Tag Archives: humor

Coal Tar and Cordless Phones

Posted on March 29, 2012 | 10 comments

Good morning Everyone!

One of the joys (at least for a woman) of shampooing your hair is the way your hair smells once you finish.  The shampoo manufacturers, well aware of this, deliberately design their shampoos to have all kinds of interesting scents for their users.  Whether you like lavender mixed with freesia, or strawberry/passionfruit/banana or kiwi lime, there is a scent for you.  Unless….

I have a scalp condition (oh, heck, we’ll call a spade a spade or a rose a rose or however the saying goes and say dandruff) that recently has flared up and it was necessary last week for me to try something that corrects the condition more aggressively.  I decided to try a Neutrogena product, T/Gel.  While no scent was listed on the bottle, I didn’t really worry about it, although I did notice that the active ingredient was coal tar.  Knowing shampoo manufacturers, I was sure that there was enough other stuff in there to make it smell good anyhow.  Boy, was I wrong!  Let’s just say that without copious amounts of conditioner, people think an airplane tarmac is approaching before I round the corner.  Even with copious amounts of conditioner, the faint scent of Eau de Asphalt lingers around my hair for a day or so.  The only things I can say for it is 1) it does work very well and 2) you only have to use it twice a week.

Now on to cordless phones….

We have a phone system that provides us with three cordless phones.  The master unit is in the kitchen, and handset 1 sits on it.  Handset 2 sits on a charger in the den.  The third charger unit is in our bedroom on one of the bedside tables and Handset 3 is supposed to reside there.  The reasoning behind getting a system with three cordless phones was partly to make it  impossible to completely lose all three phones at any one time.

I am quite sure that reasoning works well for normal people, but for the talented disorganizer such as myself, it is a complete fallacy.  In just one or two phone calls, I can lose all three hand sets.  One day, as I searched in frustration for a phone to answer, the phones rang long enough for the answering machine to come on.  This was a plus, since at least I knew who to call back.  Then I went on a phone search odyssey, to finally discover Handset 1, which should stay in the kitchen, in our bathroom, Handset 2 buried under three pillows on the couch in the den (at least it was somewhere in the right room) and Handset 3 comfortably resting on top of the washer in the laundry room.  Even I had to stop for a second and marvel at the combination of absent-mindedness and disorganization that created that particular arrangement.

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

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High School Career Day Left A Lot To Be Desired

Posted on March 27, 2012 | 4 comments

Good morning Everyone!

I find it is easier sometimes to access WordPress through Google Chrome, and as I was getting ready to sign in this morning, I looked at the latest product from the Google Doodlers, and realized that “Google Doodler” was not on the list of possible careers when I attended career day during high school.

Of course, neither Google, nor personal computers were invented when I graduated from high school, which might explain the absence.  However, other exciting career choices didn’t make the list, either.

Sunset over Key West

One example is travel show host.  If they had told me in high school that I could travel to lots of exotic and exciting places, take cruises, make regular trips to Disney World, tell people about it on TV and get paid for it, my career choices might have been very different.

I would have liked to know more about jobs like “Alaskan State Trooper.”  I probably wouldn’t have taken that route, but the show is pretty fascinating.  My husband wishes that he had known about jobs such as Alaskan bush pilot (I think that’s the right phrase).  He probably would have taken any job that allowed him to fly for a living in a sea plane between small towns, even if it meant living in the Arctic.  (And given the way Mark hates cold, that’s saying something!)   If he had known you could do it in tropical islands and make a living, we would be living somewhere like Tahiti now.

From Print Shop Professional 2.o

RV park inspector is another job that didn’t make the list.  As near as I can fathom the requirements of this job, an RV park inspector rides from RV park to RV park in some type of recreational vehicle, either a motor home or a trailer, and rates the park on given specifications either for the campground chain’s purposes or for publication in a campground guide.  We would be quite good at that.

