Actively Unplugging

            I am wearing a new watch with this amazing feature:  it tells time!  That’s it! 

            I do have an Apple watch, all plugged in and ready to go.  It’s perfectly fine, works great, tracks my every step, my calories, and my heart rate.  It can even do an EKG – and I’ve done numerous ones.  I’m in sinus rhythm!  Yay!

            The Apple watch is a marvel, but what it does basically boils down to two things: First, it keeps me distracted because it goes off constantly.  Every text message, email, Ring doorbell-activating package delivery.  It pulsates on my wrist when I am driving and using the map app, which is helpful and yet intrusive.  It tells me to get up if I’m in danger of not reaching my “stand goal.”  Disturbingly, I now get phantom vibrations on my wrist when I’m not wearing it – just like I get on the right side of my rear end, where my iPhone sits in the pocket of my jeans or shorts.  Those phantom twitches creep me out.  Also spooky:  sometimes when I’m wearing the Apple watch, it just lights up red underneath.  What does it want?  What is it doing to me?

And second, it fills my head with all sorts of data about … well, me.  My steps. My movement.  My standing up.  My screen time – guess what, it keeps going up!  To be fair, that is because my family and I play numerous New York Times games (Wordle, Connections, Strands, the Mini, Letter Boxed, plus I do Sudoku and Tiles) and share our scores – for which I have zero regrets.  My husband, Mark, and I also use the Bible app, which has our online daily reading plan.

But that’s on my iPhone.  Not my Apple watch or iPad, or my Mac.  Yes, I have four devices.  Mark has even more, because he has an extra iPhone for work, a work computer, a laptop, and his home computer, plus his iPad.  When we go on trips, he has multiple navigation systems going at once, because we like to take the back roads.  So there we are trying to take the roads less traveled, even as we use extra technology to do it.  It drives me crazy.

            I have an iPad, and I don’t use it.  Well, actually, I do use it, every night, because I play the White Noise app on it when I sleep.  “Ocean Waves Crashing” is very restful.  But I could give it up – because I also have White Noise app on my phone!  I could just use that!  Now you might say, and you would be right to point it out, that I could just turn on an old-school box fan for white noise.  Well, ha ha, joke’s on you – I have one of those, too!  I use it in addition to the White Noise, so every night we go to sleep with the fan and the ocean!  Country and Western!  It’s like a wind tunnel in the bedroom!  We also have three dogs in there, and two of them snore.  So, I could use the decibel checker on my Apple watch, but I don’t wear it at night.

            Actually, I haven’t worn it for the better part of a week, and I don’t miss it.  In fact, I feel more relaxed because it’s not going off all the time.  It owned me and I didn’t even realize it.  I’m not using the iPad, except as a noise machine, and I could get an actual noise machine.  They still make them.

            I don’t do much with social media anymore, either.  I got off Twitter because it was a time suck.  I kept going down rabbit holes.  I am susceptible to conspiracy theories!  I admit it!  So I cut the cord on that, just quit cold turkey, and got another piece of my life back.

            I don’t know how to use Instagram, except to see what other people post.  Sometimes it goes into “vanish mode,” and I panic.

            I have two websites for my writing:  this one and my men’s health website, vitaljake.com.  I could use social media more effectively – or actually, at all – and boost my posts, and get a lot more traffic, and maybe even monetize the sites (although for the men’s health one, I will never take ads from any health-related products because I don’t want to lose my credibility) – but nobody is breaking down my door with offers.

            I like Facebook, but I hardly ever go on there.  For the same reason: it’s a time suck.  All of a sudden, an hour has gone by, and I have nothing to show for it.  So I steer pretty clear of it.  I know that I miss out on a lot, but I figure if it’s really important, people will call, text, email, or even, crazy thought, send a letter by snail mail.

            I’m unplugging, and it feels great. 

            The world is so much bigger than our little tiny screens.  I have a friend who is a second-grade teacher, and she said that many of her students’ parents are self-involved, on their devices all the time, and they put their kids in front of screens to entertain them.  They don’t help them with their homework, don’t eat together, don’t spend much quality time just hanging out and talking.  These seven-year-old kids even watch screens in the car – either their video games, or cartoons on their phones, or on the DVD screens in front of them.

Everyone loses here.  The kids are missing out, and so are the parents.  I have seen a bunch of articles on the benefits of banning cell phones in the classroom.  Here’s one, but there are plenty if you want to read up on it.  It takes 20 minutes for a child’s brain to refocus after being on the cell phone.

            When my daughter and son-in-law lived in Wyoming, we used to go to Yellowstone a lot.  It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world.  The scenery is truly breathtaking, it’s pristine.  You can see moose, elk, grizzly bears, bison, eagles, wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, owls – wild and often massive animals that just want to live their lives, and if you can respect that, you get the privilege of watching them.   Sadly, a lot of people don’t grasp this concept. That’s because either they have played so many video games that they think they’re in one, or they are just oblivious.  So yes, you can go to Yellowstone and see the Grand Tetons and stunning Alpine lakes and weird, multicolored sulphur pools and geysers, and rivers with trout that the bears are actively trying to catch and eat…

            Or you can watch it on your phone!  While you’re there!  I have walked around Yellowstone and stepped out of the way of oblivious people who aren’t looking at the scenery directly.  They’re looking at it on their screens as they take selfies.  They’re walking backward and holding up their selfie sticks, seeing wildflowers or mountains or giant bison as a backdrop, in their own rear-view mirrors.  They’re literally missing the forest for the trees – except the trees are just images on a screen!  They could be wallpaper on the phone, in the background just like my ocean sounds.  Fake images instead of fake noise. Or maybe you put a soundtrack to it for the next Instagram post.  Hello to all my fans and followers, I’m an influencer and I’m live-Tweeting at Old Faithful!

