Tag Archives: Humor

January 17, 2012 · 0:00

People My Age

Well, it’s my birthday.  And I have a problem.

You might have noticed it yourself.  You may even have asked me about it.  Or wondered in stoic silence.   “Whatever will she do?” you asked yourself.  I am sure it has been weighing on you — heavily.  As well it should.

“FiftyFourAndAHalf,” that’s the problem.  It’s right up there at the top of the page.  Yup, the blog’s name.   I called it that in a fit of pique at the GOP who were going to take Medicare away from everyone under 55.  Starting with me.  It seemed grossly unfair when I was younger.  Like, you know, six months ago.

But, ummmm.  I’m not FiftyFourAndAHalf anymore.  I’m not even FiftyFourAndThreeQuarters, either — the name my son, Jacob, has been calling me.   Because my 55th birthday is here.  I tried to stop it, but, well, I failed.  My bad.

I didn’t know what to do.  I thought of taking a poll:

 

 

I must admit I was afraid of your answers.  More importantly, I was afraid that I had more poll questions than readers.

But then I saw this:

John Gorka, singing “People My Age”

It helped me make my decision.  It stiffened my resolve.  I wish I had thought of it sooner.  Like 20 years ago.  But back then, I didn’t know that people my age had started looking gross.

So I’m not going on to FiftyFive.  I don’t want to be my age, because people my age have started looking gross. 

I’m sticking with FiftyFourAndAHalf.

Man! I look better already.

107 Comments

Filed under Childhood Traumas, Climate Change, Elections, Family, Humor, Music, Science, Stupidity

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January 14, 2012 · 0:00

Connections

My sisters and I never saw eye to eye; rather we heard heart to heart through our telephone receivers.  We lived a good distance away for most of our lives.  And so our connections, close as they were, were nearly always via long distance calls.

The ear pieces on the phone grew increasingly warm and comforting with each laugh, each tease and each word we spoke.  We spent hours on the phone, twisting the curly, stretched cord around our body parts, spilling out our hearts and our triumphs and our woes.  But there is no record, no evidence, and sadly fewer clear recollections.

So I made up some memories.

*     *     *

I began to question the wisdom of this trip as soon as the line went dead.

The call Thursday night was unexpected.  Sam and Dave – customers from the burger joint I’d worked in back home — had tracked me down in Boston.  I’d left home six months earlier, and was surprised that the guys had found me.  They had said they were in Boston often and promised to look me up – but so had a lot of people.

Six months away from home hadn’t been nearly as fun as I expected my “coming of age” to be.   I hesitated to admit that I was lonely and would love some company.  But I hadn’t even thought about Sam and Dave – forgotten them, in fact.  Well, I barely knew them to begin with.  Sam was tall, blond, nice smile.  A well done hamburger with fries; Dave was shorter with shaggy brown hair that he often pulled back.  He liked his cheeseburger rare with onion rings.  Both drank Coke.  One of them drove my favorite car, a 1974 Datsun 240Z.  Blue.

“Great, we’ll pick you up Saturday at 10,” one of them said.  Was it Dave?  He and Sam were on separate extensions and kept finishing each other’s sentences like an old married couple.

“Yeah, Steve gave us the address along with your number.   See you Saturday!” said the other – Sam, I guessed.  And then they hung up.

They didn’t leave a number so I couldn’t call them back.  For that matter, they didn’t leave their last names.  First names, a car (cool as it was) and burger preferences.  That was all I knew.  Yet I had just agreed to spend the weekend with them at the Cape.

At only 19, I hadn’t done too many stupid things with guys yet.  So I called my older sister, Judy, 24, who had.

“This is ridiculous,” I told Judy, pacing back and forth across my tiny apartment like a bobcat in the zoo. “I can’t possibly go.  I don’t know who they are.  And I can’t possibly call them back – they didn’t leave their number.  They didn’t leave their last names.  They didn’t even tell me where I just agreed to go.   God, this has all the makings of a Hitchcock picture.”

“Are you Tippi Hedren or Janet Leigh?”  Jude roared at her own joke.  “You’ve known these two cute guys for three years and never went out with them?  Either of them?  Or both of them – together?” she teased.  “God you’re boring.  You’d be Doris Day in a Hitchcock movie.”

“I’m just going to have to talk to them when they get here on Saturday.”

“Ok,” said Jude, swallowing her laugh. “You’ll talk to them on Saturday.  Good plan,” she burst out again, “especially because you can’t talk with them before that because you didn’t get their number,” she said, gasping for breath.

I began to relax.  Somehow, when I told my troubles to Judy, they stopped being problems and became situation comedy.

“You’re a huge help.  I’ll call you back next time I need abuse.”

“Anytime,” Judy said, hanging up.

I spent Friday at work bouncing between laughing and worrying.  I didn’t pack.  Of course I wouldn’t go with them – I didn’t even know their last names!

At 10 am Saturday the doorbell rang.  “Shit.”

“We’re here,” Dave or Sam said through the intercom system.  Another reason not to go – I couldn’t keep them straight.  I buzzed them in, and took a deep breath.  I still didn’t know what to do.

