May Meanderings

I keep passing a building that houses a company called Coherent. I’m dying to go inside so I can call everyone and let them know that I’m in Coherent.

The sky is blue and the clouds are big and white and puffy and I wonder which one of them stores my personally identifiable information and my pictures.

I toasted a pumpernickel bagel the other day but how was I supposed to tell when it was done? It’s already brown!

This Jeopardy Masters Tournament is GREAT! The best players are back in action, searching for answers and trying to outbuzz each other to answer (in the form of a question, of course)!  This blog will be published before the tournament ends, but with these smarties, there can’t be any real losers.

And speaking of Jeopardy Masters, I must add that on the first night there was a category on FONTS, and I ran it! If anyone knows about Bodoni (my go-to headline typeface when I was editor of my high school newspaper), it’s me. I see no humor in Comic Sans, but I recognized it immediately. And I think Times New Roman is widely known. As for me, when they changed the font on the highway signs and on some of the street signs in town, I noticed immediately – and didn’t completely appreciate that the letters went from all uppercase to initial caps. Yes, I am a font nerd and I can’t read a magazine without noticing this kind of stuff that is irrelevant to most people!

What do you do when you cough and the person you are with says, “God bless you” because they think it was a sneeze? Do you say thank you as you would do for a sneeze blessing or turn it down, explaining that you coughed and did not sneeze? Why does a sneeze merit a blessing but a cough does not? Or do you just say thank you, figuring you need any blessing you can get? Such a conundrum!

Ever since my idol Tina Turner wore a denim jacket over that leather dress in the video for “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” I feel that wearing a denim jacket with anything is appropriate. She made it look very cool and classy.

Now that I belong to a fancy-schmancy new health club (thanks to my J&J insurance through United Healthcare), I can’t help but notice how people who used any excuse to get out of gym class in high school now pay big bucks to work out and do more than we ever were required to do back then (although no one is forcing us today to use the horse and the buck). Somewhere, Miss Bauman and Miss Williamson are laughing at us, right, my SHS classmates? And people are in this place at every hour of the day. Doesn’t anyone go to work anymore?

Recently I had a gel shot to relieve the pain from arthritis in my left knee (right knee, you’re next). I read through the information on the shot and one of the side effects is joint pain. Isn’t that why I got the shot in the first place?

The old kids’ song “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” should be revised for my generation to “Back, Shoulders, Knees and Hips.” Something always hurts from one or more of those body parts.

I’m at the age when I occasionally say to myself, “What’s THAT pain?” You know, you get up from the chair and your ankle feels broken – for the moment. Or suddenly you have a pain in your side. You can’t attribute these random pains – which generally disappear very quickly – to anything you did; but they just show up to keep you on your toes. And then your toes hurt.

I was at the nail salon getting all spiffed up for an event and it occurred to me that if anyone needed DNA samples from me to investigate a crime, there is a wealth of nail clippings available right here. Yes, I watch way too many episodes of “Dateline.” PS – I wasn’t even out of the parking lot after my nails dried when I messed up 3 of them. Don’t look too closely, OK?

My theme song is U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” even though the title ends with a preposition. And the title applies to the practical, not the philosophical, part of my life.

I can’t snap my fingers on my left hand. I feel that deficiency has held me back from a career in music. 

I have watched the Food Network since its inception, when they featured shows like “How to Boil Water.” We have moved past the rudimentary kitchen skills and now the network increasingly features competition shows with high end cooking challenges, baking challenges, “Tournament of Champions,” everyone who wants to “Beat Bobby Flay,” etc. Except for weekend morning blocks with “The Pioneer Woman” and “Valerie’s Kitchen” (which is in its last season), I’m seeing the same group of chefs competing against and judging each other on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other competition shows. Most of us aren’t cooking with exotic ingredients and don’t need to try to turn popcorn into a main course. Enough with the competition shows. Let’s go boil some water again!

Speaking of the Food Network, just once I’d like to see the host/cook take a bite and recoil from the taste. I suppose they do and those segments don’t make it on air.

I hate changing the sheets. I used to make the bed so tightly, with every hospital corner neatly tucked in, that I could hardly get into the bed at night. I’m a lot less rigid now and going to be is definitely easier. I’ve watched videos of the housekeeping staff at a hotel showing how they make the bed with a top sheet and another sheet on top of the blanket and multiple pillows and God knows how many more sheets, and they still make the bed faster and better than I do with the standard configuration. I guess there’s no future for me in housekeeping. 

I’m trying to understand how my search for a specific brand of women’s summer tops on Amazon yielded everything from pajamas to pool lights to a nebulizer for children. Amazon, you need to check that algorithm!

If the mail in my SPAM folder is to be believed, I have won a Keurig Coffee maker, a Dyson Vacuum, a Craftsman generator and the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes in the last week. I'm getting an iPad, a gift card from Delta Airlines and a 170-piece Stanley tool set. I think SPAM stands for Stupid People Access Mail, because I just let these messages sit in SPAM until they disappear (I only saw them because I was looking for a legit message that wasn't in the SPAM folder; I clicked on NOTHING). I'm just glad the SPAM filter works. 

As I write this, today is Mother’s Day, always a time to smile and shed a tear for the late, great Sylvia Gordon. When she died in 1989, she left behind a legacy of love and laughter. We would laugh so much over I Love Lucy reruns that my father would ask how we could possibly convulse over something we had seen so many times. Instead of laughing, sometimes my mother would simply say, “I’m hysterical,” which cracked me up more. My mother graduated high school at 16 and got a job as a bookkeeper – during the Depression! Her math skills were unparalleled. She could find a 17-cent error in my check register from across the room – a trait that must have skipped a generation. She would be appalled to know I haven’t even tried to balance my checkbook in YEARS! There were times we clashed, and when I complained, her retort would be, “Maybe your next mother will be better.” I would counter with, “When is she getting here?” (Mom taught me to get the last word!) She also taught me the importance of being treated with RESPECT. She did not tolerate taking crap from anyone. She was always proud of me, never set any limits on me and never fawned over me for things I accomplished. I could tell she was kvelling when I made National Honor Society or won the Spanish Award. She taught me foreign languages, speaking to my father in Yiddish when they didn’t want me or my sister to know what they were saying. I knew how to say, ‘Go shit in the ocean” and “crazy dog” (meshugana hunt) in Yiddish long before I earned a Spanish Award. My mother was a 4-foot, 11” powerhouse who demanded and earned respect from everyone in her world. No one could ever replace her, and even after all this time, I still have her in my ear, giving me advice or making me smile. So, Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. My sister and I were lucky enough to have the best mother ever.