Working at a local marina might be fun (I have to confess I didn’t know what a marina was until after high school; I knew what a port was, but didn’t have a conception of a marina – the casualty of a Navy family life geared to the ocean).

I did flirt with the idea of marine biologist, available on career day, but let the idea slide due to the fact that I didn’t think I could pay for graduate school (but then Mark and I ended up paying for me to go to law school at night!  Go figure.)

Writing has always been high on my list, and “writer” was a possible career discussed on career day, but the descriptions always included terms equivalent to “starving artist” which placed the job at a decided disadvantage.  It took me seven years after graduating law school to realize that I was writing for a living – granted, I was writing briefs for judges and lawyers to read, but I was writing.  “Starving artist” is not a term associated with what I do.  I also get to write this blog, which helps to stave off, even if it doesn’t completely satisfy, the creative writing urge in me.  I couldn’t make a living with the blog, but I certainly do enjoy writing it.

“Artist” wasn’t even a remote possibility, as I had no idea until two years ago that I had any modicum of artistic talent whatever.

There is always a bright side, of course, even to notable gaps in career day in high school and career choices by adults.  In my case, it is all the possibilities left for me as I decide what I want to be when I grow up!  At this rate, I expect I will be fully grown up when I reach the age of, oh, 90 or so.

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

P.S.  Thank all of you for your kind words and prayers regarding the death of my grandfather.  I appreciate them.

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Science, Gone to the Birds

Posted on March 15, 2012 | 4 comments

Good morning Everyone!

While I was out walking Tyra today at 6:30 a.m., which due to the time change my body still unhappily believes to be 5:30 a.m., the entire area was covered in fog.  Not the thick, can’t see in front of your face fog, but the kind of fog that softens the lines of the trees and the road and the lake around you.  If you don’t have to drive in it, it is beautiful.  But, strangely, the new moon, which was still out, was sharp and clear in the sky above – yet surrounded, from my earthly perspective, by fog.  I wonder how it did that?

The birds were wide awake already also, singing their hearts out.  I didn’t hear the woodpecker (the only sound I would have recognized besides a crow’s caw), but there were multiple songs in the woods around me, which made me wonder why birds sing in the morning.  I looked it up, and alas, because there is no definitive answer and none of the existing theories are particular attractive to me, I don’t have a good answer for you.  I am choosing to believe that the birds sing in order to greet the day, until the scientists make a final decision otherwise (and I’m sure they will).

It is fascinating to me, though, the mysteries that still exist for us in nature.  Just using the bird song example, mankind has known for centuries, if not millenia, that birds sing in the morning.  Even so, in the year 2012, we don’t have a definitive answer as to why.

One of us could try just asking the nearest bird that would stand still long enough to hear us, but I can just imagine that conversation:

Person:  Hello Bird.  Can you tell me why you are singing this morning? 

Bird, named George (all in bird language):  Hey, Fred, get a load of this dude!  It almost looks like he’s trying to talk to us. 

Fred flits over for a minute:  That’s silly.  Everyone knows humans can’t talk.

Person:  Are you trying to tell me something? 

Betty Jean, from the nest:  I think he is trying to talk.

George:  He may be, but it’s not coming through.

Fred:  Hey, you want to have a little fun? 

George:  What do you mean?

Fred:  I could start to dive bomb him like I thought he was threatening Betty’s nest.  I bet I could have him running in six seconds!

George starts laughing:  That’s a good one.

Betty Jean:  Fred, don’t you dare!  He isn’t bothering us.

Person pulls out notebook and writes.

Fred:  What’s that he’s doing?

Betty Jean:  I think its called writing.  I nested in a bush near a window one year, and they … um… write… in two ways – the way this guy is doing it and somehow by hitting small black rectangles and watching a white big rectangle while they do so.  I’m not sure why, though. 

George:  Oh, that part’s easy.  Humans have the worst memory in the universe, so they have tried to cope by …. I think the word is “record” things.  

Person turns to leave.

Fred:  Hey, guys, watch this! I can make this human freeze in one move.