Did it take an hour for them to climb the two flights or were they upstairs in a flash?  Suddenly I felt queasy.  “Oh God,” I thought as I shut the bathroom door, “what would Judy do?”  I sat on the toilet for the longest time, trying not to panic.  At last, I smiled, shrugged and said “oh, what the hell.”  I walked back into the main room and said “I’m not quite done packing, but I’ll be just a minute.”

I threw a bathing suit, a change of clothes, and a couple of other things in a backpack.  “There’s just one thing,” I said, smiling at my dates,  “I’d love to drive the Z.”

*     *     *

Me, Judy, and Beth, a while ago

49 Comments

Filed under Driving, Family, Humor, Stupidity

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January 9, 2012 · 0:00

Word Press, I don’t “LIKE” this!

It happened again today.  I’m sure it’s happened to you, too.  Repeatedly.  And Word Press, you need to do something about it — right away!

What happened was this:  I was taking a nano-break at work, reading a post by Year-Struck that I did not “LIKE.”  Oh it was good.  Beautiful in fact, well written, and heart breaking.  But no, I didn’t “LIKE” it in the Word Press sort of way.

What do you do then, when a piece is sad and beautiful and makes you want to make the writer feel better for getting it off their chest, for sharing, for, well, giving their story? Me,  I stress out completely.  And I don’t “LIKE” it.

I have puzzled about this before.  When I first started blogging, I would read another’s blog and hit “LIKE” and then leave a lame comment saying,

“Well, I didn’t really‘LIKE’ it, but I clicked “LIKE” because, well, I needed to do something.  But I really am sorry that you were hit on the head by a meteorite…” And I’d trail off.  I’d feel inadequate.  As if there was something else I could have done.

You know, Word Press, sometimes I just don’t want to tell somebody who has told me deep, dark stuff through their blog that I “LIKE” it.  It doesn’t make sense.  It is illogical.  It is an oxy-moron to “LIKE” something “UN-LIKE-able.”  Because the post was bad.  Or sad.  Or hard.

And sometimes, Word Press, I just don’t have time to write what I mean to say in a clever manner when:

  • A blogger just told me the worst thing that has ever happened in their life and they still have the scars to prove it (hey, I “LIKE” it!);
  • A blogger just told me that they have a terminal disease and they will die a horrible death, soon, but that I shouldn’t worry — other bloggers will survive (hey, I “LIKE” it!);
  • My head has just exploded from the stress of not wanting to press “LIKE” but having no alternative.

Really, truly, I want to scream,

 All right, I “LIKE” it!

But I don’t.  “LIKE” it, that is.  I want something else.

So for the months I’ve been blogging, I’ve puzzled.  I’ve noodled.  I’ve even gone so far as to put on my thinking cap.  And you know things are pretty serious when that happens.

My first choice for an alternative was

S*cks!

But then I thought of my audience.  We are all basically insecure writers.  And I don’t think that everyone will TAKE that moniker in the manner I’m suggesting. Then again, some folks won’t USE this button in an empathetic manner.  But that’s, of course, highly unlikely.  We are all sweet and kind here in the ‘sphere.

Besides,  I also realized that if I continue using naughty language on my blog, my dream of one day being Fresh Pressed will go down in a blaze of language my mother wouldn’t “LIKE.”

I continued to puzzle till my puzzler was sore.  Until I thought of another option:

Sending Kisses to you!

Doesn’t that just make you feel good all over?  But then, some of us are married and our spouses wouldn’t approve even of cyber kisses.  So that won’t work.

What is a blogger to do????? 

Word Press, we need an alternative.

May I humbly suggest you create the following alternative to the “LIKE” button:

The 54-1/2 Button

Click on it when your heart goes out to the blogger, when you think that their writing is strong and powerful but tells a story that is not necessarily fun or funny and you don’t “LIKE” them being in pain.  Click on it when you think that a lovely photo of the shore will ease their pain.

Or click on it when you just want to confuse folks because they will have no clue what it means.  I “LIKE” doing that.

75 Comments

Filed under Family, Humor, Stupidity, Word Press

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January 7, 2012 · 0:00

Bees and other stings

Yesterday, I read on my office building’s  elevator computer screen that someone had smuggled bees onto an airplane. The bees escaped and stung several people before brave airline personnel managed to capture and/or kill them.

I got nervous.   After all, I was in an enclosed elevator, and people around me were carrying stuff.

“Whoa!” You say, “Your elevator has a computer screen?!”

Yes, but I can’t check my stats there.  So don’t hate me.

But the news that someone had gotten bees onboard an airplane made me look around at the folks riding up with me in the elevator with greater concern.  That man over there with the regular-sized briefcase looked “bee-free,” but what about the guy with the big square briefcase?  He could have a whole hive squirreled away in there and I wouldn’t know.

The third and last person on the elevator with me had a bag that was big enough for a bunch of bees, but I was pretty sure that it was tuna.  I don’t know if I could identify what bees smell like, but I do know tuna.

I was relieved when I got off on the 14th floor without being stung.  Relieved that I didn’t suffer from somebody else’s, ummmm, mistake.  That isn’t always the case, you know.

