Discuss.

There are plenty of quick "need to do" things, Zoom meeting notes, and project reminders. But there’s also grocery lists for curbside pickup, new passwords for new accounts I had to create for SO. MUCH. ONLINE. SHOPPING., the notes about what’s wrong with my eye "red, sore at the temple", what’s wrong with my tooth "hurts, size of a golf ball", what’s wrong with my hip "started suddenly, no injury I remember" — all to explain to various doctors and dentists, some for whom it took many phone calls and friend and family recommendations to make appointments to see during a pandemic. It was much harder to see a dentist than a doctor in those early days. A dental patient is the worst patient of all. Your mouth is open and everything sprays. COVID loves that.

There are other notes.

• "Take vacation." What a joke. I forfeited a week and I’m on track to lose much more this year.
• "Set up family zoom session." Missing my family.
• "Gueben. Cole slaw. Chips." First curbside takeout order.
• "Gained 7 pounds. Still able to walk. Feeling overwhelmed and depressed." Virtual doctor visit.
• "Great answer." During a now colleague’s Zoom job interview.
• "OMG. She got furloughed. Are we next" The woman in question probably never coming back.
• "Staff restructuring." "Layoffs/furloughs." "Reduce expenses." "Slow return to campus."
• "I don’t have enough help."
• "Can I floss right away?" Follow up to temporary filling before complete root canal replacement.
• "Holy shit. Love him." A new staffer with a refreshing attitude.
• "Call UGI. A/C broken."
• "Dominick the Donkey." Answer to a Fibbage question on family game day.
• "Eggs. Smart Ones. Uncle Ben’s rice." Grocery.
• "Outpatient rehab services. Hip.
• "Stay in vehicle. A nurse will come get you and take temperature." Dentist.
• "Send in request to work from home indefinitely."
• "Signs needed: Rules, masks, swipe in, locked dors, digital, print, hours, one per elevator."
• "COVID student isolates. Roommates would quarantine."
• "Ring light. Bidet. Floor lamp. Office chair. New rug.

The list goes on and on, and so does the pandemic. I start a new notebook tomorrow.

Here, have a soothing video of my car wash. It was hell getting it.

One of the problems with buying an ice cream cone in the middle of a hazy, hot, and humid summer is melt speed.

Get a large cone and you’re forced to inhale it to minimize the inevitable dribble-down-the-hand mess, but you risk brain freeze eating too fast.

Plus, when you suck down ice cream the ability to savor the flavor is diminished by 79.4% according to a study in the Journal of I Made That Shit Up.

Sure, you could order your soft serve in a cup, but what fun is that? It’s not. You twist-cone your soft serve. You cup-pack your hard scoop. It’s the law.

What you might do to mitigate the lick-to-melt race is downgrade to a regular cone and be satisfied with that. But what if you wanted more than a regular?

This is what you do:

Your husband drives you to Rita’s and you order a regular-sized cone and tear in. Mere blocks away, he notices that you’re almost down to the cone already and there’s another Rita’s nearby.

He says “Kath. You’re making good progress on that. Do you want another?”

“Yes. Yes, I do. Next Rita’s, please.”

In the time it takes to get to Rita’s #2 you’ve just polished off the bottom tip of the cone, you know, that part – the best part – that serves as a handy reservoir for all the melty goodness that collected at the bottom. That last crunch is the delicious period on your ice cream sentence.

You pull into Rita’s #2, get out, order a second regular twist on a waffle cone, pay, and dig in again.

A mile out, you begin to realize the error of your ways.

1. Regular + half a regular = uncomfortably full.

2. You don’t want to finish Part II of the Twist Plan because you’re not a garbage disposal and your waistline wants no part of those unwanted calories. Your driver rejects them, too.

So now what?

This is what you do:

You ask your husband to pull over at the next out-of-the-way place so that you can dispose of .5 of a regular ice cream cone.

“Where?” he asks.

