Susan's Scribblings the Blog

I got a Christmas card yesterday. The postmark on it was December 21, so it was the apparent victim of mail delays. A friend of mine told me that some mail between her and friends and family arrived this week as well, so this must be National Postal Catch-Up Week.

People who want Christmas all year can at least extend it into January this way. However, the real trees everybody bought probably didn’t make it this far.

My card also came with a lottery ticket. From Maryland. It gives me an excuse to take a drive and reacquaint myself with the perils of highway traffic, since I won enough money to make it worth visiting there to claim my prize, even if the bridge toll will eat up what I won.

My mother would have related how reliable and fast postal service used to be. In the olden days, mail came more than once a day, and there was a time you didn’t even have to seal an envelope but simply tuck the flap in. There were different postal rates for sealed and open envelopes, and stamps cost pocket change. As in pennies. Ask somebody in their nineties. People took the time to actually use a pen and stationery, which is a lost art these days. However, many of us of a certain age still take the time to put a signature on a holiday card and mail it. Of course, now postage costs much larger pocket change.

Did I ever relate the time a couple years ago when an employee in my office was not able to sign a form, because they had never needed to even use a pen in school?

Not to brag, but when I found that my less than rigorous education in penmanship was affecting my writing life, I sat down and modified it myself. The results are pretty good, but I’m not sure if anybody under 40 even bothers to try to write anything any more.

The postal service is still sending things on tangible paper, and the holidays are still their busiest time. It will probably take another generation before the concept of cards and writing paper are truly endangered. Meanwhile, I still keep a supply of stamps, pay by mail and keep my pens filled with nifty little ink cartridges that are not as difficult to find as those that go into computer printers.

I still have a box of personalized stationery, and I’ve had the opportunity to use it a few times. When it’s used up, I wonder if I will still be able to get more.

I don’t want to put the post office out of business. The mail, after all, does go through.

Diets require portion control, which means lots of self control and a commitment to reading food labels and becoming familiar with the size of what foods belong on your plate. With a new year often comes an opportunity to change eating habits, so I am looking at the sizes of my food items. That’s how I hope to get to a slightly smaller size.

It’s tough already.

The first adventure with portion control I experienced involved peanut butter; it’s supposed to have some health benefits, but I found by reading the label that the serving size is about two tablespoons. One cannot make a decent peanut butter sandwich with two tablespoons of peanut butter. That’s more like a well-smeared cracker sized portion. Imagine how many tablespoons is needed to fill a regular sandwich, even without jelly, and spreading it thin to boot!

I’ve found that most food is sized for odd numbers of consumers: three servings to a bag of vegetables, or even decimals for partial portions. Who wants to be the one to receive the .5 serving? Portioning out vegetables which comes in, say, a microwave bag, means not only that you won’t get to use the bag for its intended purpose, but you must find multiple containers into which you dole out the servings if you’re not using them all. As a single person, this can make a messy fridge and freezer, stocked full of food portions.

Also, once the food leaves its original container, you have to find a way to date the new container, and you will want to use the things expiring the earliest first. This means a whole new world of glass vessels with lids that nest, various sizes of freezer bags, aluminum foil and shifting fridge shelves to accommodate it all.

I opened a package of chicken tenders and discovered that of the nine in the package, I was supposed to eat only two. This posed the problem of deciding whether to break my diet by having three in one sitting, just chopping the outlier up into a salad, dividing it into quarters to nibble on a nib with each serving or throwing it out for the feral cats to feast upon.

Dessert was even worse. My favorite brand of gelato comes in a nice little 16-ounce container, and it’s a joy for the palate: layers of cool lusciousness with chocolate bits and cherries and, I discovered, a dash of vermouth! Who can break a diet when something that good is calling from the freezer? Dutifully I checked out the portion size: one third of the container. Since it’s a layered dessert, I tried to work out the methodology to getting one third out of a cylindrical container. I tried to imagine the legendary peace symbol and work my spoon accordingly, but strangely I always ended up with something like forty percent. Since this product is produced in small batches, that probably means they won’t consider upping the amount for four people or going down to two, so if I want to continue enjoying dessert, I will have to start using a food scale.

Dieting will make me look somewhat like a scientist as I weigh my gelato.