In addition to feeling relieved, though, I also felt stressed, and overloaded by information that I didn’t necessarily need.   Like how many times things go wrong when you least expect it.  And how frequently people don’t say anything about it.  Well, until they sue, that is.

It was later on in the afternoon that I realized that the internet is, in fact, making me crazy.  Paranoid.  Thoughtful in ways I don’t like being thoughtful.  Because I was sitting in a hospital waiting room reading an online New York Times article:

Report Finds Most Errors at Hospitals Go Unreported

Oh dear.   Now I was just there for a blood test, not brain surgery (although I DID consider a lobotomy after watching the GOP candidates preening for New Hampshire on the TV in the waiting room).  So you don’t need to worry about me.

I’m not so sure about you, though.  I mean I’m not so sure that I don’t have to worry about YOU.

Full disclosure clause:

I AM NOT A DOCTOR!

I AM NOT A LAWYER!

I AM NOT AN INDIAN CHIEF!

And I have not jumped rope to that chant in decades.   AND I am way more politically correct now than when I did.  So don’t even go there.

I AM a patient, though.  More often than I’d like.  Consider me an expert patient, in fact.  Assume  it is has happened to me.  Consider also the fact that I am married to a lawyer.

So I have some advice.  Free.  No charge.

In any medical-type situation, if something doesn’t seem right,

SAY SOMETHING!!!

Say it politely.  Say it clearly.  Keep saying it until someone looks you in the eye and answers your question, stops what they are doing and makes you comfortable that either:  they will stop, or there really is no problem and you can now relax and let them continue doing their work correctly.  Just remember that they are people too.

When your health or that of someone you love is the issue

DO NOT BE SHY

Pay attention

Ask questions

Speak up

Do your homework

Write down questions

Keep an updated list of your medications with you

And, if you frequent planes and elevators, keep something in your wallet that says whether or not you are allergic to bee stings.

41 Comments

Filed under Family, Humor, Science, Stupidity, Technology

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January 5, 2012 · 0:00

Smarter than me

Lori over at Sunny Side Up posted a piece this morning about parallel parking.  She can’t do it.  Me, I can do it pretty well; I just can’t spell it without spell check.

And it made me think.  Well, that and a cup of coffee.

Now, it may just be the Cheerios talking, but I am starting to be afraid of cars.  Afraid of crossing in front of them, of crossing behind them and of driving anywhere near them.

I don’t like being around inanimate objects that are smarter than I am; and when they can move without my throwing them, well, it paralyzes me.

Have you seen the gizmos they’re putting in cars nowadays?  Lori, you can get a car that can parallel park itself.  Lori, wisely keeps looking for a place.  (Me, I had a bad-boy boyfriend when I was a teenager who taught me how to do it.  But I digress.)

But based on the commercials, by the time the Ford Focus maneuvers into the spot, I would have wet my pants, because these days I parallel park only when I stop to buy coffee/use the restroom after being stuck in traffic.

These gadgets though, terrify me.  There’s one that will brake automatically if you get too close to the car ahead of you.  What if you’re in the sort of traffic we have here in Northern Virginia.  Hell, I’d have whiplash on my first commute.

Have you seen the one that keeps you from hitting the car in your blind spot?  I’m not quite sure how that one works.  It might involve wheel-destroying spikes, a la Ben Hur, or maybe flame throwers, but hey you won’t hit that car.  And you won’t even need to look over your shoulder.  Cause looking over your shoulder can be dangerous.

And then there is the one that vibrates when it thinks you’re falling asleep.  I’m sure it will know exactly when you’re going onto the other side of the road to avoid pot holes, small animals and wheel-destroying spikes coming from the cars that won’t let their drivers look over their shoulders.  I’m positive.  Because no in-car gizmo has ever, ummmm, not worked properly, right?

I am surely not alone in my fear of these gizmos.  Because anyone who has ever had a car with an electronic device in it knows that they break down all the time.

Me, I stopped trusting them about 2 months after I got my current car.  It has lots of gizmos and I trusted one of them once, while backing up.  My car has a Road Runner stuck in side of it.  It goes “beep beep” when I get too close to anything behind me.  It is supposed to “beep beep” in a progressive fashion, as I get closer to stuff.  It goes apoplectic if I reverse to within 5 feet of a wall – knowing that I won’t be able to open the back hatch sends it into a frenzy.  Especially since I only open the back on weekends and at places where there are no walls.  The car will, of course, allow the nose of my car to be in the middle of the driving lane without a peep, though.

I trusted the “beep beep” once.  I was backing up into the only spot left in a garage.  It was the only way in.  My car was filled with a bunch of kids who were being kids and making noise.  Sadly, none of them said “beep beep.”  Neither did the car.  I inched into the wall, giving my  new car a custom bumper.  It is dented in as if someone hit it with a large muffin.

I’m pretty sure that these new safety features are going to lead to some pretty interesting reality TV shows.  And I guess anything that can make those shows worth watching might be worth a shot.

56 Comments

Filed under Driving, Gizmos, Humor, Technology, Traffic

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