Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Sunday parking is a mystery to me, especially on a day when there is a “Big Game” like today. The parking lot at the Acme was at a premium, and I had gone there as I suspected the lots at ShopRite and Wegman’s would be even more packed. Grocery stores, apparently, are the same everywhere, and know no peace on a triple-threat like today/Sunday. Add to the new popular grocery shopping day that it is the first of the month when food aid stipends are delivered, and a “Big Game,” and chaos is a guarantee.

Still, I used a cartlet (one of those new-fangled smaller two-tiered styles for grocery runs larger than a hand basket but smaller than a big cart), and managed to buy the week’s food without touching a pulled pork container or a nacho chip.

Still, I couldn’t help wondering about why the parking lot had so many cars. It seems to me that, if one person or family is entertaining several people for the game, only they would shop, and those being entertained would not need to go to the store to buy food, so the lot should be less crowded, but the pulled pork and chips would run out faster.

If it were the holiday season, I could understand crowded parking lots, because every single person seems to need to buy stuff for a bunch of other people, so with one person to a vehicle, it gets a bit packed in that asphalt and gridded wasteland.

Anyway, there were no lines at the registers and, unlike Wegman’s, I could have gone to self checkout and paid cash.

Don’t get me started on that new pet peeve. Credit cards only at self-checkout? If I have dollar bills to feed into a slot, I’ll use them, thank you.

So I didn’t buy anything for any big game, because I am not inclined to watch. Besides, I went to the big box club on Friday and bought “Big Game” food for the office for the second time in a month (without buying three or four things I could’ve gotten because it screws around with the accounting department when I try to itemize the receipt on the corporate expense report), and since I don’t work Sundays, I never get to eat what I bought.

But the parking lot had spaces then.

The perfect handbag doesn’t always last. I thought I had found mine, and it was a great replacement for my first love, the Ambassador II bag of old, which fell victim to hard times and a buyout and who knows what else. For years I carried a bag by Donna Sharp called the Pauline, which was just right for me. I found it when I saw a coworker carrying one. Between us we managed to buy each new pattern, but only once did we catch ourselves with the same one. I was the one who changed purses that time.

Now it looks like we both have to change.

Donna Sharp has redesigned the bag and renamed it Paula. It’s smaller: 7″ by 4 1/2″ by 12″ to Pauline’s 5.5″ by 8″ by 11.25″. We talked after coming into the office in our new bags. Neither of us could fit the same things into it because the compartments shrank, so we dislike that. I normally fit my cell phone into the center pocket, but on the new model it now also contains an inside pouch, and the phone gets tangled in it. My coworker had to leave out some things she normally carries, and I reshuffled mine into other places and couldn’t remember where they were when I needed them. The strap went from a wide fabric to a thinner material, and it doesn’t stay put on the shoulder.

Which means we’re back where we started years ago. How do you find the same or similar bag? It’s not as if one can input such a question into a search engine and get good results. The lists and photos and dead ends (no longer available) are endless, and prices are ridiculous, because handbags are pricey due to their temporary or seasonal nature. Hunting in department stores is no better, because women descend on the purse table like vultures on the last prey carcass.

I did order a different style bag and am trying it now. It’s bigger, of course, but it has features I need. If it fails I’ll have to search some more for another replacement. It’s the second hardest thing for a woman to find, just behind comfortable control garments.

Hug your handbag tight, ladies: it may be the last one you ever love.

Past participles may be an endangered species. I have heard increasing numbers of instances where the wrong words were used, due to a lack of knowledge or laziness. For example, in an animal attack, somebody often is bitten. Notice the “ten” in there: bitten is the past participle of the word bite. The creature in the past probably bit quite a few people, but those folks have been bitten.

Of course, some wiseguy may argue that somebody who is smitten (a euphemism for being overcome by affection) did not do so because somebody smit him or her (in fact, that individual smote them as our holy creator did to a few biblical miscreants*), but that is the way of the language, people.

Every time I hear somebody say, “I got bit,” I cringe. There is a “ten” in there. Some grammar experts feel both are acceptable in some usages, but I really prefer to hear the longer version. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer, and letters add to the word count.

Our sense of grammar seems to be falling apart, and with penmanship on life support in public schools, we may be in danger of becoming incapable of communicating at all with our hands or voices.

Coming from a world in which “whey day at” is an accepted substitute for “where are they,” I guess rules are being bent all over the place. Like twisted metal. Arguing about grammar, like climate change, does not guarantee it being heard. The “not me” or NIMBY (not in my backyard) crowd pour from the doors of our colleges with no true idea of how much skill they lack.

I was an English major, and I am certain I lack a few key skills, too. At least I do feel it’s good to occasionally point out one or two, hoping to score a win.

I was bitten by the grammar bug early in life, and can’t unbite it.

*(Of course, smiting when God did it in the Bible usually meant the smitees were killed, and unless we want to get into a big discussion about what love does to a person, let’s just move on.)

My Saturday newspapers were stolen over the holidays. Every week I get two newspapers, and on the weekends I have three because I add the New York Times for their book review and magazine (not to mention the city entertainment scene). After having an opportunity to sleep in on weekends, it was disheartening to awaken to find the bundle of my Inquirer and NYT encased in a blue plastic bag was not being held up by the dry needle bed of the front lawn in winter. The local paper, mercifully, remained untouched in another location.

