Susan's Scribblings the Blog

The old philosophy about working with children and dogs is at least half true. I found that out this past week when one picture got noticed in a big way.

At least in a big way for me, because I’m a little social fish in a big network.

My friend’s dog is into climbing. Her favorite practice is to summit the back of the chair I sit in when I visit, and then perch on the top. Since my friend always has her phone at the ready, she snapped a picture and sent it to me. Without even thinking about it, I summoned it on my phone and posted it to social media with a cute comment about my being a dog’s version of a mountain.

It has gotten 40 hits in six days. For me, that’s a lot of recognition for one post.

So the key is to have a dog in the shot.

Maybe if I had a child there, too, it would have been even better, but my world is childless. As in totally devoid of anybody familial under voting age. I suppose I could have borrowed somebody from the neighborhood, but I worry about the creepy factor: “Excuse me, can I borrow your kid for my attempt at getting a photo liked on social media?”

Fortunately the dog was much more photogenic than I am, and the shot focuses on her instead of me. It would not have gotten any views at all, let alone 40 likes. And it got some comments, including one from the ex-BF, who noted how adorable the shot was, and that the dog looked cute, too. Gosh gee. This from the ex. What have I done?

I did a photo with an animal.

You can’t top that, and I’m certainly not going to exploit this success by bombarding my social media page with more of the same. Since I can’t do photos with kids, I wonder what my next picture will be? Maybe I can post some of my digital photo attempts with scenery and such. No, that won’t do.

Sometimes successes are best left alone.

The biggest treat for cats right now is paste in a tube, which I like to call kitty crack. It comes in meat and seafood flavors, squeezes out like toothpaste, and cats seem to go wild for it. If somebody has more than one cat, they will quickly be surrounded by the entire feline army when one of these tubular delights is torn open.

If you get to do it before the cats do.

When you buy it, don’t set it down and walk away. You will never see it again. If you think it’s difficult to keep crunchy treats from burglary, or destruction of their pouches or even plastic containers, try holding onto some of this stuff. Fangs and claws can easily render packaging useless, so be prepared to invest in a sturdy, immovable safe hiding place for extra supplies.

Also be prepared for the fact that they may not last long unless you buy in gross. The tubes are normally sold three to a pack, and at a reasonable price if you’re somebody who likes to see your cat at a time unrelated to when you’re awoken by a meowing clawed fur ball in your face at two in the morning.

If you plan to get a cat with the idea that they will sit through prime time television with you, think again. And adjust their fickle little mindsets with a supply of kitty crack, to be used on your timeline, not theirs. It’s certain to bring them running.

Whatever is in this stuff is magical; cats will stand, paw, beg and stretch for a taste, and lap at the tube as if their nine lives depend upon it. They will shuffle for key positions in front of you while you hold the tube for them to feast upon. Some pugilistic scuffles may occur.

Some pet supply retailers offer BOGO deals, because they know how fast it goes out the door and into kitty tummies. Perhaps it was a CEO at one of those chains who came up with this idea. Whoever the inventor is, they came up with a winner for cat owners. You get to see your pets, and they get to party like the dickens.

As the saying goes when it comes to pets, dogs have owners and cats have staff. Now we’re just moving on to outright bribers, dealing in tempting tubes of flavor to appeal to our felines.

Yet we still love their fickle little hearts.

Old family recipes are a big part of the holidays. Unfortunately my family tree did not include many recipe fans. As for the women in the extended family, the recipe cards were in their heads and did not transfer onto cardboard. My grandmother did not surrender any of her secret recipes, taking them to the grave with her, so we depended on my mother’s know-how to keep some in-house meals true to tradition. Sometimes a new recipe would enter our lives, and we made the effort to keep them in hard copy whenever possible. That is why, when my parents and I fell in love with a shrimp bog recipe back in the late 1980s or early 1990s, we were devastated when it disappeared.

My mother had clipped it from a magazine, one of the many she read religiously every month. The big problem with clippings back then was that the instructions often ran atop a photo or an ad, and continued on another page somewhere in the back of the issue. This meant creative clipping, trying to preserve orphaned lines of preparation directions with careful folds or tape. Also, without the Internet being as big a resource, once a magazine was off the shelves, recovering anything from it was difficult at best. This particular recipe apparently went into a place for safekeeping, and it was so safe it was lost.