Of course there are all the other opposing caveats when dieting, such as not using canned anything, watching the carbs and the fat and the sugar, and going natural. I gave up orange juice and eat a small mandarin or clementine instead, which supposedly cuts out a lot of excess sugar and adds fiber. However, I did that six months ago, and still gained five pounds. Milk has also been a sticking point. Two percent milk still has a lot of sugar per serving, but milk from grass-fed cows is supposed to be healthier for you. So here I am with my milk and one gram of sugar in my cereal and a small sliced up banana added to it for breakfast, hoping I’m doing something right.

At least I can see my feet when I stand up, but how much weight I may lose is still to be determined.

Supply and demand is not a new concept, but it seems some doofusses haven’t a clue. Why else would the most popular toys be chronically out of stock, or medical supplies in insufficient quantities to meet the needs of the persons who have to have them?

Truth is, suppliers don’t care about demand if their pockets don’t suffer.

Fortunately for me, I don’t have a single Apple product or a video game console, so I haven’t been caught in the loop of trading in (or ditching) the old thing–be it a phone or the last incarnation of Super Duper Brothers– for the newer model, but this seems to be an annual ritual for many people. The manufacturers love that.

I have always used the “marlin fishing in Florida” concept as a measure of wealth, and I frequently imagine seeing the fellows from these companies out in the briny deep aboard a yacht. I hate boating in general, but that’s beside the point. If the measure of our worth is to pad somebody else’s wealth, what does that say about our sense of finance?

True, I guess I’m a bit of a lost cause, since my television is seven years old and has been fixed once under warranty, and (again) I own nothing Apple. The idea of walking around with an $800 piece of equipment, for which I would have to buy another accessory just to hold it comfortably up to my ear, just doesn’t thrill me.

The demand for holiday gifts meant shortages and delays for many over the holidays. People ran out of luck because the number of items was controlled and black market sellers, buying in bulk, plucked more cash out of some desperate people’s wallets. Some holiday packages–even those not carrying new phones or gaming consoles–are still hung up in little town delivery stations all over the country, yet I haven’t heard of somebody dying because they didn’t get a Joy Junction game system or whatever under their tree this year. It will either be broken two weeks in, or obsolete by May. The manufacturers like that, too.

Eventually I know I will have to catch up with the times, but if those times mean shortages and padded price tags, I’m in no hurry. What is important right now is to make sure there are vials of immunity-boosting drugs to get us out of last year’s pestilence within a couple more months. Some say doses are available but not being distributed, while others say there is still a shortage of what is needed to get the whole country immune, but there have already been reports of black market line-jumping, when we should be pushing our first responders to the front of any line we can get them into.

Demand is a powerful word, but we should remember that some folks have less than nothing and are begging please instead. They don’t want a new $800 phone; just some food or a place to live.

The cycle goes on only as long as people cave to what the industry tries to push onto us. Not keeping up with the Joneses can help your wallet, while smart spending will continue to boost the economy. Since we’re only two days into the year, we will see what happens. Meanwhile, remember that the first holiday bills are in the mail, heaven help us all.

What have I done for 360 days in 2020? Looking back, a lot. With only five days to go, many might be glad to see this year go, but any year that has come to its end has much to say for itself in how we spent it. Going back over the year via what I’ve posted here, a lot happened indeed, and it was as normal or abnormal as any given year, with some added intensity from the hundred-year pestilence thrown in.

The year started out with the usual domestic comments about parking lots and beta fish with Napoleon complexes and discovering new videos on YouTube. None of that has changed, except the beta is a house guest in my home (along with his office mate) since I was compelled to relocate my job to home base on March 27. I have also found that parking is better when going to the grocery store during the early “senior and health compromised hour,” of which I am the former.

So on March 13 (yes, it was a Friday), we began this tempestuous journey of disease, its transmission, spread and (eventual) resolution. By May we could get visits from Mr. Softee, but cleaning supplies and toilet paper were hard to get.

By May my office was hopeful that it would open. Hasn’t happened yet. I had quite a bit of feedback about a post that month, because everybody was hot under the collar (finally and thoroughly) about racial injustice. Funny thing is, yesterday I got some flack about a social media vintage photo taken inside Strawbridge & Clothier–a once popular department store–which depicted a well-dressed and obviously all-white clientele; a poster suggested that I was saying there were no black executives around back then, just because I mentioned that those were different times (in so many words). I replied that there were (I witnessed them), but they obviously were not around when the photo was taken. I’m hoping the new world of equality will also mean that one doesn’t have to play verbal chess with folks looking for a soapbox to stand on: once we get our world to a “good people/bad people” state of mind, things may start working better.