            I just cannot imagine that I will get to the end of my life and think, “Darn, I just wish I had spent more time on social media!”  Wish I had spent less time talking with the kids!  If I had just put in more screen time, maybe I could have made it past the easy level of Sudoku!  If only I had made more memes and reels!

©Janet Farrar Worthington

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Two Irish Siris

     Due to some Apple software glitch, I have two Siris.  They are both Irish.  I like having Siri with an accent.  For a while, she had a British-Indian accent.  She’s been Australian, and now her Irish relatives are on the job.

            It was going so well.  Irish Siri is cheerful, upbeat, thoughtful:  “Go past these lights, and at the next light, turn right.”  Well, thank you, Siri, because I couldn’t tell if I was supposed to get on the bypass here or up the road a bit.  I really appreciate it!

            We have just moved back to our former hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia.  A lot of it is familiar, but it’s grown a lot, too, so I’ve been getting GPS help from Irish Siri when I have to go someplace.

            One day, I about spilled my to-go tea.  “Starting route to —,” wherever I was going.   But it wasn’t my happy Irish Siri.  It was depressed Irish Siri, her voice about an octave lower, talking slower.  It was brusque Siri.  Glum Siri.  Eeyore from “Winnie the Pooh” Siri.  “In 500 feet, turn right.”  She might as well have added:   “If you even want to go there.  That place has really gone downhill.”  Heavy sigh.  “Nothing stays the same, you know that?”

            Gone was the “We can get there together!” positive Siri.  Then, for the next few trips, happy Siri was back.  Then, depressed Siri was back.  Sometimes during the same trip, we would have one Siri for a few directions, and then the other.

            It’s optimistic “Marian, Madame Librarian” versus “The Sadder but Wiser Girl” in “The Music Man.”  I never know who I’m going to get.  It’s like living with an alcoholic.  “I hope Siri is having a good day today.”  I get in the car and my face looks like a grimace emoji.  Please be happy Irish Siri!  I take nothing for granted anymore.

            Sad Irish Siri is disillusioned.  She is a smoker.  She goes to the pub by herself, and always sits in the same booth.  No one else ever sits there.  “Jameson.  Start a tab.”  Who hurt you, Siri?  Who broke your heart?  I’m here if you want to talk.

            “Stay in the middle lane and continue onto Garth Road.”

             Happy Siri wears her hair in a perky ponytail.  She gets up and runs two miles every morning.  She volunteers at the senior center.  She’s saving up for a Vespa.  She’s been step dancing for twelve years.  Animals and children love her.   She always has fresh flowers in her house, which she picks from the cottage garden she has grown in her little front yard. She has a picket fence.  Birds land on her outstretched hand.   Her boyfriend is a firefighter.

            “In half a mile, turn right.  Do what you want.  I don’t even care.  What’s the point?  It’s one trip closer to death.“

            “You’re taking this stuff to Goodwill, but you just bought more crap.  It’s the circle of crap.  Nobody even wants it.  They’re going to throw it away as soon as you drive off.  You didn’t even get the tax receipt.”  Depressed Siri put on twenty pounds during Covid.  Her roots need serious touch-up work.

            “All that stuff you bought? It will just be a burden for your kids to deal with when you die.”

            “That guy cut you off!  Men, am I right?  They’re all the same!  God, I hate this bra.”

            Sunny Siri wants to help.  “I could go with you to Victoria’s Secret if you’d like.  Maybe some new bras would brighten your day.  I also have a discount code for 20 percent off!”

            There is silence.  “And we could go smell the new candles at Bath and Body Works.”

            “It hasn’t been the same since they got rid of Cucumber Melon.  Everything good comes to an end.”

            “Sometimes they bring it back!  Along with White Citrus!  There’s always hope!”

            This is a lot.  This is rough.  I just want to take my dog, Daisy, to the groomer and need to know how to get there.  I need Siri to be on point!  At the top of her game!  Rerouting me around areas of heavy traffic!

            I went online for answers, and found a Mac forum discussion entitled, “Weird Siri Voice Changes.”  Someone said:  “Has anyone had any issues with Siri in the recent update?”  This person also had Irish Siri.  Most of the time, as with my Siri, she was her usual effervescent self.  “Occasionally, though, I will get feedback in a much more robotic, synthesized version of the voice.  Did Apple change Siri to use a more monotonous voice when performing on-device functions outside the internet?”  (As I said, this was a Mac forum, aka nerd city.)

            Someone else replied:  “What seemed to resolve this for me was going back to the Siri voice selection, and then selecting the voice again and making sure that it downloaded the high-resolution version of the voice.” Someone else chimed in; a different Apple update, the same problem.  “It was very annoying.”  Another person said the changed Siri sounded “dour.”

            “Yeah.  Whatever.  It’s five o’clock somewhere.” 

