Random Returns!

I am returning to random thoughts once again this month with these ditties for your reading pleasure.  Feel free to share with friends.

I am so used to speaking into my phone so that I don’t have to type that now when I leave someone a voice mail message, I find myself speaking the punctuation into the message.  Period.Do you ever have so many things going on at once that you dial the phone and hear it ringing but you realize that you don’t remember who you are calling?  Say it isn’t just me, please!

I would like it noted for my permanent record that, according to my dermatologist, I have “fabulous” skin.  I guess she doesn’t see the wrinkles and bags that I see!

I would also like it to be noted that I am told that I have excellent veins and that I don’t even flinch when the nurse takes blood. 

How is it that we can be UNDER the weather but never OVER the weather?

Here is a new pet peeve: I hate it when the doctor’s office calls but the caller uses a cell phone that is not identified as the practice, so you don’t know the identity of the caller.  When that happens, I don’t answer the phone and am likely to miss an important call.  If I do answer, the call is usually from someone trying to sell me a lower interest credit card or solar panels.

What do you do with that first piece of bread in a packaged loaf?  It is called the heel, and I know you could eat it, but it only matches up with the heel at the end of the loaf, so you can’t use it in a sandwich without removing all of the slices in between.  I think of it as the “protector” of the rest of the loaf, the piece most likely to get stale before the rest of the loaf.

Why bother to iron?  The only time my ironed clothes look good is immediately after I iron them, when they are hanging in the closet.  When I put them on, they almost immediately look like I slept in them.  And it never looks like it was a calm and restful night, either!

I’m at the point in life that when someone tells me a story about the things we did in high school, I don’t remember being there.  Not in the story, but in high school!

Somebody, please, remind me NOT to buy skin cream with cocoa butter in it.  Every time I apply it to the scars on my shoulder, I smell chocolate.  And I use so little at one time that I will be tortured by this jar for YEARS!

Do you live with someone whose annoying habits drive you crazy? You know, like leaving the drawers and cabinet doors open in the kitchen, leaving shoes on the floor and letting the dishes drain dry and not putting them away?  Yeah, me too.  And I live alone.  Must. Do. Better.

Women can tell we are getting older when the amount of hair on our chin surpasses the hair on our legs.

For all others, you know you are getting older when you can no longer get up – off a chair, out of bed or from the couch – in silence.  I now make the same noises my father used to make.

You know how many movies I see during the course of a year, so having a “loyalty card” at my favorite theater (Montgomery Cinema in Skillman) make sense, right?  All those movies don’t add up to much with their system.  I think I need to see about a million more to get even one for free!

I had to drop my car off for service and I was given a loaner for the day.  But the loaner was a 2019 model that doesn’t use a regular key, so I had to figure out how to turn it on (hit the button that says “START”) and then I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off.  I hit the same button, but the lights and radio kept going.  I had to ask someone in the neighborhood for help to turn it off.  That was humiliating.

I order so much stuff on Amazon that when a package arrives now, I get excited because I can’t recall what I ordered.

The remote control for the little TV in my office has a green button and a red button.  The red button is for power and the green one is to mute the sound.  That arrangement flies in the face of logic, where green should be for power and the red one for mute.  Strange.

If there are 1,000 shopping carts from which to choose, I invariably will get the one with the bad and noisy wheel.

My world has some kind of crazy synchronization.  When one box of tissues runs out, so does a second one.  When I need a new battery for a clock, something else also needs a new battery.  And when one lightbulb burns out, usually another one does, too. 

If you are the kind of person who always runs late, don’t even consider moving into an “active adult” community (55 and over).  In my Canal Walk community, if you don’t arrive at least 10 minutes before an event starts or the bus is supposed to depart for a trip, you get a lot of dirty looks.  Being early here is the norm (imagine all of those “early bird” dinners) and being on time is being late.  Speaking of which, I have to go, or I won’t be early enough for my activity!

I wonder if organizing guru Marie Kondo does refrigerators.  I don’t typically have much food in mine, but it could definitely benefit from her expertise.  Where should I keep bottled water?  Tall bottles of beverages?  And while she’s here, I’ll ask her to show me how to load the dishwasher to optimize that space, too.

The voice recognition on my TV remote could use some fine-tuning.  I asked for “New York Yankees” and the movie “Kinky” came up as a choice.  The Yankees are kinky?  That’s news to me!

I have reached critical mass on my Kindle.  Maybe instead of downloading every book that people recommend, I should start just writing them down and deciding later whether I want to read them.  How do I get rid of books I have read and don’t want to keep?  And when am I ever going to read all of these books?

The people at the Food Network seem to take an obsessive delight in beating Bobby Flay on the show “Beating Bobby Flay.”  The ubiquitous chef squares off against challengers, with each making the challenger’s signature dish.  All of the judges are seasoned (no pun intended) Food Network chefs and competitors from “Iron Chef America,” “Chopped” and the many cooking competition shows aired on the network, and they seem thrilled when Bobby loses to a signature dish from his challenger.  All in good fun (and good food), I guess.

I hate it when I record something on the DVR so I won't have to watch the commercials and then I watch the program but I forget that it was recorded, so I end up watching the commercials anyway. Does that make any sense?

My highlight of the summer was seeing former Rutgers Women’s Basketball player Erica Wheeler not only get selected for the WNBA All-Star team, but then capture the MVP Award with 25 points and a record-tying seven 3-pointers.  I watched Erica’s whole career at Rutgers, where she was a gutsy and energetic guard who could fly down the court.  The announcer would yell “3 for 3” (referring to her uniform number) each time she hit one from behind the 3-point line.  Before her senior year, her mother died and she almost left Rutgers.  But RU Coach C. Vivian Stringer had told her mother when she recruited Erica that she would make sure her daughter graduated, and CVS convinced her to come back.  She grew up in the Miami area, once barely escaping a shootout on the streets.  Erica didn’t get drafted by the WNBA.  Instead, she got a regular job, then quit to follow her dream, first playing basketball in Puerto Rico, Brazil and Turkey before finally getting her chance to join the WNBA, the women’s professional league here in the US.  So, this small kid, undrafted but with her degree, took advantage of every opportunity that came her way and finally made it to the bigtime, where she stood out among a group of the best players.  The tears flowed as she accepted her award – by her teammates and those of us watching on TV, in addition to Erica herself.  Determination and inspiration made a difference.  This is why I watch sports.  Skill, yes, but also that never-give-up attitude, and the time when an unheralded player makes memories for all of us.  Then that moment became a part of ESPN’s ad campaign under the banner “Why we love sports.”  I get chills every time I see it.