In June I finally got my hair done. I would have taken my mother in with me, but she made her final stop at senior living, so it was a solo mission for me to start looking more normal again.

In June I moved a piece of furniture myself, and people were aghast. My neighbor gave me the “you should have called me to help” speech, and I told her the “I needed to do it myself” speech in return. It was my way of taking charge of my space, and I managed it just fine. Yes, I’m still redoing, re-purposing, trashing, shredding and picking my way through stuff, but that is what working and hunkering down at home has wrought. This past month, that same neighbor (bless her heart) came over and helped me with outdoor landscaping, and we put out half a dozen cans full of yard waste. I’m thinking the spring will bring a new yard to my life, to match the new inside I’m working on.

Oh, and as of June I still have not nuked my first popcorn in the new microwave yet. I have, though, discovered weighted blankets, and a new mattress, delivered after over a month of waiting, has helped.

In July I had some epic fails, made butt music with my front storm door, and began delving into more social media videos and discoveries. Over the remaining months I have managed to beat programs like The Incredible Dr. Pol to the punch and diagnose twisted cow stomachs, intestinal parasites in goats and embedded worm larvae in cat wounds, as well as freak out my own doctors in casual conversations by watching too much of Dr. Sandra Lee (aka Dr. Pimple Popper) and knowing what rhinophyma is (a skin condition common to the nose, resulting in excessive growths which need surgery to remove).

In August I played detective and figured out how to ergonomically rearrange my work-at-home space so my arms wouldn’t stop working and cause excruciating pain, and in September I baked bread. It was fun to do a no-knead dough and turn my oven into a kiln at 450 degrees to get that luscious smell of heated yeasty goodness throughout the house. I have since moved on to other breads, and a breakfast pastry is next on the list.

In November I had a birthday, and I visited the office to retrieve some more gizmos and gadgets to continue working from home in comfort. I noticed, to my dismay, that my big boss’s tree is probably going to die. It doesn’t get office light or the proper watering. All the other plants went home with their owners, and I have a half dozen happy violets at home to testify to my green thumb. I just didn’t have the strength to move that tree. Alive or dead, it was a heavy thing.

So we are finishing the year, and life came and went and got messy as it always does. 2021 will be no different. If we continue to do our part, maybe within a few more months we will see something near normal again.

If not, we can still work from home and bake bread.

Santa, we have to talk. I know you will be handling a Christmas like no other this year, so I’m not asking for any presents. Maybe I can bank my good girl points for next year. Meanwhile, maybe you can use your Santa Clout to work a few miracles for 2021, once you’ve recovered from your toy run.

We are getting a new president in just a few more weeks. The one we have right now is eerily quiet, and after four years of daily grumbles by him, it worries me. Can you find something to keep him occupied outside the White House until the swearing in? That way the security detail can simply pack up his belongings and take them to wherever he plans to go after the swearing-in is done and/or he stops swearing, whichever comes first. Maybe he’d enjoy woodworking or bird watching or something.

Can you talk to the ad agencies and composers and persuade them to stop using string ensembles–violins, cellos and such–for movies, drama series and commercials? I have heard strings used ever since it was tried in Avengers: Infinity War, and now it’s on the Hulu commercial so much, that I feel like it’s an endless litany of bad elevator music, and I’m trapped on a trip up to the 200th floor. I can even quote Chris Rock’s Fargo character Loy Cannon from that ad: “We’re on the ride now, and we can’t get off ’til the roller coaster stops.” I’m getting jaded and dizzy from that ride, Santa. Please make them stop with strings and move to some nice woodwinds or vocals instead.

Could you change the laws in Nigeria so that every person who can legitimately claim they have inherited money, they can actually just go to the bank and get it? We have folks around here who have trouble getting their deposits back against helping out across the miles with such ventures, so we’d all do better if people just had to handle their own money within their own borders.

I’ve been trying to recycle, but I’ve found that most of the plastics I come in contact with are not the kind my county processes (they do #1 and #2, and most of what I get in the store is #5). I’m thinking maybe the detergent manufacturers could come up with a way to refill those bottles and not have to put them into a landfill. Also, cardboard can be recycled, so we should go more with that. Also, food needs to be more sizable for one or two people. I ate spaghetti for five days straight once; it tasted good every time, but it loses some of the enjoyment after two in a row.

I’d like Taco Bell to understand that, when I ask for one or two packets of sauce, I don’t mean twelve.