Betty:  Fred, you better behave.

Fred: No worries, Betty.  In fact, I’ll probably make his day by doing this.  

Fred flies down to five feet in front of Person, who immediately stands still, watching. Fred hops around, doing bird things at random, like singing, cocking his head and watching Person, poking his beak in the ground, and making Person turn in a circle slowly by hopping around him in stages.

Betty and George smother giggles.

Fred calls up from the ground:  I can do this for hours, and the Person will stay right there and watch.  Silly, isn’t it?

Betty:  Oh, that’s funny, Fred, but George, dear, I’m hungry.

George:  Okay, Betty, I’m on my way.  Hey, Fred, enough play for now; we’ve got work to do.

Fred, reluctantly flies back into the woods.

Person recedes in the distance, scribbling notes the whole way.

Another victory for science!

Have a great day!

Nancy

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The Robocalls have stopped!

Posted on March 14, 2012 | 4 comments

Good morning Everyone!

For those of you who are not from the United States, or who do not follow political news, there was a primary held in Alabama yesterday.  FN.    When the polls closed at 7:00 p.m., every person in the state of Alabama heaved a deep sigh.  No, it wasn’t with satisfaction because we completed our civic duty by voting (I don’t know the percentage of voter turnout in the state for the primary, but I am sure we weren’t anywhere close to 100%).

It was a sigh of relief at the fact that the robocalls will finally stop.  After Super Tuesday, which was March 6, every household in Alabama with a landline was inundated with calls from recorded spokesmen delivering messages from, or about, the various presidential candidates.

(To the candidate who called in the middle of the one network television program my family makes time to watch every week, Alcatraz, we weren’t going to vote for you anyhow, but the call during our favorite TV show clinched it.)

There were some families, my sister included, who the day before election night, gave in and unplugged their phone for the evening.  (We had done so Sunday during our afternoon nap after it was interrupted with calls.)

We should feel honored, I guess; at our house we got at least five calls directly from at least two separate  presidential candidate (‘s voices), one from a candidate’s wife (‘s voice) and one or two from various groups telling us why not to vote for a particular presidential candidate.

I think the entire state was a little bemused by the onslaught of phone calls;  this year is the first year in a long time that the Alabama primary had any relevance in the presidential election process (we used to have our primary in June, and by that time the nominees for both parties had been selected) and the first year ever since someone (and whoever they are, I hope they are inundated continually with all kinds of robocalls themselves) invented the robocall for political purposes.

So last night at 7, the people in the great state of Alabama snuggled down into their couches, content to watch the election results, or some other television show of their choice, or read, or play games or whatever, free in the knowledge that the dratted phone was not going to ring with a call from anyone besides someone  we knew, or that at least had some direct connection with us.

It was bliss!

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

FN.  For those of you not familiar with the election process in the United States, here is my best thumbnail sketch.

There are three levels of elections:  federal, state and local.   Federal elections are those elections that involve the positions that will be in charge of the federal government, that is, the government that rules the country.  However, our constitution says that the federal government can only control certain things, and leaves many powers to each individual states, which the states control with their own state governments.  (We had state governments long before we had a federal government).  So state elections involve important positions in the state governments.  Local elections deal with local areas, such as counties and towns.  State and federal elections are held every two years.  The President of the United States is a federal position, and elections for president occur every four years.  This is one of those four-year presidential election years.

We have two main political parties, although there are other groups out there, the Republicans and the Democrats.  A primary is where the individual parties choose who their candidate for president will be.  This year, there is no contest on the Democratic side because President Barack Obama is a Democratic and no one is running against him in the primary.  There is a contest on the Republican side, since there are several people who would like to run for President as a Republican.  The primary election, which is what we had here in Alabama yesterday, is the time when the Republicans in Alabama (and probably some Democrats, but I’ll explain about cross-over voting another time) chose who they wanted to be the presidential nominee, as well as selecting other Republican candidates for other state and federal offices.