While I was recently clearing off a bookshelf, I came across a metal box and, upon opening it, found a small treasure inside. Among its strange contents, I found a few neatly folded yellow napkins from the days when one could buy pink, yellow and blue napkins in a multipack. Also inside were bobby pins, a few clippings from businesses long gone, and to my delight, there was the original recipe for the shrimp bog, beautifully folded and hidden for decades. It was an early Christmas present and brought me joy.

For the holidays, I’ve decided to create the dish, to end the year with an old tradition. I’ve never done seven fishes for Christmas, but two pounds of shrimp sounds like an interesting alternative. Along with onions, tomatoes, rice and seasoning, it should bring a renewed joy to the palate.

Have a delicious holiday, everybody.

We are in the last two weeks of 2021 and, true to form, the fact that two holidays are falling on consecutive Saturdays means the world will be in chaos while time marches the year to its inevitable end. Since I normally post on Saturdays, you may not see the next two entries as expected, but something will be here, early or late, because my resolution was to keep posting, and so I shall.

It seems that 2021 is not much different when compared to 2020, since we had the same issues to deal with. The world remains perpetually sick (both in mind and body), politics are disheveled beyond belief, commerce is barely existent, weather raised its mighty hands and wiped out large swaths of populations, and entertainment and sports seem to have become a fool’s gallery of mishaps.

Regardless of your age, it sucks to be alive right now. But also it’s a good thing to be living through this.

Apathy is good in small doses, but spending too long in fluctuating extremes like stress or anger can also lead to a type of detachment from the world around us. The mental barriers we put into place to help us deal with adversity upgrade from wire fences to concrete walls topped with barbed wire. Meanwhile, the situations remain and continue to plague us, and we can’t stay cocooned in denial forever, nor can we just ignore what has to be done.

These past two years have been the “Karen Years,” in which women (and occasionally their male counterpart Darrens) became social media fodder as cell phone users recorded footage of their psychological pots boiling over in public. Sometimes the cause of the upset was little or nothing, such as a lengthier wait for a fast-food order. Occasionally the issue was with covering one’s face in public places. In extreme cases, the subjects were so overstimulated by the state of affairs that they would fake injuries on camera, sending themselves sprawling onto the ground and claiming assault while the camera caught the obvious truth to the contrary.

We have also dealt with another switch in political power, as one party went out and the other came in to repair damages in some areas while making new damage in others. Whichever way one voted, the complaints are the same on both sides, but they are simply coming from the opposing side of whoever happened to be in office because the old administration will always be wrong and the new one always right (or the old right and the new wrong).

Everyday merchandise, along with holiday special orders, became stranded aboard container ships and in cargo holding facilities. Store shelves looked barren, and what was in stock rose in price. Meanwhile, a generation has learned the meaning of the word “quit,” and they are doing so in large numbers, while big companies are restructuring and laying off or shutting down. Others are leaving the community structure of the office in the big city or urban campus, and permanently working from home, developing new habits such as only dressing from the waist up for Zoom meetings.

Our sense of self is being challenged, not just for how we look, but for how we may have expressed ourselves at any time in our past. Our opinions from twenty years ago may plague us now if somebody remembers them. In the looks department, models are now accepted with perceived physical imperfections or even missing body parts, which is a step toward allowing good people to exist in spite of their flaws. Total perfection, unfortunately, remains impossible to find, though some may try to define or create that ideal for the world to follow.

Nature has produced supreme storm events and decimated populations already dealing with unchecked disease or territorial strife. Tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, severe winter and rain storms caused power outages and shutdowns and taken scores of lives.

Yet you and I are here to record and read about them.

We’re the resilient ones. Each of us who survives these adversities will gain the power within our souls to regroup when the bad things come to an end and bring new and good things into the world. It has been this way since humans first began coexisting on the planet, and it won’t end because a new measurement of time on a calendar says it’s a new year.

Take a deep breath, and know that these problems shall pass, maybe not on December 31st, but someday soon. The second after that is our gift to do with as we choose. Choose wisely.

My relationship with social media is a strange one. Facebook doesn’t want to boost my posts–imagine, they don’t want to take my money–because in the past year I used a totally harmless word in the context of saying it was a part of our lives and affected things. They’re too busy to filter out content that isn’t violating the rules and let it go through, but at least I’m not in “Facebook Jail” and forbidden to do anything at all. When I’m not trying to make sense of how my blog posts fit into the grand scheme of worldwide readership, I also post general observations inside the site itself, just like everybody else, and try to figure out what people are thinking and what makes them tick.