“Over there. The cemetery.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

You pull aside and scooch up close to the grass. You lower the window. You stick your arm out and with one flick of a wrist the cone contents come flying out  – TTHHWWIIIIPPP! – and into the grass, where ants within a ten foot radius can’t believe their good fortune that the sky delivered them ice cream like a screaming meteor and plopped it at their feet.

Ahhhhh! Much better.

You’re now left with just the cone, coated in a bit of residual ice cream, in all its crunchy goodness, with only enough calories you consider reasonable to eat.

Yes, I will still order soft-serve in scorching heat. No, I will not get it in a cup. Yes, I know that’s easier, but it’s just not the same. Summers are for twisties and sprinkles and improving melt management skills. This 50-something kid still has a lot to learn.

So today I poked myself in the eye with the corner of some tri-folded paper towels that I reached up to grab off a shelf when I needed to wipe my mouth after brushing my teeth over the trash can in my office because I was too lazy to walk to the ladies room and do it there. It freaking hurt and then I had to go to a meeting and explain why I appeared to have been crying, but only out of my left eye. At least I smelled minty fresh.

Why didn’t I want to walk to the ladies room?

Because it’s like a quarter mile from my new office. I had easier access to the restrooms at my old office, which is being turned into study space for students in the library where I work.

The good thing is that I earn extra steps when I use the new rest room, but it’s totally inconvenient when I have somewhere to be in a hurry, like today.

BUT!

I just found out yesterday that I can walk through the fire door next to my office that leads to a stairwell that leads to another rest room just above my office.

I have been assured that the sign that reads “Do not enter. Alarm will sound” is false. It’s only there to keep students from accessing the stairs.

I even watched the building manager walk through the door today and it did not sound.

BUT!

I’m still scared to walk through it because it would just be my luck that one day the locksmith office will discover the doors are not alarmed and will alarm them for safety and I will walk through it and people will ask “Kathy, did you not see the sign that says you cannot walk through the door because the alarm will sound? How stupid are you? Can you not read?”

BUT!

One time I used my master keys in a building I used to work in to let myself into an office that I didn’t know was alarmed.

It sounded.

And it sounded loudly throughout the whole building and I had to wait in a state of terrible embarrassment until the campus police came and turned it off.

I’m not taking any chances.

The nearby bathrooms will have to remain a off limits to me.

I haven’t blogged in a long time, but in case you were wondering …. yes, it’s still exhausting being me.

The End.

When I was in my mid-20s, I lived in an apartment that had its fair share of problems: green shag carpeting, pitiful air conditioning, and a laundry room buried in a dark and scary basement next to the boiler system that ran so loud you wouldn’t hear if a murderer walked in to kill you until it was too late.

But I lived close to work and shopping, and the rent was dirt cheap. Despite the chance of being killed and no one finding my body until they had to do laundry, I couldn’t complain.

Until the summer of the thousand leggers.

Circa 1987 my apartment suffered an infestation of thousand leggers, known to entomologists as the Scutigera coleoptrata. They’re like tiny hair pieces that can move at cheetah speed.

That summer, I would find five or six of them every day in various places: on walls, in the shower, and inside appliances. No place was off-limits.

I feared I’d start finding them nuzzled up in bed with me, just waiting for me to fall asleep so they could crawl into my ear and burrow through my brain.

For the ones that were on the walls and stayed still, I’d grab a can of what had become my “go to” for instant bug death – Aqua Net hair spray. I chose this over bug spray because it wasn’t toxic to me and one long blast of it caused Scutigera coleoptrata to shrivel up and die within seconds.

I co-existed with the thousand leggers for weeks and we had a loose agreement. You don’t touch me. When I spot you, you will die. But I promise to give you a quick, merciful death. Sound good? Good.

They didn’t hold up the agreement.

I recall coming home from class one night, unlocking my apartment door, and reaching inside the hallway to turn on a light.

I felt something.