The final election is in November.

Clear as mud, isn’t it?

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Six Words and The-House-Formerly-Known-As-Clean

Posted on March 7, 2012 | 4 comments

Good morning Everyone!

We’ve made it to Wednesday (or at least those of us on my side of the International Date Line have made it to Wednesday; some of you lucky souls out there have already made it to Thursday!), but I’m having one of those weeks when it feels like it should be Friday. It will be kind of depressing when I go into work tomorrow feeling that it is Saturday. That Friday feeling is not helped by the fact that I have today off from work, with intentions of completing several errands and chores, which will push me even further forward, giving me the impression today is Saturday.

I'm so confused!

When I first scheduled today off, I was planning on at least getting the chance to sleep in, but that plan was scotched by 6:40 a.m. Monday, when Kayla started with the words, “Mom, I forgot to tell you…..” Any parent knows two things about those six words: 1) Your blood pressure begins to rise immediately upon them being uttered and 2) They never are followed with things like “my science teacher gave me a 100 on my test and says I could be a physicist some day.” The words “Mom, I forgot to tell you…” are used by children at convenient times of day or night such as 7:00 p.m. the day before a major project is due, or, as in this case, at 6:40 a.m., 10 minutes after she should have already left for school, when the announcement was “I have traffic duty this week, which means I have to be at school by 7:10, so I will have to be a car rider this week.” (“Car rider” is the local elementary school term for children who do not ride a bus or a day care van, but whose parents drive them to school and pick them up from school. In the elementary school world, “car riders” seem to have an elevated status over bus riders and day care riders.) That was doable, but due to the mechanics of when Mark needs to be at work, that meant that I would be dropping her off at school all this week. Hence, the sleeping in this morning, on my day off, was wiped out, for the most part.

What I did NOT get to do this morning!

What little hope of sleeping in at least another 15 or 20 minutes that I had were wiped out by Bad Dog (Mandy) who insisted that I needed to get up and feed her. She kept jumping up on the bed and licking and pawing me to get my attention. She was unable to jump on my hair, because I recently got it cut very short, but she tried every other trick in her arsenal. About the 8th time, I gave up trying to kick her off the bed and get her to leave me alone, and got up. At least she was happy! Darwin and Tyra seemed to appreciate her efforts on their behalf, also.  All three dogs, now, having been fed and let out, are comfortably asleep in their location of choice, but I am not too very bitter!

One sleeping spot, preferred on warmer days.

For the rest of it, I have a full day. One of my tasks is to pick up the-house-formerly-known-as-clean in preparation for my father stopping by this evening on his way through from Florida to Illinois. (Let me hasten to add here that the only homo sapien in our house NOT responsible for its current disheveled state is Mark; it’s Kayla and I that manage to leave little trails of stuff throughout the house, kind of like bread crumbs to help us find our way home.) I also, as part of that same process, have to convert the craft room back to the guest bedroom. That won’t be too bad, although I have since Christmas been a little lax about storing craft materials back up. I don’t think it would be wise to open any closets in my house for a couple of days, though, once I’m finished.

If I finish all that on time, maybe I can sneak in a little nap – but just in case, I intend to consume large quantities of caffeine throughout the day!

Lots of caffeine!

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

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Pants

Posted on March 2, 2012 | 4 comments

Good morning everyone!

Quill Pen

Between my job as a lawyer, my writing here, e-mails, that wonderful, terrible, addictive game, Words With Friends, and some other writing that I do, I usually write a great many words in one day.  In the course of doing so, every once in a while a word will strike me as strange, and yesterday, it was the word “pants” which started me wondering – why is the word “pants” plural?  For that matter, why are most words involving things we wear on our legs (with the exception of variations of “panty hose”)  plural?

We wear, on other parts of our anatomy, a shirt, a blouse, a T-shirt, a hat, a dress (well at least some of us wear a dress occasionally), a skirt, a suit.  We wear a belt to keep our pants up.  We wear a scarf, either for warmth or decoration.