            Dour Siri has actually agreed to go to the mall with cheerful Siri.  Fortunately, they don’t need directions.  I gave them money to go to Starbucks.  Not the pub!  Don’t you take her to the pub, happy Siri!   Even if it’s Shepherd Pie night!  No more Guinness!  No Jameson!  No Boilermakers!  “I won’t!  Don’t worry!  She doesn’t need the carbs.”

            I told them to take the long way home.  Drive around a little.  The peace and quiet will be worth it.

© Janet Farrar Worthington

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Trying Times

It’s a spit storm right now, people!  We’re right in the thick of it, and several things can happen in these trying times:

 

We can freak out.  Well, I think the current national coronavirus toilet paper shortage is evidence that this has occurred.  Good news:  we’re a nation of wipers!  So, there’s that.  The extreme is, we’re hunkered in our bunker (go ahead, feel free to use that as your next album title), with that black grease paint that football players put under their eyes to cut down the glare, or maybe face camo, looking at our stockpile of canned goods, pasta boxes, and mountain of toilet paper and hand sanitizer, and waiting for somebody to come try and take it.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want that!

 

We can be mean to each other.  There’s been plenty of that, too.  I live in a wonderful town called Prescott, up high in the mountains of Arizona.   The people here are almost always nice to each other.  They’re good people, and I will never, ever forget how tens of thousands of us turned out when the 19 firefighters from Prescott who died battling a horrific wildfire were brought back home.  People lined the streets, sitting for hours and just waiting for the hearses, accompanied by fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars.  They had flags and signs, but it was far from festive.  People were quiet and respectful, and grieving.  It was 19 of our own who died keeping the rest of us safe, and it was one of the most painful, raw, and hard-even-to-fathom things we ever went through.  But we did it, and the whole town came together.

 

That said, something really weird happens when these same people get on the Prescott Facebook page (and I have to do whatever the opposite of a shout-out – a shame-out? – to the moderators of that page; they could put a stop to it, but they don’t).  People are nasty.  They use the F word.  They insult people who post.  They love to hate on any of the vast tide of people fleeing the insanity and unlivability of California who have dared to move here for a better life.  When a new business opens, they give it bad reviews, instead of being glad that somebody felt strongly enough about this town and felt committed to offering something that might make it better and wanted to open up a new restaurant, or store, or food truck.  It’s really crummy.  I know this kind of online meanness and troll behavior happens a lot of places, but it really gets me.  It shouldn’t happen here.  But it does.

 

These same people also morph from the nice Dr. Jekyll, who lived to help his fellow man, into the awful Mr. Hyde when they go to Costco.  On a good day!  When all is well in the world, they block or even bump people with their carts, ace each other out for food samples, and just generally act like gluttons.  In the parking lot, showing no consideration for any other human, they rudely hold up a whole row for 10 minutes or more to get a good parking space.  That ain’t right.  Unless you need a handicapped spot, park a little further away and walk off the samples you’re about to pig out on, for God’s sake!  Burn a calorie or two!

 

Now that it’s all hit the fan, the Costco crowd has gotten even uglier.  Costco should have stopped the person who bought an entire pallet of toilet paper – either a hoarder or a scalper.  Safeway should have said no to the individual who filled three shopping carts with toilet paper.  I know, hindsight is 20-20, but if there had been some limits, maybe people wouldn’t be stealing the toilet paper from public restrooms, including at the hospital, where they’re also stealing masks and hand sanitizer.  My husband, Mark, texted me a picture yesterday of zero toilet paper in the endoscopy unit.  That is low, people!

 

We can feed despair.  Can’t stop reading the news?  You’re not alone.  Can’t stop worrying?  Join the club.  The more you read, the more you get those dopamine hits, the more your brain and body feed off the anxiety and respond with stress.

 

But panic, fear, and despair aren’t going to help anything.   In fact, the opposite:  they’re just going to hurt us.

 

So, what can we do?  We can start by being nice.  I have awesome neighbors, and I told them that if it gets really bad, we can make neighborhood soups!  Even if we eat it separately while social distancing.  I highly recommend the children’s book, Stone Soup.  It’s based on an old French tale about hungry soldiers who trick greedy, suspicious townspeople to contribute some of the ingredients they’ve been hoarding to make a delicious soup that everybody ends up enjoying.  Everybody kicked in a little, and it was great.

 

We can work together.  Even if we’re social-distancing and self-quarantining, we still have technology that lets us talk to each other.  Even without technology, people are making a difference.  Who hasn’t seen people on lockdown in their apartments in Italy, singing and dancing together on their balconies?  Who hasn’t watched, with tears streaming down your face, the magnificent tenor serenading the sunset on his balcony?  Okay, maybe that was just me bawling, but still:  there’s got to be something nice you can do for someone else today, even if it’s just picking up the phone to make sure a neighbor is doing okay.

 

We can have faith.  I should have put this one first, because it’s really the key to the whole benefits program, as Peter Falk said in my favorite movie, “The In-Laws” (the 1979 original with Alan Arkin!  It was sacrilege to do a remake, just putting that out there.)  We are supposed to have hope, and it starts with faith.  There have always been trying times – like World War II, or the Great Depression, or the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, or the American Civil War, with its 620,000 casualties.  And those are just the fairly recent ones!  Every generation has awful things happen.  But people get through it.  They KPO “Keep Plodding On,” as Winston Churchill said.  (He also said “Keep Buggering On,” but not in polite company.) As the Roman Stoic philosopher, Seneca, said, “vivere militare est.”  To live is to fight.  You have to fight!  Not with somebody else, ideally, but fight against hopelessness.  Fight for hope, and fight for courage, and fight for kindness.

