Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Author Archives: kayewer

• Party Food Frenzy

  Posted at 1:56 am by kayewer, on July 26, 2015

  This week my office had food brought in two days in a row. I picked a bad week to start my diet. There is never a good week, because food is an evil you cannot totally exorcise from your life, and it’s everywhere. At office events, it often finds itself in your face for eight straight hours. Eventually it winds up in your gut and turns into astronomical numbers on your bathroom scale.

  Contact centers (or phone banks, if you will) are sitting job parking lots and hotbeds of obesity. Workers are tethered to their cubicles receiving phone calls, and not all of them are from happy people. When you get a break, you pee and eat. That’s probably written in the guidebook of contact center life somewhere. Until we can take customer phone calls and walk 10,000 steps at the same time, that’s just how it is.

  Our company has been encouraging camaraderie by having a monthly themed event (the theme named by committee) every Tuesday, and this month’s happened to fall on the same Tuesday as a sales commission event, which also is primed and pumped regularly by the delivery of food. We moved our event to Wednesday, which explains the abundance of food in my office for two straight days.

  Our themed event for Wednesday had a patriotic theme and included hot dogs. For the Tuesday event, we had Italian food delivered by a fine establishment about ten minutes away. They came with huge trays of baked ziti and chicken parmesan, warm inviting loaves of garlic bread and enough salad that, even if only the vegetarians were working that day, they would have been ecstatic. My diet told me to behave myself, so I did.

  Unfortunately we had seriously over-ordered for the event, and when the afternoon delivery came for the next shift, we looked like a Vegas buffet with a mile of food wafting the sweet smells of cheese and tomatoes and garlic around the department. When I left at 5:00, we could still have fed an army of Minions.

  The next day, somebody broke the news to me that some of the food was wasted after the night was over, and that a fridge on the next floor is almost always empty and it could have been used to store the leftovers. They did salvage the salad. It went over like the holy grail of salad with the hot dogs, especially for the vegetarians. In fact, all the food was well received and consumed with gusto.

  I caved and ate. It’s bad enough to be seated in a corner away from the general population and separated by a huge wall right out of “Game of Thrones,” but when people don’t see you participating, they tend to forget you exist or that you are human.

  So I’m trying to make up for it the rest of the week by not eating like a human and trying to forget that I have a sitting job. Sure would’ve liked to try that chicken parmesan, though.

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• Missing the Green

  Posted at 1:15 am by kayewer, on July 19, 2015

  A couple of my plants have died. Granted, they were grocery store cheap African violets, but I do miss their comforting colors and lively presence on the windowsill. There are still four left, along with a temperamental cactus and a megalomaniacal philodendron.

  I managed to save one violet which had become rotted somehow and detached from the rest of its base roots: it’s sitting in a cup of water with a dozen blooms on it as we speak. I fear putting it in soil will kill it.

  Another plant did the same thing, and I have it floating in a shallow dish of water because it can’t get nourishment anywhere else because it had no root base at all. It, too, had blooms on it, so it’s in the plant ICU right now.

  Some people have a knack for killing plants, and others have plants they can’t hold back from reproducing like rabbits. I have a plant which has produced some 30 offspring, all of which have their own pots and, should they attain self-awareness, will hoist little picket signs and demand a better view than the next door neighbor’s wall.

  A couple of plants at home are old and have faithfully kept growing for decades, while the ones today seem to have shorter life spans. I’m thinking it’s high cholesterol or obesity; they certainly are killing us humans already.

  The violets get plant food regularly, which is really chemicals mixed with water, sort of like those vitamin water concoctions which are so popular on the shelves at Wawa. Do you think there is a connection here?

  The remains of dead plants go into the backyard garden, where the soil can benefit the other flora. That would be what happens to us if we were put into the ground without elaborate, expensive and impermeable caskets. To the soil we return, only to come back again. Hopefully not as a grocery store cheap African violet.

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• Sugar is Sweet (and So Are Diabetics)

  Posted at 2:35 am by kayewer, on July 12, 2015

  No wonder this country is so obese and diabetes is going up as well. Do you know how hard it is to find products without sugar in them? Sure, you can eat your meals for the rest of your life using the vegetables in the produce aisle (at least I don’t think they’re putting sugar in lettuce), but if you look closely, you’ll see that you’re likely eating a whole sugar bowl of the stuff before your first morning cup of coffee. And if you’re getting your coffee in a store, it’s probably jacked up, too. Do you think that choco-mocha-whipped cream macho hot cup of joe just tastes sweet all by itself?

  My morning cereal has five grams of sugar, so that’s more than one teaspoon (to convert, divide grams by four). You’re supposed to have six teaspoons or less per day for optimal health. Orange juice, that staple of the healthy breakfast table, has about seven grams or about two teaspoons. The diet version is watered down prior to being bottled, which means you can take your morning OJ and just add bottled water to it and you’ll put two of your daily essentials into one drink.