Givenchy Scarves; Photograph from Wikimedia Commons by Themepark Mom

We do wear shoes and socks, but that makes sense, because there are two of them, one for each foot.  The same is true for gloves and mittens – they are not connected, and we wear one on each hand.  If I am going to wear one, I say I am going to wear a mitten on one hand, and a glove on the other, making the singular/plural use logically consistent.

Motorcycle Riding Gloves

But when it comes to our legs, we wear pants, trousers, slacks, shorts, tights, leggings and jeans. Even things that hold our pants up in the years before elastic or belts (apparently) were plural – suspenders.   In years of yore, little girls wore pantaloons.

Pantaloons peek out underneath this little girl's dress from 1838.

The only other things that we wear that are treated the same way are eyeglasses – there is really only one unit. but glasses and spectacles always are plural, also.  (Notice I have to say “are glasses” not “is glasses” even though technically  if I am wearing glasses, I am wearing one item.  Of course, the store that makes glasses charges me as much for them as if I really were getting two units of something and not one, but that involves the science/art of economics, which makes my head hurt.)

We even went out and made another word, monocle, for glasses with one lens, rather than just calling it  a “glass” because it only involves one eye.

Actress and Screenwriter Ruth Gordon wearing a monocle in November 1919

I have read through a couple of on-line etymologies for the word “pants” and while interesting – through a long chain of events, the origin for the word “pants” comes from a Christian martyr, Saint Pantaleone, who was beheaded six times, and each time his head reattached and he continued to live  (Pantaleone basically means “all compassionate” and I guess being beheaded six times and having your head reattach would certainly help you in being compassionate)  – eventually they all can be boiled down to “see trousers.”  When you look at “trousers,” the etymology explains that the root of the word “trousers” is the Scottish “trews.”  No one explains why “trews” is plural.

A painting of Sir John Sinclair wearing trews - they look like pants to me!

That just struck me as odd.

Trousers - they still look like pants to me!

If anyone has an idea about why pants are plural, I’d love to hear about it!  Otherwise, I am afraid it will be time soon to go back to research the Ugg Clan’s family history one more time….

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

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Observations Regarding The Ten Year Old Girl

Posted on February 29, 2012 | 9 comments

Good morning everyone!

Today, I reflect upon the unique characteristics of the ten year old girl.

The ten year old girl dresses in sleeveless dresses in the wintertime for church, but when it is 80+ degrees outside, runs into the den, turns on the gas fireplace and huddles in front of it like a child out of a Dickens novel.  She is willing to go swimming at the beach when the water temperature is somewhere around “Arctic” and tell you that the water “isn’t so bad.”  She sees no inconsistencies in any of this.

The ten year old girl will inform you that the reason that she is wearing a sleeveless dress in the middle of winter is because she wants to broaden her wardrobe.  When asked about one long-sleeve dress someone gave her, she answers, “I’ve worn that every Sunday for weeks.”  When asked about a second long-sleeve dress that was a gift from someone else, she answers, “I’ve worn that every Sunday for weeks when I haven’t been wearing the other dress.”

The ten year old girl fails to see why her parents find that statement funny.

The ten year old girl is smiling and laughing, then angry, then somber, then smiling, then crying and then back to sunshine and laughter – all in the space of about five minutes.

The ten year old girl is still willing to hold hands with her parents.

The ten year old girl, when asked to clear the table, will get everything but two napkins, one spoon and a drink glass, and then look at you, puzzled, when you ask her to finish the job.

The ten year old girl will decide she wants to help clean the house, and in her eagerness, dash forward to help by choosing to do the one thing that is absolutely useless to what you need to accomplish that day, such as sweeping an already vacuumed floor when the next chore involves dusting furniture.

The ten year old girl is still willing to cuddle with her parents on the couch.

The ten year old girl is aware that items cost money.  She is not aware that all money is not equal, and will eagerly offer to take the whole family to Disneyworld with her copious savings of $12.59.  No, she is not joking.