Sometimes I get them ticked off for little or no reason.

Somebody recently posted a large image which said rather negative things about our nation’s head of the current administration. Since it came from a woman, and I had grown tired of trying to have a decent conversation with men who just seemed to want to pick a fight, I replied and asked what she had to say about the previous administration. I think I worded it as “What did you think of the last guy?”

Well folks, you would think I had disparaged her mamma. Not only did she not produce a word in answer to my question, but a man came in swinging in defense of her going off about how things are so bad now. He added similar observations. I felt like I was in one of those movie tropes in which I suddenly found myself outnumbered by a growing mob of unsavory characters smacking two-by-fours in their hands and producing brass knuckles from their pockets. And I didn’t say anything negative at all! I just asked, “What did you think of the last guy?”

She wanted me to go first instead, so she could shoot down whatever I said, and I wasn’t taking the bait. He then questioned my overall mindset, suggesting I am supporting the collapse of the world as we know it and so on. In the end, I simply apologized for asking a simple question and let it die down.

This is the kind of attitude which will continue to hold our society hostage to fear, prejudice and ignorance. When somebody asks what you think about something, if you’re so worried about being thought poorly of because of your opinion, maybe it’s time to think about the cause you are embracing. If I had received some response such as “I thought he did this right,” or “He certainly did better on this topic than the guy we have now,” it would have made for an interesting discussion. Instead, she stayed behind a curtain of uncertainty and poked her head out to pick on me instead.

Another example of when asking a question is a bad thing, along with those old questions about why is the sun in that position at that time of day, how do we sail our ships to the New World, or why did milkmaids with cowpox never catch smallpox? Don’t ever ask questions, unless you want to not be cheated out of possibly discovering something. What is this world coming to?

The first sign of Christmas that you are sure to see: the strangest of Christmas trees (including those cute Charlie Brown versions with one red ornament, along with themed artificial trees, colored tinsel trees, skinny trees, fat trees, and plenty of rotating bases to set them upon).

The second sign of Christmas that you are sure to see: two-hour TV specials (every prime time show has one, and every pop culture trend makes its own, plus all the Rankin-Bass classics and oldies on public television), and the strangest of Christmas trees.

The third sign of Christmas that you are sure to see: three tiered candles (in battery or corded varieties, not to mention the single versions), two-hour TV specials, and the strangest of Christmas trees.

The fourth sign of Christmas that you are sure to see: four extra circulars (even stores that rarely run ads will flood your doorstep, mailbox and inbox with advertised specials), three-tiered candles, two-hour TV specials, and the strangest of Christmas trees.

The fifth sign of Christmas that you are sure to see: five repeated songs (“Jingle Bells” and “Winter Wonderland” are high up on the list), four extra circulars, three-tiered candles, two-hour TV specials, and the strangest of Christmas trees.

The sixth sign of Christmas that you are sure to see: six mall merchant carts (they pop up with tons of holiday themed knickknacks, and conveniently position themselves near the mall Santa), five repeated songs, four extra circulars, three-tiered candles, two-hour TV specials, and the strangest of Christmas trees.

The seventh sign of Christmas that you are sure to see: seven traffic jams (especially in mall parking lots), six mall merchant carts, five repeated songs, four extra circulars, three-tiered candles, two-hour TV specials, and the strangest of Christmas trees.

The eighth sign of Christmas that you are sure to see: eight credit card bills, seven traffic jams, six mall merchant carts, five repeated songs, four extra circulars, three-tiered candles, two-hour TV specials, and the strangest of Christmas trees.

The ninth sign of Christmas that you are sure to see: nine charity bins (for everything from Toys for Tots to pet food, which you can feel good by filling), eight credit card bills, seven traffic jams, six mall merchant carts, five repeated songs, four extra circulars, three-tiered candles, two-hour TV specials, and the strangest of Christmas trees.

The tenth sign of Christmas that you are sure to see: ten different Santas, nine charity bins, eight credit card bills, seven traffic jams, six mall merchant carts, five repeated songs, four extra circulars, three-tiered candles, two-hour TV specials, and the strangest of Christmas trees.

The eleventh sign of Christmas that you are sure to see: eleven extra hours (including 24 hours for some major chains), ten different Santas, nine charity bins, eight credit card bills, seven traffic jams, six mall merchant carts, five repeated songs, four extra circulars, three-tiered candles, two-hour TV specials, and the strangest of Christmas trees.