 

We actually turn out better with a little adversity; it makes us stronger.  What’s my proof?  Every spoiled rotten kid or bratty adult you ever met who either never had to work for anything, or never had anyone use the word “no.”  Also, my proof is a field trip I took with my son, Josh, to the University of Arizona’s Biosphere when he was in the fourth grade.  The biosphere is its own microenvironment, complete with a mini-forest, all enclosed and protected from the elements.  I saw an acacia tree, and asked why it had stakes holding it up.  It turns out that trees need wind.  Trees that live outside, where there’s wind, get stronger, to keep themselves up.  Their wood changes; it’s the tree version of developing abs and core strength.  I found a nice article about it if you want to read more. Trees that grow up without wind are weaker and more likely to flop over or snap at a big gust.

 

If you’re a Christian, you may be familiar with what the Apostle Paul had to say about trying times, or tribulations, in Romans 5:  “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope.

 

We can listen.  A lot of people are scared, worried, and afraid – if not of getting the actual pandemic itself, of not having child care since all the schools are closed, so the parents can go to work.  Afraid of not being able to pay the rent, because their business has closed.  They need somebody to talk to.  Maybe we can help, too:  go pick up groceries or a prescription for someone who’s older or high-risk.

 

Little things matter more than ever right now.  It may not seem like it, but your day will be better if you get up and get dressed.  Make your bed.  I am a big fan of the FlyLady, who helps people get organized and establish simple routines.  Her first tip: get dressed to shoes.  If you have your shoes on, you’re ready to do anything.  It’s just a little bit of armor to help you face the day – like putting on lipstick.  Her next tip:  clean out your kitchen sink.  Your counter may be cluttered, your life may be a mess, but by golly, if your kitchen sink is clean and not full of dirty dishes and old food, the world looks just that little bit better.  What little things can you do for yourself to help you face the world?  I hope you think of some things and do them!

 

This Saturday night, when we have our regular church service, I will be one of just a few people there.  That’s because church is closed, and we will be live-streaming the service on Facebook.  I play piano in the band, and this week, I will be singing with my dear friend, Leigh, one of our favorite songs:  “Take Up Your Spade,” by Sara Watkins.  The last verse is, “Give thanks, for all that you’ve been given.  Give thanks, for who you can become.  Give thanks, for each moment and every crumb.  Take up your spade and break ground.”

 

It’s bad right now.  But we can help each other get through it.  Take up your spade and break ground.

 

© Janet Farrar Worthington

 

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Woman of Letters

I used to write letters all the time. I had a pen pal in England. I wrote letters to relatives, to friends from out of state, to President Richard Nixon – long before Watergate, and he sent me black-and-white prints from his trip to China. It was no big deal. I would just sit down, dash one off, pop a stamp on there and send it out.

What happened? Now, I crank out e-mails like nobody’s business, but they’re usually pretty short. I’m a fast typist, so basically, I just think and the letters instantly appear on the screen.

Maybe that’s the problem. It is so easy to sit there and type, and click send. These days, for some reason, I find it unbelievably arduous to pick up a pen and apply it to paper. It’s like the pen is made of lead and I’m moving in slow motion, weighed down like one of those sponge divers, tied to the boat with a rope and holding a heavy rock as ballast. Oh, the effort! Can’t… go… on…much… longer…

In shame, I have resorted to Christmas cards that are mainly just a photo, thinking that even though I probably won’t – who am I kidding, I know I won’t – have it in me to write a newsy update to go with each card… Maybe, just maybe, I could manage to lift a pen and sign our family’s names.

Yet even that pitiful effort becomes tormented. Each year, I usually send less than half of what I’ve ordered, which in itself is some ambition-free, low-ball number.

            I am so lame.

This is a shame, because there has never been such an abundance of lovely letter-writing products available to me. I love to look at the American Stationery catalog. Embossed, heavy stock, beautiful linings for envelopes, monograms, piping, cards, notepaper, personalized everything – you name it, they can do it, and make it look classy and elegant. I even bought a fountain pen, thinking – well, I don’t know, I guess hoping to get inspired by looking at the nib, or something.

This year, once again I purchased lovely Christmas photo cards (with hardly any room for text, and a lovely gold liner for the envelope). Sadly, I don’t even want to use those anymore because I have now lost 16 pounds and the photo was taken on Thanksgiving Day after a huge meal (note to self, don’t ever do that again!) and pre-diet, so I look at myself and think of one of the floats in the Macy’s parade; also, “pumpkin pie bloat.”

On a whim, I also bought some beautiful non-holiday stationery. Note cards, actually; I didn’t want to get too ambitious and then have my few words look even smaller on a large field of paper.   They are very elegant.

I look at them and imagine myself, like Jane Austen or anyone in any of her books, sitting down at an elegant writing desk and attending to my morning correspondence. Or maybe as Donna Reed, writing thank you notes or letters to distant aunts, or sending invitations to my next bridge party or luncheon. I don’t have bridge parties or luncheons, either, by the way. Or dinner parties, which my parents used to have a lot when I was a kid.

