Susan's Scribblings the Blog

New Jersey’s gyms will be opening in a few days, finally. I decided to commit and sign up for one. My company likes their associates to sign up for using a gym, and they offer perks. There is nothing like incentives to help people break bad habits or start up new ones. If there was one for mask wearing, we’d have our current problem licked in a week!

Anyway, a gym close to me is a rebuilt former movie theater. Back in the good old days before multiplexes, my town had a single-screen theater, and back in 1973 they showed The Exorcist. That movie came out years before the first true summer blockbuster (and it came out on the day after Christmas at that), but it was quite a phenomenon. The lines to see the film stretched for nearly half a mile. The theater closed in 1986 and sat as an aging reminder of bygone days until a popular purple-themed fitness chain bought it, restored the original facade and turned it into an ideal spot for the exercise crowd.

I’ve been to gyms a couple of times over the years, but until recently no fitness center really seemed to like a less-than-fit person to work out. The problem is that nobody is interested in the Before, only in the After. I’m definitely a Before. But hey, you have to start somewhere.

Years ago, I tried to enroll at a now-defunct gym which had offered a special of twenty visits for $20. The sales associate, however, played dumb and didn’t want to give me the special. He sat me in a sweaty closet of an office and tried to intimidate me into a much more expensive deal: he even brought in a muscular hulking behemoth of a workout lug standing what seemed to be seven feet high (and about five feet wide: the man had arms that could feed a family of eight), who stood over me as if I would only leave with my life if I succumbed to their will.

“I want twenty visits for twenty bucks,” I said levelly. They let me go with no enrollment and seemed disappointed. I was not quite the Before I am now, but they’re out of business, and I still have my self-esteem.

Walking has helped keep me in decent shape, but there are times when hitting the streets for a stroll may not be wise, so a gym seems like a great way to work out safely. Shorter days are coming, too, so once daylight goes, I can think of no place better to get fit than a secure facility.

Buying workout gear, fortunately, is still the same, and I’ve bought a trio of outfits for this venture, including moisture-wicking tight but colorful tops and bottoms. The sneakers I think I have covered, along with socks. I made sure to get pants with pockets; I don’t think hanging a purse on the equipment is a good idea.

Of course there are now stringent rules when going to a gym. Masks are required, and one is expected to wipe down the gear after using it. No problem. I have my anti-bacterial gel handy, a good supply of PPE and determination.

I may not be a six-pack After, but I should feel better after a workout. And it is even less than that twenty bucks I wasn’t conned into all those years ago.

A flower blooms every morning. It starts out curled up asleep, but the light appears and it opens up to start its day. It may be the first time, or the last time, or somewhere in-between, but it blooms just the same.

Nobody may notice it at all; it might be in a field of millions of other flowers, and nobody sees just one. It may be alone in a place you would not expect to find a flower, but it blooms just the same, for the same reasons as all the other flowers.

It may get rained on, or a cold spell may cause it to droop. It springs right back up again and keeps being what it is. A vehicle may run over it and flatten it, or an animal may relieve itself on it. It blooms just the same.

A flower doesn’t put on extreme makeup or clothes; it stays true to itself, and it looks just fine the way it is. Nobody judges its color, its petals or how tall or short or big or small it is. It still blooms.

When you get up in the morning, remember that flower. Open up to the start of a new day. Don’t worry if nobody notices you; you have a purpose, and that purpose matters. Do it as you would any other day.

If you get rained on, don’t worry; you’ll dry off. If it’s cold, you’ll warm up.

If somebody tries to put you down, spring right back up. They don’t know anything about you, but you do. You are a flower, and every day you are part of something special. Go ahead and bloom.

So there’s a coin shortage. We were not spending in stores until recently, so that interrupted the supply chain by which coins flowed through the commercial merry-go-round, and now there is little to go around.

Just a day or two before the announcement about the coin shortage came, I had taken some $40 worth to one of those big green counting machines (you know, the brand whose name reminds you of the solar system). With my coins I got a voucher for Amazon, because everybody shops at Amazon, and I’ve also been pulled into its web of plenty.

Coins used to be more than just weight in your purse or pocket. In the old days, people counted their coins, wrapped them up in specified rolls and took them to the bank for deposit or paper currency. That hobby seems to have vanished and now is as rare as the coins.