The ten year old girl, unlike a five year old girl, has a filter in place between what she thinks and what she says.   Unfortunately, the filter is calibrated so that it kicks in about ten seconds after she has already spoken.

The ten year old girl is willing to empty the dishwasher once she is reminded 10 times, but unable to concentrate on the task long enough to finish it.

The ten year old girl has boys she “likes” at school, but is still young enough to tell her parents about them.  The pool of ten year old boys she has to draw from still aren’t really interested in girls.  The ten year old girl’s parents find that satisfactory.

The ten year old girl is trying hard to be nice but sometimes things just come out wrong.  Last night, when a big package came to a house from Omaha Steaks with some frozen dinners, one ten year old girl looked at her mother and asked, “Gee, Mom, are you just going to give up cooking altogether?”  When reminded that the mother had cooked for several days straight, she said, “It’s okay to lay off it for a little while.”

My ten year old girl is the light of my and her father’s life, and we can’t imagine life without her!

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

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Celebration: It’s Been One Year!

Posted on February 23, 2012 | 19 comments

Good morning everyone!

This week marks the one year anniversary of this blog so today is the first day of the New Blogging Year.  From my first post, My Unintended Exercise, through my latest post, A Touch of Spring, it has been an exciting journey, and I just can’t tell you how much I appreciate your taking time out of your day over this past year to share this journey with me.

I will start off this New Blogging Year with a conversation Kayla and I had yesterday.  She was sick, and Mark was staying home with her since he also was sick.  Once we decided that she needed to stay home, both of us reinforced the idea that if you stayed home sick, you needed to rest and be quiet, not play and watch TV.  She willingly went back to bed, and when I was ready to leave I went in to her bedroom to tell her good-bye.  She rolled over, gave me a sleepy hug, then said, “Mom, can I ask you a question?”  I said, creatively, “Yes.”  She then asked “Is food included?”  I smothered a laugh, told her yes, food was included in a stay at home day, and then beat a fast track out to the car where I could laugh in safety.

During this past year, we have shared a lot of laughs, traveled together and even learned a few things.  You have been kind enough to read some of my poetry, read my posts about the history of the Ugg Cave Clan and listen to some of my whining thoughts on contemporary technology and other things.

Some of the posts that both you and I agree were pretty funny include my thoughts on The Perils of Absent-Mindedness, my one post that was Freshly Pressed, Rules I Never Thought I’d Need, Cheese Grits:  The Sequel, Please stop Improving My Life, Part I and Part II, Fibber McGee’s Closet and Drunken Puppies.

Together, we have traveled to many places, including Key West, the Smoky Mountains, Destin Florida, Oak Mountain in Birmingham, Pensacola and Callaway Gardens.  We also got to visit two fantastic restaurants, Lambert’s Cafe in Foley, Alabama and Captain Anderson’s in Panama City.

You shared the recently discovered history of the Ugg Clan with me in A Highly Biased History of Washing Machines, A Highly Biased History of Bowling, and A Highly Biased History of Bowling, Part II.  Research into the Ugg Clan continues, and I suspect that more of it will be revealed as time goes on.

Kayla, my daughter, has featured prominently in posts – the title of the blog is Tales from the Mom-Side.  Some of your favorite Kayla stories include Conversations with my Ten-Year-Old, Inappropriate O’Fences, The Art of Gentle Satire and the Vegetarian Veterinarian Veteran .

I had the chance to talk to you about our three extraordinary dogs, Tyra, Mandy and Darwin, aka Bad Dog and No-No, as well as tell you about our first dog, Shadow.

You and I also got to share some of the sweeter aspects of small town life in The 214th Comes Home and Homecoming Parade.

You have thought along with me in a few reflective posts, such as A Day of Thanks and Books:  Adventure of a Thousand Lives, as well as been kind enough to read some of my poetry in the posts A Poem for Memorial Day, A Poem for the Fourth of July, Praise, With Apologies to Samuel Clemens Moore and Christina Rossetti and in a funny remake of a popular Christmas carol, The Twelve Days Pre-Christmas.