Mark and I love the 1979 movie (not the recent remake!), “The In-Laws,” and we quote from it a lot. In one scene, Vince Ricardo, played by Peter Falk, is talking to his son, Tommy, and says, “Remember when we used to play ball on Nagel Avenue?” Tommy tells him that, in fact, they never actually played ball on Nagel Avenue, but “We talked about playing ball on Nagel Avenue.”

Well, we talk about entertaining. We don’t actually do it. We talk about having our neighbors over; we’ve got great neighbors, and it would be a nice thing to do. But we don’t ever pull the trigger and have a cookout, or even go buy food somewhere and put it in our own dishes and pretend like we made it.

I don’t know why. Is the world that much more stressful than it used to be – so much so that when we’re not working, when we’re all home, we just want to nest there and decompress and not do much?

I talk about writing letters.

Maybe it’s lack of muscle memory. I type so much more often than I write. When I was an English major at Vanderbilt, we took tests in blue books. None of it was multiple choice; it was all essays. I remember writing up a storm for every test.  Side tidbit: because I’m left-handed, I would always get that telltale coating of blue or black ink on the side of my left hand, too, because it’s a right-handed world and right-handed people don’t have to sweep their hands across the words they’ve just written and smudge their ink. But I digress. Back in the day, I could write all day and it was fine; it was just something I did.

Now, because it’s not just something I routinely do but I want it to be, I am making the effort. I have written three letters so far on my beautiful stationery. Whoo! Shoot up a flare!

Or maybe, hold your applause. I’m not penning hefty epistles, mind you; in fact, the best word to describe them might be “brief.” Or maybe “concise.” But it’s a start.

Funny thing: I’m kind of enjoying the exercise itself – sitting down, composing my thoughts and trying to put them down coherently.

It’s more thoughtful than just fast-typing or worse, shooting an emoji at someone because I’m too lazy to use words at all.

I don’t know how this year’s Christmas cards are going to go. I don’t want to get ahead of myself; it’s still an effort, and I don’t think the postal service is going to be complaining about the extra work of delivering my voluminous correspondence. I’m not going to be signing up for any pen pal programs. But if you write me a letter, there’s a fairly good chance I will actually write you back – a few words, at least.

© Janet Farrar Worthington

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The Human Comedy

At 6:30 this morning, I was standing in the kitchen, dying laughing. Usually, I’m barely functioning at this time of the day, walking around like an old person, with a righteous bed head, just trying to make myself some iced tea so the caffeine can get in there and help me function.

But when the alarm went off today, I was in the middle of the craziest dream. And so here I was, trying to convey to my husband, Mark, the true hilarity of it – at least, it seemed like a laff riot to me. I was with my old boss at the Public Affairs office at Johns Hopkins. We were filming a commercial for the Department of Neurology, for which I am currently writing a book. A young Dan Ackroyd was there on camera. I could see the cue cards he was reading. With his best huckster voice, he was hard-selling something, and putting down the competition: “That’s nothing but pink sweevum, folks!” And when he said this odd word, he drew it out, like “sooey,” and his voice went up in pitch. The cue card spelled the word phonetically. I know this, because the first thing I did (after I got some caffeine in me) was write it down: “SOOOOEEVUM.”

I have no idea what this word is – I’m pretty sure it is not actually a word at all – but I kept saying it and cracking myself up.

It’s pretty nice to start your day with a laugh.

I think, the older I get, the more I appreciate Uncle Albert from “Mary Poppins.” Maybe you remember him, played by Ed Wynn, floating around near the ceiling, because laughter made him lighter than air. “I love to laugh,” he sang, “Loud and long and clear. I love to laugh. It’s getting worse every year!”

This is the opposite of what’s happening in our world right now. I think there are an awful lot of people who read the news and then their brain goes, “Hate, hate, hate.” Then maybe they get on social media, write nasty posts, get more fired up, and their brain goes, “Hate a whole lot, hate even more, grr.” It’s like eating something fried, putting ranch dressing on it, getting terrible heartburn, and then eating ghost peppers, and getting worse heartburn and maybe even fiery diarrhea. This is self-inflicted, people! It’s Orwellian. Seriously, in 1984, George Orwell wrote about the Two-Minute Hate, where every day, the whole society of Oceania had to watch a film that ginned up hatred for their enemies, and then express that hatred for precisely two minutes. This, in Orwell’s view, was hellish. In my view, this is what a lot of us are doing every day, for a lot longer than two minutes.

One of my relatives was a wonderful person. I loved her very much. But man, did she enjoy battling her enemies. She’d get all riled up about something, and then write letters, go to meetings, and just talk about whatever it was. Her face would get all red. My dad used to say “She runs on acid.”

I think the world runs on acid right now.

            I don’t want to run on acid. So, in my own way, I rebel.

On Facebook for instance, I don’t do anything political. I just won’t. All I post is either stuff about work (rarely), pictures of my family (also not very often), and terrible puns. I know they’re terrible! That’s why I do it. I just want to make somebody smile, and maybe inspire my friends to come up with bad puns of their own. That’s all I want to do.