For awhile, nickels were the hardest to find, but now I seem to have as many of them as quarters. Unfortunately I have no pennies right now, and if any coin has an image problem, that’s the one. Sales and income taxes force us to deal with pennies more than we would like, and we never are happy with how many pennies we have to pay. One or two cents, either paid out or received in change, seems to cause discontent. There is always too many of one or too few of the other.

The obvious solution would be to round sales figures up or down: down for one or two cents, and up for three or four cents. Pennies should go into charity or fundraiser jars, or thrown into fountains.

Recently I found I had a considerable amount of change, so I’ve been giving exact change while shopping. Nobody seems to mind if I take a moment to prevent them having to give me coins back, and it puts the change back into circulation.

Speaking of circulation, I’ve gotten some more exercise recently, now that the weather has cooperated. So far, everybody I’ve seen has worn a mask and respected personal space, so shopping has returned to my repertoire.

That, and using up dollar bills I’ve gotten instead of coins, because I’ve been using exact change there, too.

Five and a half months to go. 2020 feels like the year that won’t come to an end soon enough, and we have just reached mid-July. It has been over 110 days since I started working from home, and it feels as if I have not been to the office all year at this point. Maybe I won’t recognize the place when I do get back: the company has gone to great lengths to convert it into a less virus prone environment in which we can work safely, kind of like John Travolta in the movie “Boy in the Plastic Bubble” on an enlarged scale. And without hazmat suits.

When we do finally get to go back to what is termed the “new normal,” it may just look like an infectious disease lab set up shop in your office. The only problem is that none of us are trained to work in an infectious disease lab and adapt it to what our real jobs are. Technically it’s impossible to take the entire human race and seal them off from harm. When something infectious of this scale appears, it will do what it’s engineered to do, and we do our best to dodge it. But it has been a disruptive event to be sure.

This is what might be called a century event, even though it took an extra two years to actually show up. If viruses have bosses, this one would definitely have been fired. Instead it’s fired up and ready to go full throttle into our lives and make sure we’re miserable.

That doesn’t mean we have to go along. We’re adapting pretty well, and changing with whatever life throws at us. Graduation ceremonies were held this month, and people showed up. Sports are going intro controlled practices, and people are letting them do their thing without crowding around to watch and risking getting everybody sick. Sports fans hope for games, even with empty bleachers, to broadcast soon. We can still shop and exercise, and television hasn’t been too bad, even without sports.

I’ve become a fan of The Incredible Dr. Pol on NatGeo Wild, binged two weeks of shows recently and didn’t feel guilty about it, because I read an article validating “guilty pleasures” as something we all need to do to some extent. Sometimes I wonder if I could deliver a calf after watching Dr. Pol do it about 30-40 times. No, I don’t think reaching into the rear of a distressed cow in labor is my thing.

One thing online I have gotten hooked on is unusual video channels. It started innocently enough by discovering the Try Channel, where people from Ireland are subjected to international cuisine. Some things are heavenly, like Lindt chocolate, while others are barf-inducing like durian fruit (an acquired taste). From there I discovered “Tribal People,” which introduces new food to seemingly isolated village Pakistanis, and a channel featuring an American with an opinionated wife he brought over from Italy, trying to navigate what is “real” food here that she would be willing to cook or eat (the lady poo-pooed Whole Foods’ pastas, folks).

And yes, I got hooked on some cat videos from a (I think) South Korean woman who has seven cats in her home to keep her and us entertained.

Then I found “first time” channels in which folks watch movies or music videos from before their time: this resulted in quite a few newbie Star Wars fans, as well as vintage MTV hits rekindling those fond memories of the eras when nobody worried about a virus (or at least not this one).

Meanwhile, I’ve learned how to make banana bread, am brushing up on needle felting, crocheted again, re-potted some desperate plants and used Marie Kondo’s methods to tidy up the house. Well, it looks a bit better, but there is still de-cluttering left to do.

At some point I will–maybe–end up back at the office for the rest of the year, which will mean resuming rising early, timing my day, the commute, the meals and such, and perhaps some normalcy will return.

After these past few months, though, I wonder if anything we have done is actually normal, or just one more way to live life? When thinking about who has not seen Star Wars or eaten (or liked) durian fruit, the view of the world as we have seen it before has expanded. We’re living in a big world, and an affliction just as big is making this year seem like it will go on forever. It won’t. Still, I’m taking a deep breath and waiting for whatever will come in these next five and a half months.