A couple of other interesting posts including the history of the Thanksgiving Holiday (not the Pilgrims and Indians, but after that) and a discussion of one of the underappreciated tasks in the modern world: garbage collection – go without it for three weeks, and you will never take it for granted again!

Do I know where I’m going in this next year?  Absolutely not, but then that’s at least half of the fun!

Thank you for sharing these posts along with me, and here’s to a wonderful second year!

Have a great day!

Nancy

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Modern Inconveniences: Electronics Cords

Posted on February 17, 2012 | 13 comments

Good morning everyone!

I intended to upload some pictures today and discuss the unusually early harbingers of spring that appeared the last week in January, but in the wild scramble to find the camera, along with the correct cord for downloading pictures to the computer, I got sidetracked.

Standard Electrical Outlet

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away…..  Sorry – wrong story.  Still, a long time ago, we had both electrical appliances/machines, and enough electrical outlets to match them.  Things that you plugged into the electrical outlets were fairly simple – in the bedroom, you plugged in the television, if you had one for it, and lights; in the den, you plugged in the television , possibly the radio/stereo and lights, and in the kitchen, without counting the major electrical appliances such as the refrigerator and the stove, you would plug in a toaster or a toaster oven.   Throughout the house, you needed enough strategically placed outlets in order to be able to run the vacuum cleaner.

And that was about it.  It was fairly simple to match the outlets to the required gizmos.

There are seven things in this picture that must be plugged in to an electrical outlet - Can you find them all?

But then, electrical equipment began to multiply.  Looking back, I think it was the television equipment that started everything.  Someone invented cable, and the cable box and about the same time, someone else invented the VCR.  Ergo, instantly, two more cords were needed.  One of the very earliest home computers was a Commodore 64.  The Commodore 64 worked by using the television as your monitor, so if you had a Commodore, you needed another plug for the Commodore unit.  Video games were born, such as Pong – a green screen, two white lines for paddles and a white dot that you and the other player (or you and the computer if you didn’t have anyone to play it with) hit back and forth across the screen – and another plug was required.  At first, most of us just plugged various articles in and out as needed – after all, there was no reason to leave the Commodore or the video game plugged in all of the time – but a few brave souls ventured out and discovered the power strip.

By the time the electrical equipment revolving around the television had a good running start, the electronics revolution had also started, and home computers and car phones arrived on the scene.  Home computers required at least three separate outlets – one for the monitor, one for the processing unit and one for the printer.  Because the computer industry did a good job of warning us about what would happen to the (then very expensive) computer equipment with one good lightning stroke in the area of your house, we all felt the need to buy surge protectors, which were conveniently designed with many additional plugs so that you could plug in as many as 16 separate items through one plug on a two plug wall outlet.

All of this was still manageable, however, because once things were set up, they rarely needed to be unplugged and moved around, unless you were rearranging furniture.  Some creative use of power strips and surge protectors might be required, but once you got everything plugged in, the power cord stayed right where you left.  Until…..

The Cell Phone

The mobile electronics revolution began.  Car phones started this round.  When Mark and I were first married, car phones were basically unheard of.  You called from a land line when you could, and otherwise you had to wait until you and whomever you wanted to speak to were in the same place.  The first car phone I can remember having was known as a “bag phone,” which was a handset about the same size as a regular phone contained in a bag about the size of a lunchbox.  It could be charged by plugging it into the wall, or, if you had the adapter, by plugging it into the cigarette lighter in your car.  It still wasn’t too hard to lose this cord, since everything coiled into the bag.

But with the advent of the car phone, the mobile electronics revolution accelerated, and now my life is saturated with electrical cords – cords for the laptop, cords for the digital cameras, cords for each cell phone, mine and Mark’s, cords for various PDA’s that we have used and discarded over time, cords for my Kindle (Mark had once of the first hand-held Hewlett-Packard computers back in the early 90’s, and I can remember using something called a Sony Clie once upon a time), cords for the laptop(s) and probably some I have forgotten somewhere.