I also look for the humor whenever I can. Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t laugh at people; I’m laughing with them. There is an expression, “the human comedy,” although I saw a movie with that title, set in World War II with Mickey Rooney and Van Johnson, and oh, man! What a downer! So it’s not that particular human comedy.

My pastor’s favorite movie is “Pollyanna.” It is a wonderful movie, in which Hayley Mills looks for the good in people and finds it.

Well, I look for the humor, and I often find it. I don’t even deliberately try, but things just strike me as funny. I can usually find something that makes just about any situation seem not so bad. Again, don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to be yukking it up over a school shooting, or natural disaster, or bad medical diagnosis. Too many things in this world are just plain painful, or horrifying, or heartbreaking. Of course I know that.

There are a lot of things in this world that make me cry. But I laugh when I can.

For instance: A couple weeks ago, I was in the doctor’s office, waiting for a routine visit. I sat there for 45 minutes waiting for my appointment, which took all of five minutes. I had brought a book, but the people-watching was so good, it was kind of like a dinner theater, without anything to eat. Or drink. But really, it was like a show.

A lady came in, and said out loud for the benefit of the entire waiting room: “I’m late, I’m late.” Not only that, but she said it in this creepy singsong, little-girl voice. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. She continued, still for the benefit of the whole room: “First, I had to get rid of the satellite TV installer. My doggie didn’t like him.” If you’ve ever seen the movie, “The In-Laws,” with Alan Arkin and Peter Falk, you may remember one scene where Alan Arkin, who plays a dentist named Sheldon, is just appalled at something, and he has one palm on each side of his face and his mouth wide open; he just can’t take it in. I sat there and thought about Sheldon. But not for too long…

… because about one minute later came another woman, who had the stage presence of Elaine Stritch, the Broadway grand dame. She was moving extremely slowly with her cane, and she stopped in the doorway and announced, “The mechanical door does not stay open nearly long enough.” But she said “dwoah,” and “lwong” with a New York accent. Just a captivating entrance. Bette Davis caliber.

And then, immediately after her – I don’t know if he was with her, or was a party of one – came an older guy, who said all in one run-on sentence: “There are plenty of places to sit but not anywhere to lie down and that’s what I really want to do is lie down.” He kind of reminded me of Mr. Carlin, one of psychologist Bob Hartley’s patients on “The Bob Newhart Show.” The nurse came at that point and called me back; I kind of hated to leave.

On the way home, on Willow Creek Road, our local version of a racetrack, this guy tailgated me in the left lane. I moved to the right lane, he gunned it and dramatically passed me. I then moved back to the left of him into a turn lane, and as fast as he had gone, we were sitting side by side at the red light. He turned his face away from me – yes, it is awkward, isn’t it, when you ostentatiously pass someone and then they catch up to you – but I could see his hands on the steering wheel. He was wearing driving gloves. I laughed. Clearly, if I had seen his face, I would have seen Dick Dastardly from the old cartoon show, Wacky Races. “Curses, foiled again!”

A lot of hassles in this world are nothing but pink sweevum, folks.

© Janet Farrar Worthington

 

 

 

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Hey, Technology! Stop Bugging Me!

It’s the start of the New Year, and I’m already stressed out – mainly due to constant harassment from technology. “Oh, really?” you may sneer. “Well, why not just turn it off?” It’s not that easy, buddy. Trust me. Here are just a few examples:

My phone: I’m tired of Apple constantly saying that my recently updated phone is not finished being set up because I haven’t done Apple Pay. I don’t want Apple Pay. If I wanted Apple Pay, I would have set it up. But it keeps asking. Stop bugging me!

My dishwasher: I don’t know why; I can’t explain it, but I feel just feel pure outrage and violation when the light comes on my dishwasher saying I need more rinse agent. I just filled it up! I bought a huge bottle of Jet Dry at WalMart. But why do they even sell a huge bottle of it? It should come in a little ampule and an eyedropper, because that’s all the dishwasher holds! But wait – there’s more! It takes a nasty turn. My “smart” dishwasher punishes me if I run out of Jet Dry by making the cycle 15 minutes longer. How dare this machine do this to me? Who’s in charge here? So I put in another micro-alloquot of rinse agent, all this expensive “smart” machine will hold. The dishwasher is pleased with the sacrifice. The digital readout that tells me how long it will theoretically take to wash my dishes – it actually never takes as long as it says – goes back to 2:15 instead of 2:30.

I don’t want my dishwasher to be smart. I want my dishwasher to be a dumbass.

My car: I get crap from my car, too. God forbid if I have to haul something like – oh, I don’t know, just say for a random example, eight feet of floorboard molding from Home Depot. It won’t quite fit. My car, Magnus – it’s a Highlander, so we gave him a name that would be appropriate for kilt wear – starts beeping. He starts out by just being pushy. Then he gets annoying. Then he gets the Red Mist – he quickly moves into rage at being ignored – and the beeping becomes increasingly louder and, frankly, unbearable.

I’m just trying to get home. I have the back door tied down. That’s not good enough.

I looked online, and there is no way to make it stop making this noise. Because it thinks it knows best. (I could stick some cardboard in the door latch, but that might mess it up, and besides, who carries around cardboard?)

The reason for this is that the arrogant designers – the same pompous, smug presumption we see all the time from Apple, which harasses you to update your phone, and then won’t let you actually update it (which I do, just to make it shut up) until you hit the “agree” button, agreeing to God knows what – don’t think I’m an adult who can actually make quite rational decisions, and that I shouldn’t be allowed to drive if the back door is not shut.