Bumpy.

Hairy.

And it moved.

The light illuminated one of meaty, leggy intruders that had parked itself on the light switch. “Evening, Kathy! Where’ve you been?”

I dropped my books and my purse, went screaming through the apartment looking for my Aqua Net, and prayed I’d find it in time for our agreed-upon merciful death.

I didn’t. When I came back to the hallway, it was long gone, free to move about the cabin, or – go tell its friends that I was home and they could begin their reign of terror into the night.

I slept with the Aqua Net.

Another day, when I pulled down the door to empty the dishwasher one fell out. On. To. My. Bare. Foot.

Primal Scream is the name of a British indie rock band from the early 80s. It’s also the sound I made when this thing landed on me. Not only did I make a sound I didn’t know I was capable of, but I jumped up and down so loudly that my downstairs neighbor came up to see about the hubbub.

“A thousand legger got me,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” said she.

We shared a moment of exasperation, then I shut the door and began a recon session, Aqua Net in hand.

Spot, spray, die. Spot, spray, die. Spot, spray, die.

This went on the rest of the summer and luckily the infestation lasted only that year.

A few years later we had bees and by then I decided enough was enough. An elderly neighbor had them too, and I learned she was allergic to bee stings. Our apartment didn’t allow pets, but she’d been grandfathered in before the new policy was enacted and didn’t want to make waves with apartment management by complaining.

I had nothing to lose, so I called the Health Department.

Bees no more.

So why have I called this story “You’ve come a long way, baby?”

Because I just saw a tiny thousand legger crawl across my kitchen floor.

They’re here.

But I let it live because someone posted on Facebook yesterday that Scutigera coleoptrata are super good at eating other insects and you want them in your house.

Lucky bastard. I just gave you merciful life.

Carry on.

Testing … testing …

Is this thing on?

OK, so I know I haven’t been able to shake a five pound weight gain from a  recent vacation due to the following ice cream and ice cream-related events:

1. Sept. 24: chocolate/vanilla twist

2. Sept 25: chocolate/vanilla twist, chocolate custard waffle cone

3. Sept 26: chocolate twist, cookie dough/hot fudge sundae

4. Sept 27: chocolate custard waffle cone, cookie dough/hot fudge sundae, chocolate/vanilla twist.

5. And for good measure, Oct 1 – Oct 12: Post-vacation ice cream events too numerous to mention.

I know. I have a problem. Note taken.

The caloric nightmare ain’t over, or maybe it is.

I just went to the store for some things and picked up the lowest calorie snack of all the high-calories ones I perused. That’d be a 12-pack container of mini-whoopie pies that clocked in at 1,200 calories (vs. others I wanted that started at 1,600).

When I got to the register and the cashier rung me up, she couldn’t get my precious whoopies to scan.

“Hmmm,” she says. “That’s weird.”

She tries again, this time entering the code manually. No dice.

Gets another cashier to try. Also no dice.

She turns to me and says “That’s never happened before.”

“What never?” I ask.

“It says ‘Item not for sale,’” she says.

“So what you’re saying is it’s not for sale for me,” I suggest.

She chuckles and the other cashier offers to go back and find another. I wave off the offer, thank her for saving me 1,200 unnecessary calories and I leave snackless.

I’m crestfallen. But I’m also relieved.

I know I need to get serious about these five pounds now because if you don’t stare a gain like that down and do something about it, you wind up getting used to it, add another five, get used to that, and suddenly you weigh 193lbs again.

Thank you, grocery store scanner for refusing to sell junk food to me.

Except I still really wanted it.

I read this comment on a blog almost a decade ago and haven’t forgotten it since. I can’t be certain where I saw it, but I believe credit is due the artist Terry Border, an incredibly talented man who began a blog called Bent Objects to showcase his whimsical art, and followed up over the years with eight books, one of which has become a musical.

