On Being an Ant

Today's blog entry is brought to you by Princess 2, who is in the 1st grade and wrote this Pulitzer Prize winner for school.

65 Is My Age, Not the Speed Limit!

I learned how to drive when I was 14, so you'd think by now I'd have the hang of it. But my driving skills have not developed in any significant way over the years. In fact, I've gone from pretty bad to "Jesus! You almost hit that guy!" I recently drove from Gulf Shores, AL to Collinsville, MS with my daughter and 3 of her children in the car....at night.  I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that my oldest grandson said, "I don't know what happened, but every time I woke up we were about to die." I will say that I didn't see any deer at all, so when my daughter said that I nearly plowed over about five of them, I believe she may have exaggerated.  There were plenty of other near misses, but it's a 3 hour trip, so stuff is bound to happen. When it was over, I wrote myself a note to avoid driving at night. That should fix everything.

But how in the heck did I manage to do this?

It happened while backing out of my own darn garage! Which I've done thousands of times!!  I was pretty mad at myself that day. Of course, it was largely Handy's fault, as many things are around here. He put the snow blower in the garage a little right of center, so when I pulled in I had to inch over a little bit. Then pulling out, I forgot I had inched over and WHAM!!  $400 in less than a second.

The Right Tool for the Job

This was my first toolkit. I bought it a couple years ago so I could do little things around the house, like hang pictures and tighten loose door pulls.

And look at the cute case!

My husband, aka "Handy" called it my "nail kit," as in manicure.  In retirement, the more time I have on my hands, the more I want to do things I don't know how to do. When that happens, I either figure it out or break something. But without a doubt, the most aggravating part of tackling a "home improvement" project is finding the right tools.

There's a balcony off our master bedroom, a nice little spot to sit in the sun on the rare occasion that we actually see the sun up here on Lake Superior. We used to have a bird feeder out there, which Handy had mounted on top of this post.

I have no idea why he thought he needed a log 15" around to secure a bird feeder, but there it was, sticking six feet in the air for no apparent reason. I decided to remove it, thinking all I needed was a screw driver. Upon closer inspection, as you can see from the photo below, a screwdriver wasn't going to help. I had no idea what the hell would remove whatever that thing is, and there were two of them holding the post to the balcony.  I took this photo and went down to our local True Value Hardware store, where I said I needed a tool to remove two of these things. "Oh!" the guy said. "You need a torque bit." Of course...why didn't I think of that!

 He walks me to an entire aisle of these things:

 

There were hundreds, maybe thousands of them. And he says, "What size do you need?" as if I would know. He says why don't I bring one of those bolts down and he can get me the right size. And I'm thinking if I could get one of the goddam bolts out of the post to bring it down, I wouldn't be here! I kindly informed him that the only two bolts I had were tightly screwed into the post I was trying to remove.  "Hmmm..." he says, "Well, we have these key sets to determine the size."

I had never seen anything like it. They were definitely not keys. Folded up it looked more like a Swiss army knife, but after staring at it for about a half hour I said, "OK, but after I figure out the size I need, how do I get it in the drill?" Seriously. I asked him that.  I'm sure he was thinking, lady, just leave the post alone. But he was patient and explained. The key set was $18. I bought it, went back home, figured out the size bit I needed, went back to the hardware store, and purchased the correct bit for $2.27.

In the end, it took me all of about 30 seconds to remove the post. But I spent 20 bucks and an entire morning finding the right tool.

Words, Words, Words

I used to teach Hamlet to my AP English classes. I liked to consider myself a wizard of words and emphasized to my students how inadequate popular American lingo is.

I guess when you live long enough, everything is a cliche. Even saying that is a cliche! But since it's been bugging me, here are some words and phrases that I am SICK of hearing:

Starting a sentence with, "SO...." or "Look...."

VENUE.  Nothing happens at  place or a location anymore.  It's always at a venue.

Wrapping one's brain or head around an idea.  The first time I heard that one, I thought it was sort of clever, but hearing it several times a day is just stupid, especially when someone gets it wrong and says they can't wrap their arms around it.

SURREAL seems to be the only word people can think of these days to describe something unusual, fantastic, unbelievable, awesome, dreamlike, or weird.

People saying they are "blessed" when something good happens.  Blessings come from God.  If your house survived a tornado, but your neighbor's house did not, why would you think you were "blessed" and your neighbor was not?  You were lucky, or maybe your house was better built, but thinking you were "blessed" is the height of arrogance.

IMPACTFUL.  This makes me cringe!  I noticed about 5 or 6 years ago that people were using the word "impact" as a verb, as in "The snow will impact the whole city."   Over time, it has actually become a verb.  I can live with that, but "The storm had many impacts on people," "The storm impacted many people," or "The storm was extremely impactful?"......Unacceptable!