The twelfth sign of Christmas that you are sure to see: twelve bad parking spaces (made by those who park crooked), eleven extra hours, ten different Santas, nine charity bins, eight credit card bills, seven traffic jams, six mall merchant carts, five repeated songs, four extra circulars, three-tiered candles, two-hour TV specials, and the strangest of Christmas trees.

The most important thing you are sure to see is humanity in all its forms. How it plays out is based upon what you do. Enjoy the craziness of it all and bring some joy to your life while it lasts.

When my office building was shut down in favor of permanently working from home, some of the knickknacks we had accumulated over the years had to go. Just like at home, we had amassed a horde of items in need of new places to hide in; being a customer service environment, we stored paper plates, utensils and cups, along with table cloths for the occasional massive eat-in lunch orders for which we set up tables and serve-yourself items. We also had seasonal things to decorate the departments, and from that group I inherited a large metal lighted snowman.

He stood guard near the vice president’s office in front of a post for years, and he was frequently decorated with flower leis and suited up for various occasions. Unfortunately he is missing one arm which apparently was never found when we scoured the place to clear it out, and once an item like this is sold out, replacement parts are impossible to come by. The idea is that you throw the old one out and buy new. Since I am one of those people who doesn’t believe in hopeless causes, and since I even managed to retrieve the box for the thing (imagine that: somebody kept the box!), I figure I may be able to fix the snowman by creating a new arm for him.

This poses its own set of problems, because I really don’t know what size wire this creature is. I searched the question “How do I determine the gauge of a wire” and received a rocket scientist formula in reply. Not happening: I was a lost soul from the New Math generation who got by college math with barely enough sanity to remember what numbers are.

The next best thing is to go to a hardware or craft store and try to find a similar wire there. Then I can buy the correct length and bend it to shape in my late father’s cellar workshop. Or at least that’s my first plan.

Since the other arm is just wire, I could always fake it as a last resort, and just mock up a hand and cover them both with something resembling a pair of mittens.

Then comes the act of setting the thing out on my front lawn. I’ve never put out decorations in front before, because for years they were destroyed or toyed with, and it wasn’t worth the effort. Now that the block has a much different vibe, I think it may be worth trying again. At least I didn’t pay for the snowman. I will pay for a cord and a timer so it will come on at dusk. It will still be a bargain.

But I’ll say this: if I plug it in and it comes to life saying “Happy Birthday,” I’m out of here.

Autumn leaves are a menace. At least that’s what the general opinion is among society. Actually my neighbors, but to me they are the society that matters. I live close to them, and it’s important to maintain stability with one’s neighbors.

I was away for a few hours at a show, and while I was gone, the general alarm went out that the leaves on our lawns needed to be raked to the curb for pickup immediately. I didn’t get the memo, but in the four hours I was gone, neat piles of leaves appeared curbside. Mine is untouched, so I am temporarily out of compliance with the general neatness of the block. It’s dark, so I can’t rake now, unless I want to find myself in a padded cell somewhere, being tested for soundness of mind, so it looks like I will spend tomorrow morning raking.

I don’t know who decided nobody can keep leaves on the lawn in autumn. Left unattended, they degrade into a nice fertilizer for the grass. Forests don’t get raked, and they do just fine, but we spend weeks every season trying to stay ahead of the lemming-like mass leaf suicide.

Men rake or blow leaves; a popular commercial (for a law firm, no less) features a fellow with a super-sized pair of massive high-powered blowers with which he takes charge of his leaves in full bravado mode while a neighbor watches. It’s a control thing for men to have the most efficient blower.

I rake, and I have an adjustable rake with a lever that widens or narrows the prongs for optimal coverage. Leaves quake when I approach, and I go into full girl-power mode while the neighbors sleep in. Hey, I’m not a showgirl; I just go to them in the city once in a while for entertainment.

My lawn care guy has kept ahead of the leaves very well, considering he is still forced to work alone because of support employee issues. Still, I will get my front lawn looking naked so nobody will have an issue with the care of my front. We may have trees, but gosh gee, we don’t let them make a mess.

Once the warm weather returns in spring, we will have springtime droppings from those same trees, and nobody rakes or complains about them, so I’m guessing the cause of the discord is the fact that autumn leaves are dead, dry and subject to moving around during wind or rain, causing slippery conditions and unsightly detritus all over.

