No need to make any new New Year’s resolutions. I just dusted off last year’s collection to give them another shot.
If I can have heated seats in my car, shouldn’t I be able to have heated seats on my couch? I don’t think I would ever leave the house!
Being short has very few advantages. Sure, I’m closer to the ground and could stop, drop and roll in case I catch on fire, but that doesn’t make up for my need to climb on the supermarket shelves to get something I need. I’m tired of asking taller people (for me, that’s anyone over 5’2”) to get something from a higher shelf. Where I shop, the rest of the old people around here shop, so there aren’t that many “tall” people to ask for help. I have to use a step-stool to get to the second shelf of the kitchen cabinets, and I even have a step-stool next to my bed. The phrase “climb into bed” is completely accurate for me. I’d like to be able to get the laundry out of the washing machine without injuring my ribs. I don’t take a carry-on on an airplane if it has to be stored in the overhead bin because I always need help putting it there and retrieving it. And at this age, I am probably shrinking, so the reality of my ever reaching anything has diminished.
I wonder what is stored in the cabinets above the refrigerator. I hope it’s not something I need.
Passwords – the bane of our existence! I have all of mine in a cleverly labeled document that no one else would guess and I put a password on that to keep it safe. Now I can’t figure out THAT password, so I can’t access the master document. I got a password protection program but that no longer works either. Some passwords require a capital letter, a number and a special symbol – but which ones? As I said – the bane of our existence!
According to my driver’s license, I have brown hair. That’s what it looks like to me in the mirror. So why does every picture of me look like I have gray hair, white hair or sometimes blonde hair? I’m sticking with brown. I don’t want to change my driver’s license.
I’m a firm believer in back-ups, so I rarely find myself without an ample supply of staples like toilet paper, napkins and cleaning supplies. If I install a new cartridge in my printer, I’ll order a new back-up that day, so I never get caught short. I keep plenty of tape, paper clips and, yes, even staples on hand so I’ll never run out. That’s probably because when I was growing up, I was lucky to find a pen or pencil to do my homework. My father would use a razor blade to sharpen the pencils because who could afford a sharpener? Now I have an overabundance of everything, and if I only have 48 rolls of toilet paper in the house, I’m sure it’s time to restock.
My sister is sitting in her very noisy house while the roofers put a new roof on. Between the hammering and nailing and her Ring doorbell alarm going off, that is not the place you want to be. She’s a little disappointed that she needed a new roof in the first place. She never had a roof leak (that she knows of), just an occasional shingle would blow off. But it was looking old and worn and it was probably the right time to replace it, despite the noise and inconvenience, before it did start to leak. She said she just couldn’t believe that the old one would lose shingles periodically. I had to point out that the old roof was 36 years old!
I cannot imagine having the ability to write a song, record and perform it, and have an entire audience enraptured by it. What a feeling it must be to create something that captures people’s hearts to the point that they sing along or play it over and over and share it with meaningful people in their lives. To know that you made something that was loved and shared by others must be a joyful accomplishment.
Alexa and I are BFFs. She lets me know the weather and I tell her what to add to my shopping list. But sometimes she can demonstrate mom-like tendencies. She’ll tell me that it may be time to order more tuna fish or that I might be running out of my probiotics. And sometimes her algorithm seems a little off, like when she tells me about a book or author that I might like, and I have never heard of the author. She let my sister know that there was a book available that she might like. Nancy doesn’t read that much and since Alexa said the book was about animals, a subject in which Nancy has no interest, that algorithm made no sense at all. Do better, Alexa.
My sister and I are tired of the whole dinner planning/cooking/cleaning up routine. In addition to using paper plates (at least for lunch), she says she would prefer to have paper pots so she wouldn’t have to scrub anything. I get it.
I’d like to wash the dishes without getting water up my sleeves.
I didn’t think some of the songs of the Disco era could get any faster, but even KC & the Sunshine Band is sped up on “That’s the Way, (Uh, Huh, Uh, Huh) I Like It” when they play it for my aqua aerobics class. It is played at breakneck speed! Eventually, all of the songs played sound like “Ice, Ice, Baby” by Vanilla Ice.
I have more Tupperware and glass containers than I could ever use, unless I move into a shelter in the event of an apocalypse. But I cannot bring myself to let go of any. The same is true of mugs. I don’t even drink coffee, yet I have an extensive collection of mugs, many of which were gifts or have some special meaning, like my mug from my high school reunion from 25 years ago. No way I’m getting rid of that one!
The days are getting longer, thankfully. By now it only starts getting dark just before 5 PM. Man, it is a long, cold, lonely winter!
I feel sorry for those astronauts who were launched into space back in June for about a week but who have been stuck on the space station ever since. This is the real-life equivalent of “Gilligan’s Island,” when a three-hour tour on the S.S. Minnow turned into a multi-season TV comedy. I would be so sick of my socks and clothes by now, to say nothing of my co-workers. Do they have enough laundry detergent to wash their meager wardrobe? Are they rationing toothpaste and mouthwash? Will they ever get to see new movies or binge TV shows? And I sure hope they didn’t have any library books on hand when they launched, because those books will be WAY overdue!
I love the sound of Michael McDonald’s voice and I love his music. Maybe one day I’ll actually understand the words that he is singing. Same with Bob Dylan and Dave Matthews.
In December there was an area-wide issue here with water quality, taste and smell. The local water company, which recently hiked their prices substantially, initially could not explain why the water smelled like paint thinner. I suppose it didn’t taste quite right, either, but I refrained from consuming it and went back to using bottled water. There were numerous assurances that the water tested just fine, thank you, but I don’t want to start growing an ear on my forehead if it turned out that it was actually dangerous to consumers (think: Love Canal). The problem was eventually traced to a small local company that makes fragrances (and presumably dumps dangerous chemicals into local streams and tributaries), but the water company insisted the water was safe to use. Meanwhile, my used bottles are filling the recycling can and I’m having trouble finding cases of water in the supermarket.
I have been immersed in watching “ER,” the old medical show from NBC, for the past few weeks. There are 330 episodes in the 15 years that the series aired, and I’m up to season 6 – and those were the days when a season went ran around 20 episodes or more! I’m amazed at the ability of the writers to convey real-life medical issues and in the actors’ ability to deliver the medical lingo with such conviction. I keep looking up terms and conditions so I understand the plots better. Yesterday I caught an episode where they were bemoaning the advent of Y2K, something my younger readers will barely remember at all. But for the rest of us who were worried about how turning the page on the last century would cause technical chaos, what a non-event that turned out to be – thank goodness! I’m totally enjoying this show and I don’t think I ever finished it when it first aired, so there’s plenty for me to experience for the first time.