There’s a lot of that.

Guess why I don’t have a smart watch? I don’t want some machine telling me I haven’t exercised enough, or slept well. Duh! No poop, Sherlock! I know I haven’t slept well! I was there!   I know I haven’t exercised enough! Happy now? Now? I already have the health app on my Apple phone. I can’t make it go away. It won’t be deleted. If I could put my phone on the washing machine and have it think I was exercising more, I would. Just to make it shut up. I do what I can. Isn’t that enough for you, Apple?

Landline phone calls: I’m tired of robo calls with fake people. I got two this morning, both from spoofed local numbers, so it looked like someone from my town was calling me.

Some innocent-sounding, high-pitched female voice says, “Hello, can you hear me?”   I know what you want, you evil spammer robot hag. You want me to say “Yes,” so you can use that as taped permission to open some account in my name. I always just hang up.

“Hi, this is Angela from credit card services.” Hi, Angela. You’re a robot. Take a long walk off a short pier. Click.

Email: I’m tired of websites saying “We’ve missed you!” when I JUST MADE A PURCHASE. Literally, yesterday, I just bought something, with the 20 percent off and free shipping that you offered. What do you want from me, Williams Sonoma? Pottery Barn, cut me some freaking slack! Dillards, Nordstrom, Victoria’s Secret, Bath and Body Works – you’re downright needy. Amazon, I don’t even like myself for buying stuff from you, because I feel like I’m hurting actual retailers – except they don’t sell all the stuff that I can buy from you. Stop bugging me! I’ll come crawling back, the next time I’m looking for something I can’t get here in town.

It’s gotten to where, if I had any sense of humor left, I would laugh when I saw an email from a store with the words, “Last chance!” No, it’s not. Something else will go on sale tomorrow.

And frankly, I don’t need anything.

I Do Not Need Anything.  It’s important to realize this.

TV:  HGTV sells dissatisfaction, disguised as serenity and happiness and shiplap. I love HGTV, don’t get me wrong. But you know why all those made-over homes and rooms look so beautiful? First of all, it’s because they decluttered!  They’re crap-free!  More than anything, that’s what makes your home look good. That, and a coat of paint.

Get rid of all the clutter, and any place is going to look more Zen. Add a houseplant, paint the walls a lovely shade of white, and boom, it’s already more serene. But who can live like that? If I really followed HGTV’s advice, I wouldn’t have books double-stacked on my shelves. I would have just a handful, hard cover, matched by color, and maybe a nice Mason jar tealight candle. Actually, in Country Living magazine, I saw books placed on shelves BACKWARDS, so you couldn’t read the spine! It looked more restful that way. WHAT THE HELL! Hey, I want to read a book: I like this one. It has a nice width! Said no one ever.

Charities: I’m tired of pushy charities. If I make a donation out of a burst of goodwill to an organization, I wish I had as much money as I really don’t want to get envelopes in the mail with the words, “Your Account,” or “Membership Statement Enclosed.” I’m not a member! I just made a freaking donation! We don’t have a relationship! I’m sorry I ever gave you money in the first place!

One organization, which shall remain nameless but is located in upper New York State, has a bird app that is really cool. My son, Josh, loves it. I downloaded the app and from the get-go started getting online appeals to Save the Birds. I made a donation and thought, “Good, I’ve done my part.” Wrong! The emails doubled down! “Triple Match Alert! Give now and a donor will not just double, but triple your gift!” Emails several times a week, sometimes daily.

No! I’m not the dang bank machine.

Bah, humbug! And it’s not even Christmas!

© Janet Farrar Worthington

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Beauty with a Side of Fashion

You know why I look so good in my makeup mirror? The lighting. Whoever figured out that bright, whitish lights, coming from below, produce flawless skin and just generally make the world a better place was a genius.

Light from below, you say? Like Lon Chaney or Boris Karloff, or Severus Snape in Harry Potter? No, of course not! Don’t be ridiculous! A flashlight put directly under the chin makes anyone look spooky and awful. That’s not what I’m talking about at all.

All I’m wondering is why they don’t have light like that everywhere.

Restaurants! Who needs candlelight? Just beauty-light me, and I’ll sail through dinner with confidence and poise!

Department stores! Ka-ching, ka-ching! Glorious beauty lighting makes everything look good! Your customers will be more likely to buy things instead of putting them back and skulking away in shame. Or maybe that’s just me…

Instead, dressing rooms are so very dreary, with hideous fluorescent light that imparts a greenish, bilious skin tone, invents or highlights bags under the eyes, gives you cellulite where you don’t actually have any, adds 20 pounds, and just generally makes you look like crap.

Let me just take a moment to say that when I was a kid, we used to shop at Sears and when that Wish Book came in the mail around Thanksgiving, I immediately stopped everything, lay on my stomach on the living room rug and read that thing cover to cover. I dog-eared numerous pages of things I didn’t even want – like sheets! Just because they showed a pretty canopy bed with matching pillows and beautiful bedspreads. They really knew how to make stuff look tempting and good.