The comment stuck with me because I’ve been on the receiving end of it a bunch of times over the years (especially during the Windy years) and again just recently when I posted this picture to Facebook, with the caption: “Astonished sidewalk guy.”

Someone commented “You have too much time on your hands,” to which I replied “I really hate that comment.”

Boy, do I.

A lot.

I was thinking of replying with a different comment, one that would have addressed the time factor, as in “Really? The three seconds it took to take the shot, then the five seconds to post it to Facebook, qualifies as too much time?

But that’s not a comment that speaks to the real problem with the accusation.

The real problem is that no one needs to justify the time they spend for anything creative, no matter how small or insignificant others might think it is. That’s the beauty of art and creation.

There are a thousand reasons why people innovate and create. It could be for utility or to solve a problem. It could be an outlet for stress or to move through a painful experience. It could be to learn a new skill, to seek a new path, to grow as a human. Or it could be to entertain, to enlighten or simply to bring a smile to the face of another person. That is me.

When I observe something off-beat or interesting, it makes me happy and I want to share it. It’s why I took up blogging. I always said about blogging that if I could make someone chuckle for five minutes out of their day, I’ve done my job.

And if it took me “too much time” to think of something bizarre, stupid, uncanny, or ridiculous, so what? That’s my time to spend. I have never accused anyone of spending too much time on something that gives them joy to make, to do, or to experience. Think of all the hours that people (including me) invest in passive activities, like binge-watching their favorite TV series. They’re not creating art, not creating music, not dancing, not painting, not writing. But they’re creating joy for themselves and I say “Go forth and be joyful!”

The last thing we should be doing these days is raining on others’ parades for doing something they love. If it’s not hurting anyone, why even care?

After I received the “too much time” comment, all I could think was that guy would have lost his mind if he’d seen what I did to this fallen tree on one of my favorite walking routes through the woods. I carried a hammer, some nails and plastic googly eyes for three and a half miles to make and take this shot.

Too much time? Not to me. It was time well-invested because every time I see it, it still cracks me up.

And when passersby laugh about it, take out their cameras and save it to share with others, that’s icing on the cake.

I do what I do first for me. If someone else finds it just weird enough to enjoy, then all the better.

It leaves me happy, because I do know what creativity feels like, and it feels pretty damn good.

Addendum: I just visited the Facebook page of the guy who made that comment to me. In his profile, I see where he graduated college and what he studied. Wanna guess what his degree is in? Can’t make this stuff up: Art History.

Dear New Work Password,

I really tried hard to love you. In fact, to prepare for loving you, I practiced many other passwords first to see how quickly I could type them, while maintaining the strongest level of security. I even gave you that one special character I hold so dear, the asterisk. It truly is the star of passwords! I wanted to be your BFF for the six months I would have been with you before being forced to choose another yet again.

But I’m giving you up early because you just don’t flow freely from my fingertips like you should. We’re good together on paper, but in practice, it’s just not working. You just became too hard to get right. I misspell you constantly. I curse at you with your mixed case and nonsensical words. You’re even harder to get right when I’m typing you while standing or leaning in at an angle. ERROR! ERROR!

I know there must be that one special password out there for me. But deep down, I know I’ve already chosen all the good ones in years past. And since I can’t reuse an old password, I keep searching. Searching for the one that will be complicated enough, secure enough and easy enough to get right the first time.

I’m sorry I led you on. I really tried. It just wasn’t meant to be. Good night, sweet password. Maybe you’ll find someone else out there who’ll love you like you deserve.

Remember, it’s not you. It’s me.

Every so often I perform one of my most-hated chores: taking our oversized comforter to the laudromat. Somehow time spent at the laundromat is some kind of wrinkle in the time space continuum, such that 1.5 hours is really a day. A whole staring-at-tumbling-laundry, God awful boring sort of day.

I load up all my crap in the car and lug the hulking blanket, along with my wallet, iPhone, car keys, detergent bottle and fabric softener sheets into the laundromat. Did I mention how much I hate this process?