Our Graveyard for Obsolete Electronics Cords

For the disorganized individual who loves electronics (and I just can’t be the only one out there) it is a disaster waiting to happen.  To go back to the search that started this post, I spent five minutes going through 10 different cords before I found the one that I needed.

A few things have helped.  I have discovered that the Amazon Kindle cord works well for recharging the cell phones Mark and I have, and one or two of our cameras, so when we’re traveling, as long as I remember to pack the Kindle cord (and since it involves reading, I probably will remember to pack the Kindle cord) we are covered for most of the electronic gizmos and gadgets we will have with us, except for the laptop cords.  Mark found  a charging station for the cell phones, also, that sits on the kitchen counter, so the cell phones recharge in a predictable place.  (Don’t, however, ask me to find the cord that is supposed to sync my phone to my computer; once I started getting error messages every time I tried, that cord faded into oblivion.  Some archeologist is going to find it two thousand years from now and conclude that our civilization practiced ritual strangulation with strong black cords with funny ends.)  Camera cords are a bit dicey, though, because cameras are portable and need to be recharged as well as access a computer for downloading photos, which gives me three different points at which I can lose the cords.  That’s too many for the organizationally challenged like me.

The power strip by my bedside table - the one empty slot is reserved for my laptop.

There really is no point to this lament – I’m going to continue to use, and lose, and find these cords no matter what difficulties are involved, because I am hopelessly addicted to anything that makes beeping sounds, gives me messages and has flashing blue lights anywhere on it as long as I don’t reach the blue or black screen of death – unless someone out there gets the bright idea from this post to design the universal cord – one cord that meets all your needs for any electronic gizmo no matter what it is or when it was made.  I’d have to have about fifty of them to be sure I had one available when I needed it, but I think it would be an improvement.  I think.

Have a great day and weekend!

Nancy

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Conversations with My Ten-Year-Old

Posted on February 15, 2012 | 11 comments

Good morning everyone!

I thought you would enjoy sharing some conversations we have had at our house lately.

I.  While backing out of the garage to drive Kayla to school:

Kayla:  Mom, don’t hit the basketball goal.

Mom:  Why?  Am I about to?

Kayla, grinning:  No, not yet, but you just backed into the garbage can.

Mandy

II.   After school, Kayla working on homework looks down at Mandy:

Kayla:  Mandy, why do you chase your tail when you know it’s going to hurt when you catch it?

Mom:  Kayla, why do you leave your stuff all over the house when you know it drives me and Dad crazy?

Kayla:  I don’t know.

Thoughtful silence.

Kayla:  I’m sorry, Mandy.

III.  Driving Kayla to school while she’s slouched in the seat yawning and looking sleepy:

Mom:  Sings “You are sleepy, you are sleepy, you are sleepy right now” to the tune of the immortal “Kill the wabbit, Kill the wabbit, etc.” from one of the great Looney Tunes cartoons starring Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny.

Kayla stays slouched in the seat yawning and looking sleepy, but gives Mom one of her “You’re crazy but you’re mine” looks.

Mom:  How about I sing that song in the hallway at your school while we’re delivering this Valentine stuff.

Kayla immediately sits up straight in her seat, forces her eyes wide open and announces:  I am a bright and happy child.

IV.  Dad, Kayla and Mom are looking for a DVD to watch.

Dad:  How about “The Patriot”?

Kayla, immediately:  No.  I’m not up for football.

Mom, helpfully:  No, Kayla, it’s not about the Patriots but is called The Patriot.

Kayla:  Why would I want to watch a movie about some football guy?

Mom collapses in laughter on the couch, leaving Dad to sort out the historical and sports references properly.

Sunrise at my house, April 28, 2011

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

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Posted in Out of the mouths of babes...., working mom

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