Normal is as normal does.

I took a walk this morning, and when I came to a corner I noticed that some detritus was blocking up the sewer grate, and the water puddling in the gutter from the previous day’s tropical storm was trickling in much slower than it should as a result. I moved a clump of the gunk with my shoe, and the water started flowing into the grate like a dam being burst open.

The small things we do every day, or could or should do, make a difference. We don’t always see them, like the water draining from the street so nobody has to step in a puddle, but good affects more good in the same way that bad begets more bad.

Having started a walking routine in the past month, I have noticed that some things we do haphazardly have a way of reminding us of the sin. For example, I have walked past the same discarded, flattened, dried up former water bottle in the street. Somebody threw it out a car window, no doubt, and at some point a street sweeper will retrieve it without anybody running the risk of catching any germs from it, but just because an object has left your hands doesn’t mean it magically vanishes. That bottle moved very little over a three-day period; only a few inches after a vehicle’s tire kicked it around slightly.

For reasons I don’t understand, we seem to have a strange unwritten rule in our country that, once we finish with a container, it must leave our hands immediately. This normally means dropping it within the next step or two we take on the street. This happens to bottles, cans, food wrappers, and even the contents of entire former fast food meals, not to mention store purchases in which the buyer has removed the wrappings and placed them in the bag before dropping it.

I have never checked to see if any receipts are in those puffy pieces of trash, but if you worry about those things, and you’re a doofus, be sure not to leave one in there. Some enterprising con artist (or, if you’re paranoid, the FBI) might trace you via your receipt or your DNA on the inside contents.

It really shouldn’t be a problem to carry a cup until you reach a trash container, or until you get home. Besides, who invented this need for cash-and-carry beverages anyway? The companies who invent the liquid and don’t seem to care about what people do after consuming the product. The days of glass bottle deposits are long gone, but it saved us from tons of plastic waste in the oceans. On that waste sitting squished in the street.

What’s wrong with moving a twig off the pavement, closing something that’s obviously flapping open for no reason, or waving another vehicle through to do a left turn? Apparently it’s some sort of pride thing, but I think that it really does little for a person to not do them, while it’s satisfying to feel good about actually doing them.

Last week one of my plants had a bent stem, and the bloom on the end was bound to die, so I grabbed a twist tie and splinted it, and it has continued blooming through the week. That’s the reward that comes with attention to the little things, and I won’t stop doing them, even if others are cranky or stubborn.

Let’s just hope that street sweeping is done before the next time I walk by.

Oh, and yes it does also apply to wearing a mask.

I had a week’s worth of failures, but it’s okay.

Today I planned to do a Fourth of July volcano using soda and candies. I’ve seen the videos in which dudes seeking a thrill go to the woods or a beach and put together a cocktail that results in a huge foam explosion. Mine didn’t turn out that well. In fact, nothing happened at all, except I wasted three bottles of soda, a box of baking soda, half a six-pack of candies, a bottle of vinegar, three aluminum containers and my pride.

Still, I put up the video to show that failing is okay:

Maybe it was my choice of soda: I wanted to use a popular colorful soda for the obvious red, white (sort of) and blue patriotic significance. Maybe I didn’t have enough of the ingredients or did the wrong combo in the recipe. Anyway, I wound up with less of a mess if I would had it gone correctly.

Tried my hand at sealing cracks earlier in the week, with a recommended spray can, which stopped up and didn’t look very appealing when applied. I guess I’m stuck with it until I can wrench it out. Plus I’m out two thirds of the can I bought.

Last week I bought a beautiful plant, a hydrangea, and I figured that once it rained and the ground was soft, I could pop it into the ground. The threat of severe weather hung like a cloud–a nonproductive one at that–all week, but nothing came. After a few days I tried to get into my dad’s old tool shed for a spade, but the combination lock was frozen and would not budge. Wound up borrowing a friend and a bolt cutter and getting a new lock.

Once I had the spade, I had to start digging. The insects were out in force and I got bitten a few times, but got the hole dug and put the big root ball into it and was ready to walk away, when I looked back and saw that my angle of viewing was so off that a good two inches of the plant was still protruding from the ground. Plus I had watered it already. Two muddy hands later, and it’s finally at the right depth.