So I get things going by pumping $6.50 worth of quarters into the Volkswagen-sized washing machine. I see a message on the display asking whether, for one more quarter, you want "Super Cycle."

I’m thinking "Yes, yes I would like a Super Cycle because that probably means it’ll be done faster. Like a lightening fast SUPER DUPER WASH CYCLE THAT’S DONE IN A FLASH." No, that’s not what it Super Cycle means.

I means it adds 10 minutes to the wash cycle.

10 minutes.

It’s like 4.5 hours.

But at least I had my iPhone! Did I tell you I bought an iPhone?! Changed my life. Gets you through the tough times, like waiting at the doctor’s office, standing in line at the grocery store, and Super Cycles at the laundromat.

Smartest thing I ever did.

“We are shutting down our 2G network by the end of 2016.” – Your friends at ATT.

And so it begins.

I’ve been a cell phone user since 2008. The crappy kind of cell phone with the capability for only old school texting. The kind where you put only a handful of minutes on it each month for emergency calls. The kind that gets you laughed out of the room if you dare show it to anyone.

I deserve it, though. See, I’m a computing consultant by trade, surrounded by cutting edge technology every second of the day. And yet, I used a ridiculously outdated Nokia that I called my “Playskool phone” because it really was. Actually, even toddlers would point and laugh at it.

But now I have to be dragged into this century kicking and screaming because ATT won’t support my phone anymore. “Come on, Kathy. You can do it. Everybody’s doing it!”

Why have I resisted coming into the smartphone age? For a couple reasons:

1. The cost. I don’t want a new large monthly bill that I will surely have the rest of my life. We’re always trying to cut costs and now we’re negating all that effort.

2. I’m already plugged in everywhere I go, except my car and leisure stuff. Laptop at work, laptop at home, iPad at work and at home. Yup, my iPad is on the nightstand because it’s the last thing I check before calling it a night. I don’t want the last slivers of freedom from technology consumed by yet another device.

Sure, I could just let my 2G Nokia die a natural death and leave it be. Live my life cell-phone free and continue to have people question my sanity.

I was all set to fade into the connection-free abyss until I needed a phone in a bad way last weekend.

After doing steps at a local football stadium with my sister, we went to leave and I discovered my car battery dead.

Luckily, she hadn’t driven away yet and she has a phone. So I called my husband to come with jumper cables, which he did. My sister’s like “GET. A. PHONE. ALREADY.”

The next day my husband dropped me off at a job fair so I could hire a student assistant for the year. I don’t always stay at these fairs for the entire time allotted and didn’t want to tell him to come pick me up at the end. If I wanted to leave early, how would I reach him?

No phone, only email on my iPad. So the poor guy had to keep checking his email from home to see if I sent a “Come get me” message. Ridiculous, I know.

Yeah, I could have asked my table-mate to borrow his phone to make a call home, but then he’d realize I didn’t have one and I’ve had enough people laughing at me this week, thank you.

So here I am in the market for an iPhone and it’s crazy what they cost and how much the monthly bill will be. Part of me thinks I should just get a pay-as-you go Playskool phone again, but the other part sees the value in upgrading to something more full-featured.

When the gal at the ATT store laid it all out for me, I complained about cost at every turn. Data plan, cost of phones, installation fee, taxes, accessories. Even with my discount from work, it’ll cost something like $120/mo for two of us and that’s not including the cost of the phones.

The saleswoman said “Wow, I haven’t seen someone like you in a long time.”

What? Someone who’s disgusting by having to attach myself to a never-ending bill every month for something I wish I didn’t need?

I don’t know. I hate it, but I probably deep down want it. It’s like exercise. It’s good for me, but it costs time and effort. The phones and plan will cost me mucho bucks and freedom from every-waking-minute connectivity. I’m not the sort of person who can disconnect easily.

And so it begins.

My cat Lucky waits for me in the center of the room.