  Ketchup can contain sugar, as can salad dressing. Remember when we used to mix our own dressing in a cruet provided for an extra charge by the makers of the dressing mix in a dry pouch? I think it was Four Seasons or something. No sugar that way, and you mix just what you need.

  I wonder what it would be like to go 24 hours without any sugar? Is it even possible? Has anybody tried it and lived? I guess the solution to preventing diabetes and obesity is to relegate sugar to an occasional (like birthdays and Christmas) trip to the bakery or the candy store. If food companies tried to do it, though, most would probably go out of business or their costs would go up to where we could not afford it.

  So much hassle over a refined granule of sweetness.

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• Happy 4th!!!

  Posted at 2:02 am by kayewer, on July 4, 2015

  I’m taking off for Independence Day and sheltering in place while all the hoopla goes on around me. Stay free, stay safe and I’ll be back in a week, when the rest of the summer gets going.

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• Love That Freedom

  Posted at 2:52 am by kayewer, on June 28, 2015

  It will soon be Independence Day. It’s great to be free, but sometimes it comes at a great price. Our servicemen make sure we can continue to be free, and our laws are designed to help us keep to a standard which can help us not allow ourselves to get out of hand, because true freedom still comes with the burdens of conscience and common sense.

  I will be cooking up the burgers and potato salad, flying the flag outside my home and enjoying the parades and fireworks. Some people go to the beach or a campground. Some don’t go anywhere or do anything. That’s fine. We’re free to do that.

  While you’re out and about or sitting and relaxing on this historic holiday, remember that it took a lot of bloodshed and compromises and hard work to get our country to where it is now. We must continue to work hard at it every day so we can stay free.

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• I Am Not Buying Apple Products

  Posted at 4:17 am by kayewer, on June 21, 2015

  I don’t own an Apple product. Not an IPod, IPhone, computer, watch or anything else they might have on the market. Still I am surrounded by Apple stuff every day, and Apple users have laughed at me.

  I’m not buying any Apple products.

  The newest commercials feature exquisite photos taken by–I assume–normal people using their IPhone cameras. I have never figured out how to use the camera on my Windows phone, but I carry a real pocket camera around anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

  Why does a phone need a camera, anyway? It eats up battery time and storage space. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the over-the-top soggy and rainy weather we’ve had lately is due to too much stuff stored in that infamous cloud. Yes I know; it’s just a figure of speech, but if you can’t see where it’s stored, does it still exist? And what happens if somebody finds your cloud? Gives that Rolling Stones tune a new meaning, doesn’t it?

  Hey you, get out of my cloud storage!!

  Anyway, now Apple has a watch that you must get custom fitted and comes with an electronic personal trainer that eggs you on to bigger and more exhausting feats of daily exercise. About two years ago, my company gave out free pedometers, so I keep the battery fresh in that little guy, and it counts my steps just fine. Two LED indicators are missing, but I can tell an 8 from a backwards 3, so it doesn’t matter.

  I see lines of people in Apple stores, and the workers are exhausted. My bosses joke with me that nobody is in line at the Windows store. Good. I can get service immediately.

  When the day comes when all the Apple products go on the fritz, I’ll come charging in on my white horse with my Windows all ready to go, and then you’ll all be sorry.

  Don’t throw Apples at my Windows: I’ll make applesauce.

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• Hemoglobin Hostage

  Posted at 1:51 am by kayewer, on June 14, 2015

  There is something about going to have lab work done that puts a lot of us off our game. It’s a part of being healthy, of course, but it’s a complicated process to submit bodily fluid samples or–horrors!!!–let somebody poke your veins with a needle.

  People who are on cholesterol medication, for example, know that it’s important to take your statin every day to keep the bad LDL cholesterol down and promote good HDL cholesterol. They need testing to check liver function. People on blood thinners need to get checked regularly to make sure they have a good circulatory system (though new medications are making that more rare).

  So when my supply of medication started to run low, I called for a refill and found out they wouldn’t send any more until I had my lab work done to make sure my body was functioning.

  Guys, if my body was not functioning, could I put in a request for a medication refill? I’d be un-functioning, as in dead.

  Still, the unsympathetic guardians of whole body health demanded I go bleed into a tube for the cause. So I went early one morning and sat in the waiting room at the local lab. Cell phones were forbidden (no email or gaming) and the magazines were from 1997. I was hungry because I had to fast for the lab work, and the program they had on the lobby TV monitor was doing a segment on cookout food. Since all the other patients appeared to have needed to fast before visiting the lab, we were averting our eyes from the rack of ribs. They looked great at 7 AM.