But now? Fuggetaboutit. Walk into Sears and, first of all, at least in the Sears stores I have ventured into and quickly escaped over the last decade, there’s the dead silence. Pipe in some cheery music! Then there are the grocery carts. And zero sales clerks in the individual departments; they’re at centralized checkout stations that exude the efficiency and joy of Eastern Europe in the Cold War. I remember when people used to be clerks in one department, like lingerie, or hardware, or children’s shoes, and that’s all they did for years. They were experts, and the best of them knew you and your whole family. It was their career.

Shopping carts in a department store! What moron came up with that idea? When I go buy clothes, I don’t want to be pushing around a grocery cart. Maybe the big idea is something like: “Give people a cart and they’ll fill it up.” If I want a cart, I’ll go to Walmart, and buy some canned goods or cleaning products while I’m there.

No. Mall stores should spend their money on better things – like vacuuming the bleak, depressing carpet in the dressing rooms. In a lot of them, it’s dingy and stained, too. And who hasn’t been simply minding his or her own business, trying on clothes, and stepped on a straight pin? That’s a mood-killer. The worst was in a mall in Baltimore, where they actually had to put up signs asking people not to change their baby’s diapers and/or go to the bathroom in the dressing rooms. What is the thinking process there? One stall’s pretty much like any other? No, see, one actually HAS PLUMBING.

Misuse of the dressing rooms aside, I feel that many retail stores are out of touch, and this is a shame. I grew up going to the mall. I love malls – when, that is, they’re full of life and people and not dismal, half-empty shells with boarded-up windows from stores that have folded. We have a really nice mall here in Prescott, but the genius owners imposed rents that were too high, and stores couldn’t stay there. Many have folded. Right after we moved in, the Barnes & Noble folded, and it broke my heart. I can’t tell you how inexpressibly sad it was to see it empty – and then how much sadder it was, for me at least, to see it with the walls painted black for an indoor lunar mini-golf course, which that space briefly became.

Books are sacred. Bookstores are, too. To lose one is like saying goodbye to a friend.   The remaining merchants at our little mall are trying so hard to hang on, and many of us here in town are shopping there and rooting for it to come back. J.C. Penneys and Dillards seem to be doing well, and amazingly, we just got a Sephora.

I love Dillards and although we don’t have one here in town, I love Nordstrom. I get emails from both all the time with suggestions “just for me.”   These are not good suggestions! Here are some fashion trends these stores recently suggested for me in emails:

“Romantic bodysuit.” As in, crotch snaps. No, thanks. I did that in the 70s, and they never stayed snapped. True story: I was not a svelte child. My mom enrolled me in a ballet class and she bought me a leotard, but she didn’t realize that it was actually a body suit. Every time I moved around too much, snap, snap… Not good.

“High-waist jeans.” No! The only trend worse than this would be, “high-waist jeans with PLEATS and peg legs.” Designed to give you the shape of a bowling pin.

“Menswear details.” This one sounds possible… Kathryn Hepburn pulled off that look all the time. But this particular menswear detail they’re showing me is a shoe that looks like something the Pilgrims might have worn, with a high chunk heel, except with a fringe tassel instead of a large buckle. And it’s metallic gold! Hello, Rust-Oleum!

“Bell sleeves.” Three inches longer than my hands, guaranteed to get in any plate of food. Not recommended for eating biscuits and gravy, maple syrup, spaghetti, or soup.

“Giant gaps between the sleeve and shoulder.” I don’t actually know what these shirts are called, but they look stupid and if I were to get one and wear it often, people would say, “There she is again in that shirt with the big holes in the shoulders.”

“Flare-leg jumpsuit.” No. Whom do they think they’re dealing with here? I lived through the Seventies! I was there, Gandalf! Yes, it looks great and dramatic, very Diana Rigg as Mrs. Peel.   Imagine yourself wearing it… and then having to use a Port-o-Pot, or a public restroom. Maybe one with an under-sized stall, the kind where you have to take your purse off your shoulder so you can turn around and get the door closed, and you end up holding it because you don’t want to set it down because there’s moisture on the floor, and/or something worse: grossness. Ugh. See, with a jumpsuit, unless they come up with a Union suit-type butt flap, you’re out of luck if you have to go. You can’t just lower the pants only. The whole thing has to come down. Not good.

And yet, I also realize that today, we don’t make enough of an effort to be beautiful at all times. Not like they did way back when. Even the pioneers looked better than I do half the time: I know this because I’ve seen Fess Parker’s wife, Rebecca Boone, played by Patricia Blair on the old TV show, “Daniel Boone,” and even though it was back in the early 1800s, she managed to keep her hair sprayed, her updo looking smooth, and her false eyelashes on straight.

Similarly, “Big Valley,” late 1800s in Stockton, California: Barbara Stanwyck and Linda Evans managed to convey “respectable gentry” with their turtlenecks, bolero jackets, and blue eye shadow. And they didn’t even have electricity! Shame on us looking less than our best, with all our modern conveniences! We need to try harder, ladies!

But not too hard. I say this with love to Hallmark. I love Hallmark Channel movies, but somebody needs to do an intervention and dial back the hair dye on the men and women in their mystery movies. That’s about all I’m going to say on that, but just look at it sometime. The hair is way too dark on many of the people in Hallmark Land.

They just need to go back to the basics, and focus on the one thing that makes everyone look good: Beauty lighting.

© Janet Farrar Worthington

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