April Amusements

 1.    Have you ever wondered whatever happened to that cake left out in the rain at MacArthur Park? Is that sweet, green icing still flowing down? And why did someone go to the park to get rid of it since it took so long to make it?
2.    That lovely new fragrance that I am wearing these days is the Eau de Lidocaine that I am spraying on my aching knee.
3.    Does anyone ever use those coupons that come in the ValPak envelope? You know, the ones that offer services by roofers, installation of gutter guards and even ordering Bradford Exchange decorative checks. And does anyone in 2025 actually order and use decorative checks? Why? Who sees your checks? Most of my bills are paid online, most automatically. I can’t imagine paying for checks that are pretty when the bank sends me blank ones for free (and I go through a book only every few years)!
4.    My dry skin really needed some attention, so I decided to switch to the soap of my childhood, Ivory, which boasts that it is “99 and 44/100 percent pure.” My luck, I’ll be in that .56% impure part.
5.    I never feel more stupid than when I check the Spelling Bee results from yesterday and see all of the easy words I should have found!
6.    I just came across the plastic wheel that I used for cropping pictures way back when. I have no use for this item – I’m not cropping any pictures these days – yet I just can’t throw it away. I’ll just keep it stashed along with a slide rule I still own. I am really OLD!
7.    If I don’t put the garbage out before 10 am, the garbage truck will come early that day. If the garbage is at the curb by 9 am, the truck won’t show up until after 2. I know this to be true.
8.    There is something to be said in favor of not washing all of the pots and pans immediately after dinner. My parents were big on letting things soak to loosen up the crud and I have come around to that thinking. My rule was always that I had to finish doing the dishes before I went to the family room to watch TV, but, hey, I’m not totally inflexible. Sometimes.
9.    There should be a law prohibiting cars from having black bodies and white tops. I always think a police car is after me when I see one!
10.    How do the daffodils know to come up at the same time every year? I must have missed the 9th grade science class where all this nature stuff was explained. Every spring, when I see them bloom in the yards of my neighbors, I think, where were these all winter and why haven’t I planted any?
11.    My dentist retired, so after about 30 years, I switched to someone new. But you know how traumatic it is to switch any kind of service or medical provider. The new one does things the old one didn’t, which could be good or bad. In this case, it was good! I got a comprehensive exam, saw pictures of every tooth in my mouth (way more than I needed to see) and even had my open mouth measured horizontally and vertically. It turns out that the vertical measurement is about the size of an 8-year-old’s mouth. I can’t figure out how I have managed to stuff that much food in such a small cavity (get it?). The dentist said he could fix it by doing a whole bunch of stuff that would result in more capacity. I declined, figuring that this mouth and these teeth have done a good job for 74 years (minus the time when I had no teeth), so if it ain’t broke, why fix it?
12.    Don’t sneeze when you have a mouthful of toothpaste. Trust me, I’ve done it!
13.    Every time I buy “healthy” bread that is made from “ancient grains,” I can’t help but wonder – is this fresh? It sounds OLD! I feel the same way about heirloom tomatoes.
14.    Whenever I get a manicure, the nail tech always tells me to relax my hands. Sorry, but that’s not even possible. There’s no part of my body that is relaxed. Ask my gynecologist!
15.    Brave is bringing a bottle of water to aqua aerobics class and drinking it during a break in the session. Stupid is swallowing any of the pool water, just in case…
16.    It occurs to me that although I see the people in my aqua aerobics class three times a week, I wouldn’t recognize them if I ran into them outside of the gym. This is because they are not dressed in the pool. The women have their hair pulled back, and many people are taller than they appear in the water (I can barely hold my head up since the water is so deep to me!). So, if you’re in my class and I ignore you when I see you outside of the pool, please understand why!
17.    Several of the vitamins and other meds I take come in the form of gummies, which almost makes them seem like a dessert. The problem I am finding is that they stick together in the bottle and I have lots of trouble getting them out. Any suggestions? I don’t keep them in the bathroom or near any heat source.
18.    Nobody I know sleeps through the night anymore. I try the tricks – listening to nature sounds (a babbling brook only makes me need to use the bathroom), meditating (my mind wanders), playing soothing music. Sometimes I have Alexa read my current book on Kindle, but then I either get caught up in the plot or miss a chunk of the story. So I put on the TV and it is on all night. My current favorite show to sleep through is “Mighty Cruise Ships,” a series of programs about all kinds of cruise ships on all kinds of routes. I especially love the scenes where the provisions come in – when they tell viewers how many dozens of eggs, gallons of beer and tons of produce are needed for a week at sea. And then, somewhere between the scenes of the cooks preparing thousands of meals each day and the captain trying to dock a ship the equivalent length of a skyscraper, I manage to fall asleep. At least I’m not watching the murder and mayhem of “Dateline,” which I had been using for this purpose. (It’s always the spouse, by the way.) I would put on an episode, someone would be killed, and I would wake up at the end of the next “Dateline” with an entirely new case – and it was still the spouse. Or I tried “Air Disasters,” reenactments of actual plane crashes, as the authorities attempted to figure out what went wrong. There is something strange about someone who finds this kind of show relaxing and sleep-inducing (raising my hand).
19.    College basketball season is over, at long last. Now instead of following the scores, fans have to follow the transfer portal to see who has left their team for supposedly greener pastures. More than 1200 of the women playing college ball have decided their current program no longer meets their needs and they are up for the highest bidder. They issue earnest statements thanking their coaches, teammates and the fans for their support, talk about their growth on and off the court and say what a tough decision it was. So why leave, if you were so happy, loved and supported? It’s all about the money – though some of the players transferring will find out they are worth much less than they estimated!  It’s very hard to be a loyal fan with so many players changing teams each year. Now, on to baseball and my Yankees with their new “torpedo” bats!