I would like Microsoft to understand that games are supposed to be winnable without pulling one’s hair out. Facebook’s games should not require money to win or play better. When games stop being fun, I feel sad.

Almost done, really. I swear.

Sometime between now and the end of the year, I want to sit down and spend just a few hours doing arts and crafts. I’ve bought kits all year but haven’t had a chance to do anything with them.

Overall, Santa, I’m hoping for a 2021 in which at least ninety percent of the world gets inoculated, so we will all be immune and maybe by spring we can start seeing a more normal universe. I want to take a vacation and not worry about social distancing or piling on hand sanitizer. Mask wearing may be a requirement for a few more months, but maybe it won’t seem to burdensome to people by then if we have hopes of an end.

And by the way, I’m glad you and Mrs. Claus made it through 2020 without gaining 20 pounds. I gained one, but that’s because I can’t give up my favorite ice cream. If you feel guilty about not leaving something under my tree, pop a quart in the freezer for me. Thanks.

We are health ignorant. Considering how much accurate information is available, it’s surprising that so many people hold to long-disproved ideas. I actually have a friend who insists that taking an antibiotic makes her feel better when she has a cold. Her gut health is deplorable because the antibiotics kill her good bacteria. She hates having to replenish her gut bacteria with yogurt because she is lactose intolerant, but she feels compelled to take a pill for a cold. You’ve got to take something, right?

In olden days, bloodletting was a common practice. Many people claimed they felt better, and doctors touted it as effective for all sorts of conditions. The key was that most of the conditions were related to “bad humors” in the body which were relieved by balancing the amount of blood, which they felt was too abundant, by letting some out, as if easing an overinflated tire. It probably worked well for hypertension, or to prevent folks from excessive partying. Without a full tank of blood, who feels like doing anything?

So our pharmaceutical companies have worked hard to produce a vaccine to purge our world of our current dreadful illness. They made an effort to test thoroughly while picking up the pace. They have tested and found the product to be effective for nine in ten people, with few side effects (discomfort where the shot is given, for example), and only the same kinds of problems for people with allergies, which leaves them out of the program anyway (people with some allergies take no vaccines at all).

The plan is to roll out shots to healthcare workers first. They need that, so they can stay healthy enough to treat the sick. Next will be nursing homes, then the elderly (of which I am now a member), and finally the general adult public.

Some of the general public, though, are having none of it. People don’t believe in the vaccine. But then some folks don’t believe there is a crisis, nor that face coverings are necessary. 2021 may be an even stranger year than 2020, if just for the videos of anti-vaccine zealots versus the pro-vaccine front.

And what about “may we see your vaccination card?” Does anybody remember when we got our childhood “21 gun salute” vaccine which left a scar on the upper arm? It was symbolic of one’s crusade to stay healthy and protect the population. Today we don’t get scar-producing shots, but if the healthcare system keeps count and verifies that enough of us have taken the shot(s), life will start to get better, fewer people will get sick and/or die and the crisis will be nearly over.

I feel confident enough to be first in line for the vaccine, with the hope of life returning to normal by spring. This is not something that can be treated with an antibiotic. I think I can stomach that.

Amazon scares me sometimes. They terrify me the most when I have to order something for the office on the corporate account, because it’s not the same as personal ordering. Some things cannot be ordered on the corporate account, which makes it tough to get prizes for the staff.

Lately we have had a few prizes to order, because a month-long contest was in progress. This is how we learned not to order gift cards, always put special instructions anyplace there is a memo field online, and remember to pray really hard every night until each delivery is accounted for.

A few weeks ago I had to order a Grand Prize for somebody; a flat screen TV. This involved a precisely-worded Amazon search to get exactly what the contest called for, followed by redirecting the delivery to the individual, a lengthy approval process and the services of a witch doctor, all of which took long enough that I went on vacation before the prize was actually shipped. Also, I had to order a handful of additional prizes, so I did take the time to notify the lucky recipients that they should expect delivery on the select days I had received from Amazon; the TV was part of the group scheduled for the following Monday.

At home on the first day of my vacation, my growing sense of relaxation was interrupted by a cell phone call from Amazon: they announced that they were right outside my house with my package. First of all, I said to the operator, the package wasn’t mine; second, it’s not coming to my house; third, the person might not be at the front of the house to receive the package. After having gone to the trouble of specifying that the recipient’s name was not mine, I couldn’t imagine why they were calling me, so when I asked which delivery it was, they refused to reveal where they were going or to whom. They were, however, calling me as if I were the recipient. I told them that, if no response was coming, they may want to try again later. They hung up on me, but I did not hear back, which normally indicates the delivery was successful.