It seems we don’t even enjoy jumping in leaves anymore. We want them gone, so we rake them up for collection and admire our naked lawns with yellowing autumn grass feeling we have done our part.

I’d rather leaf them alone.

I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year; short for National Novel Writing Month, I decided to try this year to take on the challenge and write 50,000 words within the month of November. Even though I have fewer obstacles in my way this year, at least in terms of everyday things, life still throws unexpected roadblocks into the mix, and over a two-week period, I’ve had quite a time just trying to put 1,700 words (or more) on a screen every day to keep up.

My first week went very well. Starting on day six, I had an overnight trip to New York, and the WiFi failed on the bus on the journey in, and didn’t do much better on the trip back. Add to that my return to work, evening meetings, a birthday and a complete Windows update, and I fell short of my daily word count.

The real challenge is whether I can continue chugging on or not. I took advantage of a write-in on Wednesday night, and cranked out another 1,500 words. And that made me feel like I’m still in the running. Not giving up is the key, first and last on the list of unwritten rules of writing commitment. Another rule is that it’s okay to write crap, as long as you’re writing, darn it.

Since I’m not an outline writer but a pantser–one who writes by the seat of my pants–and I suffer from first draft perfectionism, it has always been tough for me to just write everything down without regard for spelling, punctuation or grammar. Imagine being your own worst writing partner. I have perfection as the angel on one shoulder and the urge to write it all down and the heck with it as the devil on the other.

This is why I blog with a time limit, so I can try to unbind myself from those restrictions and learn to edit later. If spell check doesn’t catch it, I try to let it go, or I’ll find it later on and fix it. With a daily expectation of writing 1,700 words, however, when there is no daily time factor (only a deadline of November 30), but there is regular living on the line, I’ve found that my self discipline comes in spurts, and I have to take advantage of them. A few times that has meant the 11 o’clock news has ended and I’m still cranking out crap absentmindedly.

This morning I did a quick free-flowing write-in and did over 500 words. This evening I will do another 1,000 or more. Tomorrow I’m sitting and writing 3,200 more along with some other torture-minded writers in a virtual group meeting. The life of a writer, especially when you’re working a “real job” and writing on the side is a test of writing character, an inward look at one’s commitment, and an opportunity to actually focus on something of value which may go unfulfilled when everyday life gets in the way. I consider the time writing to be a gift, so this is thirty days of gift-giving.

When it’s finished, I can add an award to my writing credentials, and I may have a good deal more of a first draft on record than before. What comes afterward is taking time off (yes, they encourage this) and then editing what I’ve written. That’s when I’ll glower at misspellings and mentally flog myself for bad punctuation. Like Leonardo daVinci, I have a bad habit of never declaring something finished, but I may find myself one step closer this time.

Excuse me, but I have to produce more free-flowing crap.

I’m excited to finally have the opportunity to attend shows again, and I’m not wasting any time padding my schedule with whatever I can get. I go to the movies with a friend all the time, and I was even able to attend a screening last year while using the recommended procedures. The crowds aren’t back there yet. Live shows, however, have been reborn. Enthusiasm for theatre, opera and other performing arts is surging, and I am glad to surf that wave.

When the chance finally came to go back to New York City, I happily accepted. A few places comped tickets for patrons who had been part of the previous season, or held funds on account in the event of cancellations, for when live performances returned, but the catch was that I had to use mine for an evening performance.

In case you didn’t notice, guys, I’m a matinee person. Home before dark.

It couldn’t be avoided, so I made arrangements and soon found myself in an orchestra seat surrounded by a variety of patrons either decked out beautifully or understated as if they just came from raking leaves. It didn’t matter: we were together again for something we all love.

My choice of outfit was in the grey area between Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and business casual, and it worked just fine.

Three women seated in front of me were gowned up, but one wore a hard molded plastic face covering which did not fully seal under her chin and left room under the eyes for gaps. I figured that she probably had her own idea of what safety is for her and others in her circle.

Venues are checking for vaccinations and protection in New York, because if anyplace can be considered a soup of viruses and bacteria, that’s the place, simply because of the humanity from around the world who pass through if they’re not staying. The authorities are broadcasting messages about keeping up immunizations and staying protected, hoping for an eventual normalcy to return. I can’t wait for that, either.

We’re all looking forward to being free of the burdens of global disease, and being able to sit together in a theater while keeping some rules in mind is a step in that direction.

Since we’re used to what we have right now, step on out and see something. And don’t wear hard molded plastic.