Fixed a squeak in the storm door, or thought I had. The telling feature was when leaving the house and holding the storm door with my butt while locking up: the squeak had such an interesting timbre that I would occasionally (when nobody was around to look) do a little bump and grind to make some squeaky door music with it.

Hey, I’ve been working from home in quarantine, too, and whatever brings joy is fine at this point.

Anyway, a can of that famous two-letter and two number lubricant later, and it’s finally fixed. Squeaky door concerts are over for the season. It may return in time for Halloween.

Bought a loaf of supposedly tasty but healthy bread, but for all the care spent packaging it, it tasted like flavored cardboard. I went back to my regular bread.

Out of the three cartons of milk I had ready to go last week (one nearly empty, one ready to replace it and one on reserve, I realized the one I had almost emptied had a later expiration date than the other two. Considering that the store has been known to do this, I should’ve put my glasses on first.

The great thing is that I survived this week, and today I’m going to have burgers and coleslaw and just forget about soda foam salutes. Next week is a chance to start over and do better.

After I polish off the rest of the darned soda.

Next Saturday is supposed to be Independence Day, but somehow we seem more enslaved than ever this 224th birthday. Not only are we dealing with a 100-year disease, but society has put its foot down on the issue of black oppression, and this time they’re wearing heavy jack boots.

The oppression reckoning has been a long time coming, but I’m not sure how it will affect the future of our country. Our origins, at least how we had it in school, were based upon the acquisition of laborers who received little or no wages and low quality food and board in exchange for building part of the country (the South) for rich land barons. History, as it was taught to us, says that European traders brought sturdy Africans over and sold them to be used as field hands and builders. I don’t know why the traders could not have made offers of employment in the new world to them, rather than chain them up and forcibly sell them as chattel, but that was apparently how it was done back then. Who knows what the South would’ve looked like if nobody worked on anything, but since we have apparently been lied to all these years about our history, how can one discuss such things and really be sure we know what we’re talking about? I’m probably wrong, too, but I’m willing to put out there what I remember. It never seemed right to me, as a child, to make somebody into somebody else’s prisoner.

The whole truth is hidden somewhere, and in order to settle everything down, we will probably have to sort it all out and decide where that is, and whose story we shall rely upon to reprogram our thinking on the issue.

We are also dealing with a lot of name changes. Anybody who has used the “n word” or was known historically to have owned a slave, or was a major public figure in a time at which nothing was done about discrimination or oppression, is being publicly shunned, and statues erected to tell their story–selective though it may be–torn down with shouts of vengeful disdain. School buildings will be renamed, along with talks of a new name for New York City’s famous Columbus Boulevard, since he overtook the natives when discovering this plot of dirt for us. Even the famous Mount Rushmore is in discussion to change it and remove or add new faces. It’s enough to make one’s head spin.

Folks, history happened one way and one way only. We should never have lied about it, nor ignored it or covered it up. In the past few weeks I have heard so many new tales (one doozie said George Washington’s supposed wooden teeth were actually stolen from the mouths of slaves), we will destroy our sense of selves as surely as if we were brainwashed by pros.

Actually, it looks like we’ve already been brainwashed by pros who had free reign to pick and choose what to tell children about our nation’s history. At least we were not programmed to deify a public figure without question. But are we America, or not?

The festivities on the Fourth of July will be televised fireworks from previous events, since we cannot gather to watch any spectacle in groups for fear of getting sick. Maybe this is what we have truly earned: a mirthless, silent day for reflection on what we have allowed ourselves to become, and what we may be doomed to be forever unless we act now.

There are no lowly people, so there are no lowly jobs, and thus there should be no lowly pay, and qualifications should be the measure of eligibility for a job, not what the applicant looks like. Education should not be one type for this group and another lesser version for that group, and it cannot be rewritten to make anybody look perfect or rock-bottom terrible; you must tell the whole story. Facts are called for. That is the measure of any human being: their successes and failures together. Don’t tear the statues down: make the signage bigger and tell the good story and the bad. That way you don’t have to rename places or lie about anything.

Another good thing about telling the whole story: many of our young people are struggling with self-worth issues, and they cannot see what their contributions will be in this world. Our ability to face our failures and learn by them are what we should promote for young people, so they can understand that not everything they do will be great, but they have the potential to be a great part of what this country needs. Good, honest, humanity.

The country was built on how we erred and tried again, and again. That is what makes a good human race.

Maybe we’ll look better for our 225th birthday.