ON THE GROUND.  It was probably CNN that started "boots on the ground" to signify soldiers in combat, but now everyone says it for everything, like the local weather guy saying, "I'm here on the ground in upper Michigan where it is snowing heavily." I guess it's better to be on the ground than up in the air, especially when it's snowing.

The other night Handy asked me, "which is correct, disburse or disperse?" What I saw in my head was "Disburse" (as in the disbursement of funds) and "Dis purse" (as in this handbag)...and you'd only get that if you live in "da U.P." So I said, "Dis purse isn't even a word." Imagine my chagrin as he checked the dictionary to prove me wrong. I'm hardly ever wrong about words, but, like Hamlet, some of them drive me nuts.

Shit Happens

One of Handy’s business colleagues gave him a bag of exotic coffee from her recent trip to Vietnam.  It’s called Con Soc and has a picture of a squirrel eating beans on the bag.  According to Handy, who looked into what makes this coffee so unique, the coffee beans are hand-picked and sorted by specially trained Vietnamese workers.  Then the best beans are fed to squirrels.  After the beans go through the squirrel’s digestive system, they are again sorted by the workers, and the best ones are ground into this coffee, which is supposed to be, like, the best in the world.  So while he’s telling me all this, I can hardly keep from gagging while he’s slurping squirrel poop.

You would have to know how many times he’s gotten on my case about washing fresh fruits and vegetables because “the last person to touch that lettuce probably picked his nose first” to understand why I’m delighted to have squirrel shit to fall back on.

The Fancy Perspective

It seems like my first grandchild (aka “Fancy”) was born about five minutes ago, but, in fact, she turned 18 this year.  Unbelievable!  One day not too long ago, we were talking about armpit hair.  OK, that seems like a strange topic of discussion, but Fancy has opinions on everything.  Remember, she’s 18!  Anyway, she noticed that my pits needed a shave, and I said I’d try to do a better job of it, but that it’s harder to do as you get older.  She said, oh, that’s probably because when you get old, you’ve got a lot of hanging skin to deal with.  I said, well, smartass, that’s true, but it’s mostly because you can’t actually see what you’re doing.  In my case, I can’t even turn my head far enough to look, never mind see if there’s any hair under there!  And Fancy, in her sarcastic 18 year old way, said, “Well, I guess that’s just one more thing I have to look forward to.”  

Actually, I’ve taught her a lot of stuff about what to expect as she gets older.  I hope she’s been taking notes.  When she was about 10  or 11, we were spending a lazy, hot, Mississippi summer day floating in the pool, when she said, “Let’s talk about puberty.”  OK, I said, and I gave her the whole talk about how the body changes and what menstruation is all about, even though I was pretty sure she had heard it all before from her mother, my daughter, who probably understood the whole process by the time she was five.  I asked Fancy if she had any questions.  She said, “No, I got it.  But I’m not going through all that mess.  I just want to pop out some boobs and get on with my life.”  If only!

These memories came to me this morning in the shower when I realized that I had been “shaving” with the plastic thingy still on the razor!  I guess it's time for me to start taking notes on the things I learn from Fancy!

Road Rage

I don't need to be driving to experience road rage.  Today I got it just walking.  In the mile or so stretch of Mississippi country road I walked today, I saw empty soda cans, cigarette packs, candy wrappers, chip bags, milk jugs, all kinds of unidentifiable styrofoam, plastic, and metal, a bungee cord, the top of a cooler, an empty deer feed bag, some pvc pipe, countless beer bottles, baby food jars, and, strangely, a TV antenna stuck in the ground next to a plastic chair and an old iron stove.

If you're the guy who throws beer bottles out your window, I guess that makes sense.  You're drinking and driving, and when you get pulled over, there won't be any evidence in your car and, of course, the police officer will never notice that you're acting like a total dick-wad.

If the plastic littering my walking route can be recycled for plastic surgery, there's enough of it for every woman in Kemper County to get a boob job.  That stuff does not break down, people!  It will still be on the side of the road next month, next week, next year, and probably 100 years from now.  Granted, it's all junk.  The morons who throw crap out their car window didn't want it and will never want it.  I'm pretty sure no one will be collecting styrofoam Sonic cups for their sentimental value anytime soon.

I'm particularly peeved at the baby food jars.  Might as well teach them young how to properly dispose of garbage.  "Look, son, you just throw it out the car window.  Isn't that clever?"

As for the TV antenna, chair, and stove.  I suppose that could be somebody's deer blind.  That would also explain the deer feed bag.  After all, this IS Mississippi.