I had some suspicions, but no evidence or suspects. One thing I did know: whomever was lifting my papers probably did not want the whole thing, which made the theft even more of a tragedy. I can’t picture somebody saying to themselves, “I think I’ll read the rest of these papers after I go through the book review.” I imagined somebody pilfering the coupons or the Sunday ads and ditching the rest, not even bothering to read the exploits of BC or Beetle Bailey. Did they take the papers home, I wonder?

Two things I resolved to do right away: replace the missing papers myself, and not complain to the paper’s offices, because my carrier is a nice person who doesn’t deserve to have to deal with petty theft. I think I’m the only person on the block who gets actual papers delivered these days anyway, so the time of the paid paper flingers may well be going away, and I don’t want to put people out of work.

I did get helpful advice when I posted on social media, and from an unexpected source: an ex boyfriend suggested waking up early to confront the pilferer. The thought came and went just as quickly, because our neighborhood recently experienced a killing over a tip jar, and who wants to read about somebody getting hurt over a newspaper delivery. I chose to patiently wait it out and see what this weekend brought.

The paper was waiting for me. So Shirley Holmes has deduced that the two weekend thefts were likely caused by a holiday visitor who decided to make themselves at home by raiding other people’s properties. I just hope they didn’t take the papers home and try to convince their hosts that they were out buying them at the quick mart or “sebben lebben” as some local humorists call it. What a shame that somebody would think that way, but at least I’m guessing the problem is now over, and the person responsible is back at home raiding his usual haunts for his reading material or coupons.

They could’ve at least left the book review and the comics.

My mother called me “kid” this morning, and though it may seem jocular, it has a sinister meaning in her side of our family. One of my great grandparents referred to my mother as “the kid” in a not-so-nice way. Back then, kids were not treated as kindly, either.

Of course my mother was not herself when she said this to me. It’s all part of being elderly and on changing medications, and of having bad mornings when things don’t seem right in one’s head upon awakening. When you’re a senior and have decades of mental files in a brain which is not as good at keeping them filed and orderly, some of the strangest memories turn up at unusual times. A complete song came to her mind later this morning; one I had not heard before. Same person, different hour of the day.

Of all the things we wonder about and study, the mind is still a huge mystery. Why somebody goes on a rampage and kills, or shuts down and loses touch with life, are still mysteries, and not only for older adults. The brain is more complex than any computer, and more vulnerable than we care to admit. This is why many people don’t understand voluntary chemical dependency on cigarettes or substances (vaping, drugs, alcohol). Nobody would wake up saying, “I think I’ll start a habit which will create a burden on my life,” but it happens every day. And it stays, and torments, and destroys.

I realize that we thrive on rewards, regardless of how they may be obtained. Rewards come from reactions within the brain which compel us to find the same feelings again. With problems such as substance abuse or gambling, rewards become a chronic obsession. It may be a sick thrill to know that somebody is going to be hurt because you arranged for it to happen, but it’s the reward that matters, not how it is obtained. That may be the key to any kind of adult abuse of children. It needs to be studied and addressed.

As for the elderly and the tendency to come up with random thoughts during mental spring cleaning, I passed off the “kid” reference, but I hope that by the time I am at an age with the mind supposedly “starts to go,” I will be able to read the results of a study and know why, and be able to do something about it.

2019 marks the end of the “twenty-teens.” Many people review their lives by decades, so I decided to put together a look back at 2000 through 2019.

In January 2010 the hot topic was HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) and its effects on health. The obesity epidemic is still with us, but some manufacturers note on food packaging that they have no HFCS.

October 2010 I posted about bullying. Having been a victim of extreme bullying, the topic is close to my heart. Fortunately I have lived to see something being done about it, but with every child or teen suicide, or high school shooting threat or event, I die a little.

In March 2011 I received my BA diploma from University of Pennsylvania in the mail. It may not have increased my salary. In some ways, I still feel people’s resentment of my education. I don’t brag about it, but a copy is on my cubicle wall at work, in case somebody tries to call me a dumb blonde.

August 2011 featured a post about scrapple. A co-worker vilified scrapple. It’s amazing how people will be so quick to judge, but slow to learn.

Over a few years, the saga of the lemon tree I grew at work took up a post or two. Unfortunately it died of unspecified causes. Surviving family includes several violets and a rather anorexic philodendron.

Also a big topic over the decade is NaNoWriMo. I’m still working on it, and like my novel, it’s possibly doomed to forever be a work in progress.

In July 2014 I injured myself tripping in the kitchen. Seems like yesterday, just like any injury I have ever had. The bruising did go away after about ten days, but I’m always cautious about that spot, hoping to avoid a repeat.

In January 2015 I put out a request to see if somebody could help me find the young men in a photo taken on Guam in 1985. It’s a big world, but we’re such a microcosm of it, I got no responses. I have the same luck with ancestors on my mother’s side of the family.

May 2015 is where I will end this segment. A neighbor brought some roses over for my mother and me. They were well-kept by the home’s new occupant on behalf of the original owner, a woman whom I miss dearly because I never had the chance to say goodbye to her; she died while I endured Navy boot camp in 1980.

We take the moments in time for granted too much. As I look back on these posts, I realize my history is filled with meaning. Next week brings a brief look at 2015 onward, and a few favorite moments before we bring on 2020.

Thank you for staying with me on this journey.