  When I got to my assigned drawing station (or cubicle of torment), a sign read “NOTE: Students in training. Your sample may be drawn by one of these students.” Sure students have to learn somewhere, but hire some practice subjects with gigantic, juicy vessels from which they can jab at will, not my petite tertiary roads on the blood vessel highway. I hate coming out of a lab looking like a junkie. Once I was poked four times before a spot yielded results, and I had bruises the size of Rhode Island for a week. Prior to a procedure on another occasion I had four technicians with warm towels and relaxing music trying and failing to get anywhere. If somebody knows what works like Barry White for veins, let me know.

  Fortunately I did not get a student; the phlebotomist did admit she was getting over a cold, but she got lucky on the first try, and I didn’t get a bruise.

  My pills were ready the next day. So I’ll be good to go for a little while. Also, I went out for some good cookout food.

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• Photo Synceth This

  Posted at 1:35 am by kayewer, on June 7, 2015

  I’ve been playing around with digital photography (but not on my phone, because I can’t figure out how). Back in the good old days before digital photography, taking pictures was a matter of good focus and what speed of film you used. Now the camera is so smart that it knows the speed without a roll of film, but the rest of the playing field is now complicated by rules which would fill a professional sports manual.

  Before getting off a single shot, I’m tasked with learning what environment I’m in, what the conditions are, what might move in the shot, what objects from far away need to be sharp and what objects in the foreground could be a bit fuzzy, what special effect(s) I might want and how much control I want over my camera. With manual cameras, I focused and clicked; now I have a checklist as tall as Shaquille O’Neal. How does a pro get a decent Pulitzer winner of a shot if he has to go through all that rigmarole?

  The saving grace of a digital camera, for those of us who might want to shorten that checklist to, say, Verne Troyer size (with all due respect, Mr. Troyer), one can use various degrees of automatic control features that let the camera decide some, most or all of the actions to take to get a good photo. This works well when learning, except for one minor detail: the shutter button.

  In the old days, one click did the trick. Now the shutter presses halfway to “compose” the shot, then all the way to capture the image. By that time, your subject has packed up and gone home, and you wind up with a blurry, jumpy photo. Also you realize you should have mounted the camera on a tripod.

  The process of learning the finer arts of digital photography won’t deter me, since I have no desire to stop learning. However, cameras may go further into high tech by the time I think I’ve learned it all. Sad that progress always seem to go faster than we do.

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• Blue Pill Blatherings

  Posted at 2:57 am by kayewer, on May 31, 2015

  While watching an “On Demand” program, I was subjected to an ad for Viagra® about a dozen times. It’s amazing what you learn by visually dissecting a commercial. You can only go to the fridge or the bathroom so many times when inundated with the same three or four commercial breaks (when it’s a smaller network, it’s even worse).

  So a rather pleasant looking young lady (Kelly Hu) is perched on a bed in what looks like a couples retreat, and she begins by setting up a scenario about things being “just right.” Then she mentions that  over half of men have some form of erectile dysfunction. The source, revealed in smaller type at the bottom of the screen, says a Massachusetts male aging study found 52% of 1,290 respondents claimed it just wasn’t as easy to get their altar ego’s attention at that “just right” moment. If you’ve been with one of those poor men on the 52% side, hopefully cuddling on the couch or endearing pillow talk still works for you.

  As the usual barrage of medical disclaimers comes in voiceover, another little footnote says Viagra® takes a half- to a full hour to take effect. So encourage your partner to take it when he is about 35 minutes away. With any luck, he carries a water bottle with him. And nobody notices that trademark little shaped pill when he downs it in public.

  Also, one cannot be taking nitrates for chest pain, because your blood pressure may go down (and your altar ego will definitely stay down if that happens). You can also get other mood-blowing side effects such as a headache, vision problems, flushing and upset stomach. So you’re ready to roll, but you can’t see where you’re going and it’s you who has the headache.

  The most hilarious caveat comes next: if you want Mr. Happy to stay healthy, don’t walk around doing an impression of a coat rack for more than four hours. In medical terms, this is known as priapism, after a Greek god who was perpetually ready to go and probably had 1,290 women who either loved him (50%) or fled for their lives (52%) whenever he drew near.

  The next little footnote prompts viewers to “See our ad in Golf Digest.” I suppose if Viagra® is not for the man in your life, he can yell “Fore” on the greens and forego the foreplay.

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• Bloom and Grow Forever

  Posted at 12:50 am by kayewer, on May 24, 2015

  We don’t often stop to appreciate nature’s gifts of plants, flowers and trees. They’re all around us, and we don’t always notice them until they interfere with us or we with them. Some trees have grown for ages and have outlived generations. On my block only a few trees are left, but on a smaller scale there are smaller milestones right in the neighborhood. An old friend who lived on my block until 1980 had prized roses around the outside of the house. The new owner has kept them up since then, and the other day she brought some over for my mother.

  They are the most beautiful and fragrant roses, and their scent takes me back 35 years with every breath.

  Sometimes it’s not the best idea to rip out all the landscaping and start again; some things are best left to their own way of life, like roses and trees. They aren’t a roadblock to progress, but markers of where life has been and will go on.

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