Last week went without a hitch. Then came this week, and I got an email from the intended TV recipient, saying they never got the set! Thank goodness I lived through the potential coronary that followed. Administrative prize ordering is not for the faint-hearted.

As I started playing Shirley Holmes (hey, folks, I’m no detective dude), I managed to come across a photo of the delivery; there was the television, propped up against a porch window. I dutifully sent a copy of the photo to the recipient. She replied that it was indeed her back porch and, after taking a few minutes to actually go out back and look, the package, mercifully, was there.

Is it me, or is it unusual for a person to not venture into the back of their property for nearly a week and a half, especially when they are expecting a major award?

At least her neighborhood doesn’t seem to have back porch pirates.

Yes, I’m thankful this year. Nobody seems to think much of 2020, but when you look back, even during terrible times, we got some good things out of them. We can’t stop bad things from happening, but we have taken the time to learn from the experiences.

When somebody is being cruel or criminal, people stand up to them and for the victim. I’m glad I’ve lived to see attention paid to bullying and racism, so it may be less problematic soon. I was glad to see countless protesters on the streets for the Black Lives Matter movement, because sometimes it seems that whenever the sort of things that have always been happening to black people happened to white people, nobody said anything. That somehow meant that nobody’s lives mattered before now. It had to start somewhere, and it’s good that it is happening with one of our most repressed citizens (our indigenous tribes should soon follow).

We remembered the chaos of 2016, fought against countless hordes and elected somebody else as president this month. That was not an easy thing to do, considering all the planning for mail-in ballots, but we hung onto our hopes and became a truly dedicated voting country with staggering turnout.

Overall we have been dedicated to listening to experts and trying hard to get ahead of the record-breaking pestilence bringing the world down this year. Considering we are a close contact species, it’s hard to resist the urge to gather and hug and see each others’ lips move, but a majority of us are considering the consequences of not wearing masks and staying distant, and that means fewer people may get sick. That’s a good thing.

In spite of toilet paper shortages (more on that in a moment), and problems with some supplies and demand issues with soaps and such, supermarkets have plenty of turkeys this year, and it looks like the department stores will be ready for Christmas as usual. We kind of need that right now.

I’m glad to see that toilet paper is still being supplied, but wonder why, when other countries use bidets, we can’t do the same. Instead of runs on the paper products aisles in times of crisis, we could be relieved to know that our bottoms will still be clean. And we’d save trees.

At least we only have 41 days to go before a new year comes.

And if you are reading this, be thankful because you are still alive to read something about what’s coming.

And as times goes, so new things will come. That’s something to be thankful for, isn’t it?

Mister Rogers was right. Each of us is special, because we are unique. In the wonderfully individual act of human construction, milliseconds or minutes can determine exactly how we will come to be. One cell steps out of line, and something changes. Something from Mom or Dad–or both–sometimes gets the address mixed up and shows up at the wrong party or at the wrong time, and again things change.

Once we are born, what we are is stamped upon us in invisible ink.

We have learned to be selective among our own kind, judging and misjudging equally, which is part of what makes many of us feel unequal. And yet we all go through a similar journey (similar, rather than the same, because as I said, each human is unique), so why do we become selective?

Fear and uncertainty have a lot to do with that.

What we don’t know or understand tends to make us defensive. The problem is what we do with that lack of knowledge. Often we ignore the call to understanding. So much factual information is available to help us discover how not to be selective about acceptance and judgment.

Our libraries, news media and the Internet are the water, and some of us are the horses, balking at taking a drink from the fountain of knowledge.

The reason the phrase “knowledge is power” is such an important message, may well be because lack of knowledge is so weakening. Ignorance should no longer be an excuse, when the world is open to discovery.

By now, you are probably wondering why I’ve compiled this lecture. After six decades of life on this planet, I am overjoyed to see so much attention devoted to inclusion, recognizing the uniqueness of each individual and discouraging bullying.

There are still problems, of course. We’ve probably all seen the “Karens in the Wild” and others who feel that nobody’s life matters but their own in the moment. However, we are doing something about it today.

I’m glad to have lived to see it, and that I am able to write about it in my own, unique way.