I take this as my cue to put my sneakers on.

I load up my water bottle, move the ottoman out of the way, and prepare two couch blankets in a very specific fashion.

I take the first one and fold it length-wise, then lay it across the couch, smoothing out any wrinkles. Then I take the second blanket and fold that too. I drape it over the couch in a way that creates a tent.

I now have an A-frame house for Lucky, who knows now that he can move to the end table and sit there.

I begin the video.

For the first couple of minutes, Lucky does nothing but observe me, making sure I have good form and that I’m getting into a zone.

After that, he begins pawing at the edge of the top blanket to indicate that he’s now ready to enter his tented house.

There is plenty of room for him to just crawl through the side opening I have carefully created for him, but no. He paws at the blanket because he wants me to stop doing my cardio, go over and pick up the top blanket, pull it back, then wait for him to decide the time is right to enter.

This may take five seconds or it may take a full minute. Meanwhile, I’m losing precious cardio time. I coax him by saying “Come on, Lucky. Who’s a good boy? Lucky’s a good boy! Go on, go in!”

I encourage him as long as it takes, then he slowly makes his way through the tunnel to settle his warm little body into a nice blob under the center of the blanket. I return the top blanket to its position so as to recreate the tent, taut and well-constructed.

Here, he either makes a satisfying little noise or he says nothing.

Either way, I go back to doing the cardio. If this was a day where he said nothing going in, I go back over to the couch and poke him through the blanket until he makes the noise. I don’t know why I do this. I guess for the same reason Lucky has his routine. I have mine.

Halfway through my workout, I ask him how he’s doing – “Lucky! Is he a good boy? Yes! He’s a good boy!”

When I’m done with the video, I go back over and ask him if I did a good job today. He looks at me like he wants to answer. I like to think what he wants to say is “You did a great job, Mommy! And thank you for making my blanket tent a good one today. You’re the best Mommy! Yes, you are!”

I love this routine of ours. I like to make Lucky comfortable each morning because we don’t know how much longer we’ll have him. He’s getting up there in age. I love that he has to have a house tent made for him “just so.” I will do it for him forever and always.

So what do you do for your pets just to make them comfortable?

But do you have a mini junk drawer? A drawer so small that for all intents and purposes is really just decorative. It can’t even fit cutlery. It’s a dumb drawer.

We have one in the kitchen. It’s where my husband Dave and I years ago decided “This is where we shall put all our important receipts and crap. It will protect only crap of the most critical kind. We will never lose anything important if we put it in this ridiculously tiny little drawer.”

And so we did.

Today I cleaned it out because it could finally take no more when I tried putting in a receipt for my cat Lucky’s medication. It cannot handle the addition of a 0.05mm-thick piece of paper.

As I extricated the pile of stuff, the things I realized we were saving got more and more stupid.

• Receipts for any meaningful work we had done on the two cars we don’t even own anymore
• Receipt for a PC our family bought Dad in 2007
• Receipts for carpet cleaning, purchase of a storm door and new mattress and work on our garage door and microwave
• Blood work results for my husband
• Meals on Wheels donation receipt
• Two Sharper Image mini catalogs
• Black and white 35mm film (do kids these days even know what that is?) 
• Said 35mm camera
• A bird feeder warranty (because, you know, they go bad)
• Zinnia “Guaranteed to Grow” flower seeds (2 packs)
• My college transcripts (so that’s where they were!)
• A thank you letter from 2002 for work I did on a client’s PC that crashed (what?)
• Instruction manual for a Motorola pager. A pager!
• Approximately 80,000 screws, nails and cables for unknown things

If this is what I fit into mini junk drawer, you can just imagine what’s in my full-service junk drawer.

The only thing I plan to leave in Tiny Junk Drawer is the meat thermometer. It shall now be known as Meat Thermometer Drawer. At least until we want to save another critically important receipt. Or flower seeds.

So where do you keep all your super duper important things?