Robin
Williams — Wow. You just never know what
someone is feeling. How someone who made
so many people happy could be so sad himself is a tragedy. RIP.
I
don’t know who Pearl is, but today I am wearing her mother’s earrings.
I
notice that I am becoming more indecisive lately. I can't decide what
music to listen to on my walks, what clothes to wear or even pick out socks
without pondering the decision — as if anyone would know or care. Are you
indecisive? Yes and no.
Why
is it that when I yawn, my ears always seem to pop? They don't seem
clogged between yawns, so I can only conclude that my brain is leaking out
through my ears.
What
could be more ignominious than having either a rest stop or a women’s prison
named after you? There’s a good news/bad
news scenario. “Congratulations,
Lombardi Family. We’re naming the
Turnpike rest stop after Vince!”
I
watch “Jeopardy” every night, and I just have to say that Alex Trebeck is a bit
of a “know-it-all.” I guess that makes
him a wise guy. By the way, if you
record “Jeopardy” and skip the commercials and Alex’s meaningless little chat
with the contestants, you can watch the whole show in about 20 minutes. Don’t tell the sponsors.
Do
you ever drive past a construction site, notice that a building has been
demolished on a lot you pass all of the time and you have no idea what the
building was?
No
one seems sadder than Ted Allen when he has to tell one of the contestants on
“Chopped” that “You’ve been chopped.”
For
someone who sees as many movies as I do, it is amazing how few “blockbusters” I
watch. I eschew action-adventure for the
most part, shy away from anything remotely scary or bloody (which leaves out all
those vampire movies) and anything with fantasy in it (I just cannot suspend my
sense of reality). That means when the
list of Top 10 Box Office movies comes out, it is likely that I will have seen
none of them. Yet I manage to watch 150
or so movies a year.
If
I stick the left earpiece of my headphones in my right ear, what happens?
Will I hear things in the wrong order?
Does it matter? Will the audio
authorities come after me and box my ears?
It
is a wonder I can see at all sometimes with all of the schmutz that's on my
glasses.
July
marked the 25th anniversary of the TV sitcom "Seinfeld," a show
about, well, basically, nothing. And who didn't love that? Waiting for a
table in a Chinese restaurant, Vandelay Industries, Kramer, Elaine's manic dancing...all
classic TV moments. I watched from the first episode of what was
originally called "The Seinfeld Chronicles," and enjoyed every
episode except the finale, which was God-awful. Still, overall, a great
show.
My
DVR has a perplexing habit. When I turn
it on, it sometimes flashes a read-out that says “DUI” before it give me the
time or channel. Do you think it drinks
while I’m not watching? I can’t come up
with a logical translation for DUI.
Suggestions?
It
amazes me how we have to nurture our plants and flowers and yet weeds can grow
in cracks in the asphalt and thrive despite drought, cold and every other
condition thrown at them.
As
a walker, I am grateful for those electric fences that persuade dogs to stay in
their yards and not attack me.
My
BFF suggested that I pick up the pace a little when I walk to get more out of
the experience. But wouldn't that potentially jeopardize my standing as
the dead-last finisher in the Resolution Run/Walk on New Year's Day? I
have held the title for 2 years and don't want to give it up now, not when I
can go for the three-peat.
Isn’t
it odd that you can walk along feeling fine when suddenly you get a pain in
your ankle or shoulder or elbow for no apparent reason, think you’ll never walk
again, and then it goes away?
Last
walking reference: I try to walk for health and fitness, yet now I am
developing bunions. It seems to me that the punishment doesn't fit
because walking is no crime.
After
our horrible winter, I promised I wouldn’t complain about the summer heat. So I’m not going to complain about the summer
heat.
I
know we need rain, but can’t we just get regular rain instead of torrential
downpours that overfill my pool? I’m
tired of getting flash flood warnings on my phone every time we get another
deluge.
One
of my BFFs retired as a teacher. Now I
can call her anytime, because she has no class.
I
used to have to straighten out those twisted cords on all of my phones. I was always untangling them in the office —
even in other people’s offices. Now that
we all have cordless phones, that’s one habit I have dropped. Instead, I’m fixated on keeping the headphone
cord for my iPod free of twists and kinks.
I guess I’ve just transferred that OCD characteristic from one thing to
another. Blue Tooth is a good thing for
me!
Don’t
you just love to find a book that you absolutely cannot put down, that you want
to finish but don’t want to finish because you will be sad when you are done
reading it?
I
have some habits (actually, too many to mention) that really annoy me. One is that I will write down a phone number
but not the name that goes with it.
Later on I find the number but have no idea whose number it is.
I
need to go to bed earlier. I don’t sleep
well anymore, what with at least one stop in the bathroom after which I have
trouble falling back to sleep, so that means I am usually up early after 5 or
so hours. Maybe if I went to bed earlier
I could erase those Samsonite bags under my eyes. I really don’t think I look my age (going on
64), but those bags! You could go on a trip
around the world with smaller bags than the ones under my eyes! Maybe it’s time to see the wizard on Park and
73rd. Or just go to bed
earlier. That would be cheaper and far
less painful.
The
very idea that a dab of concealer under my eyes could possibly disguise the
bags is optimistic at best — or just plain foolish. Maybe a vat of concealer, applied with a
trowel, would make a difference. I just
bought a lighted make-up mirror, a concession to the fact that I need a lot of
light to see. I didn’t quite understand
how BIG an 8 inch mirror was until this enormous looking glass arrived. It also magnifies my face 7 times, so my head
now looks like it could be on Mount Rushmore, and my pores look like the
craters of the moon. But my lipstick and
eyeliner (yes, I do wear eyeliner — as infrequently as possible) will look
great. I’ll just have to get over the
scariness of my face that big.
I don’t mind cooking, but cleaning up is a giant pain. Since I live alone, both the cooking and the
cleaning up are my responsibilities. But
at least I get to eat whatever I want to eat.
So there’s that.
These days, I measure the effectiveness of my brain by trying
to recall every word of “Love Child” and “Along Comes Mary.” When I stop remembering the lyrics, I’ll know
trouble lies ahead.
You can’t tell me that my nails don’t grow faster in the
summer. I mean, you can tell me, but I won’t believe it.
My bottle of nail polish remover has an expiration date. Really?
What happens when nail polish remover “goes bad?” Will the bottle itself disintegrate? Just wondering.
Does anyone actually go on line and take the survey that
Kohl’s asks you to take every time you purchase something? We could save plenty of trees if they would
stop handing out that little slip with the website on it. Besides, most people go on line just to
complain about service, and at Kohl’s I find everything to be more than
acceptable. Except that they keep asking
me to take the survey!
What’s the point of ordering a load of mulch, having it
delivered and then letting it sit in your driveway for the entire summer? Not me, but several houses I pass have done
just that.
Alert the media: I actually finished two magazines this month in the same month they arrived! Aside from my weekly People magazine, which takes only 10-15 minutes to absorb (if that’s an accurate description), I normally skim magazine articles first and put the magazine aside for later, in-depth reading. That means I will soon be done looking at holiday recipes for Thanksgiving and Christmas from last year’s Better Homes & Gardens. Yet I cannot recycle my magazines unless I have at least gone through them once. Why do I continue to subscribe, you (reasonably) ask? Well, I wouldn’t want to miss something interesting now, would I?
And speaking of magazines, I have subscribed to TV Guide since 1974, and notice that they seem to send out a lot of “double issues” now, which makes me wonder — with a subscription that will probably outlive me, do I get half as many issues as I used to get? Is a double issue counted as two issues? Oh, the weighty concerns on my mind!