but no Old Brunswick, West Brunswick or just plain Brunswick.

Why are there superintendents but no intendents? How can supers be better when there is nothing beneath them?

Why do suction cups that have adhered to the wall forever randomly decide they can stick no more and fall off? 

Why is the word “brain” one syllable but the name “Brian” is two syllables?

Don’t you hate biting into a hard-boiled egg and hearing that crunchy sound because you left a tiny piece of the shell on it? 

I was feeling bad that I could not think of the word “jughandle” recently, but then two friends told me that they had to Google the word “romaine” when they couldn’t recall the name of that kind of lettuce, and I felt better.

Remember when we had to check the clock before making a long-distance phone call?  It used to be that calls were cheaper on the weekend and at certain times, so we could call my uncle in California to discuss the weather and what time it is there (do the math, Mom & Dad; it’s always 3 hours earlier in California – and sunny!).

I think Alexa and I are going through a rough patch. I fell asleep watching the men’s NCAA National Championship basketball game and woke up the next morning at 4 AM with the light and TV on, not knowing who won. So, I asked Alexa, “Who won the basketball game between North Carolina and Kansas last night?” She gave me the wrong answer – twice – which I only knew because I turned on ESPN, where I was shocked see Kansas celebrating! Then I asked her the temperature, which she promptly answered. But she neglected to tell me it was raining until I asked her, “Is it raining?” and she said it was. Come on, girl!

Alexa also has a new routine, insisting on telling me not only the weather report in the morning, but also reporting on the traffic for my daily “commute.” I don’t know where she thinks I am going, but I need to break it to her that I am retired, rarely leave the house during rush hour, and don’t know where she is sending me.

I really don’t like using the self-service checkout at the supermarket. The area is too small, I don’t like looking up the code for bananas, I always have a problem in the bagging area, etc. I generally don’t mind waiting in line for a real cashier. But I always seem to be on the line when a new register opens and the people behind me flock there (I would do the same thing), so I’m still stuck waiting. And yes, this should be my biggest life problem.

I was watching a pleasant telecast of the Oscars when a boxing match broke out. Or, more accurately put, when actor Will Smith walked up on stage and smacked comedian Chris Rock in the face for his tasteless joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett, who suffers from alopecia. I think Rock gets away with a lot because he exudes a boyish kind of charm, but Smith, noting that his wife took obvious umbrage, decided to storm the stage and then proceed to utter a stream of obscenities at Rock. The telecast went on while witnesses to the assault sat stunned in the audience and in their homes. Smith was not asked to leave and later he received a standing ovation when he won the Oscar for Best Actor in “King Richard” (well-deserved, but that’s not the point). Smith issued an apology to Chris Rock the next day, but the entire incident was so badly handled. He also apologized to everyone EXCEPT Rock in his acceptance speech. It would have been better to take a moment to cast light on alopecia and its effect of the people who live with this condition. He initially laughed at the joke and only rose up to defend his wife when she shot him a look. Violence is unacceptable in any form, and Smith’s explanation that “love makes people do crazy things,” sounds too close for comfort to excuses for domestic violence. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences subsequently stripped Smith of his membership and banned him from the Oscars for 10 years, so don’t look for him on next year’s telecast handing out the Oscar for Best Actor/Actress. I’m sure he’s chastened by his outburst, but we don’t need displays of toxic masculinity.

And one more Oscar thing – The “In Memorium” tribute to those people in the movie business who have passed away since last year was accompanied by singing and dancing that was totally inappropriate for the solemnity of the moment. They should just hire me to run the whole show.