Simple, Often Repetitive, Always Funny

In my perpetual overthinking, hazard of one with abundant time on her hands, I hesitated to post my morning laughter on Facebook.  It begs to be told whether or not there is a listener, so the world must know how feeding the birds can be fraught with danger...and funny.

I've been watchful for snakes which sometimes view my bird feeders as their hunting grounds, slithery mooches.  This morning, I heard a soft buzzing near the base of a crepe myrtle, one of two where I place seed for my avian visitors. 

I try later to describe the sound to my husband, telling him I was at first looking for a baby rattlesnake, then theorizing it might have been an insect of the night winding down as the sun rose.  

"It talks to you, too?"

Great laughter, the sort which would wake a neighbor if we had one in earshot.  Yes, I suppose the crepe myrtle has begun talking to me now.  

His sweet zaniness never grows old, even as we do.
  

Good News, Please

Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana, what beautiful names to give to a brand new princess.  A new baby, a fresh start, a chance at a better outlook on this world we are all passing through.    

I've overdosed on news of racism, especially with the inspiration for twitter's #EricSheppardChallenge attending university in my home town, though I should say attended.  Something tells me he won't be in class here this fall as his possession of a firearm on a Georgia campus, a felony in the state, may cause his registration to be delayed.  He's doing a darn good job at being the hidden one in a federal game of hide and seek, so he may not surface before the deadline for registration anyway.   

When the whole world seems to be coming apart at the seams, people everywhere stomping an American flag and residents of Baltimore torching a CVS store, I retreat to the serenity of line-dried clothing.  Eric Sheppard would likely find this racist as this practice dates to antiquity and the sheets are white.  There are, however, no eye holes cut in them, so I may get a pass for the 21st century.  They'll smell divine, no matter what anyone of any ancestry, royal or otherwise, thinks of them.

Line drying clothing surely is close to the bottom of things a brand new princess will ever be expected to do in her royal life, heck, those who attend to her are royal in this category as somewhere in Buckingham Palace must be a state of the art laundering facility, no pegging out of the royal nappies in this generation.   

If Eric Sheppard-on-the-lam is hiding amongst the hedges along the highways, he may have dried some of his clothing on a makeshift line somewhere, but methinks modern fugitives aren't this resourceful and he is probably piled up (like laundry) somewhere with someone super sympathetic to his self-made plight.

Britain's brand new Princess Charlotte will also be in hiding for some time, albeit her digs assuredly are a bit fancier than wherever Eric Sheppard is hanging his hat and the next American flag he plans to tromp and burn.

After I hung freshly washed sheets on the line, I thought of Sheppard.  I'd stomp the little malcontent if he dirtied my laundry with his feet.  I instantly condemned my thought in the style of social media before I ever shared it: How terrible of me to value a piece of cloth over a man.

Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana presently has none of these concerns and my only one for her, as the spare to the next generation of heirs to the British throne, is that she isn't someday discovered partying naked in the United States as was her uncle spare, Harry.  

If she is, she might cover her lady bits with an American flag and she could be either a hero or a villain, depending on one's perspective.  (Reference: Michelle Manhart)

Now back to my antiquated laundry habits and some good news with an exception:  Tonight I shall sleep blissfully atop line dried jasmine-scented sheets.  

Note the jasmine blooming to the left

Uh-oh, the jasmine is white and called Confederate Jasmine

I give up on trying to be politically correct.  

A nod to my late brother, "I'm just dammit me."  

        

Electronics and Perimenopause

...as if those two go together.  

"Here's another thing to avoid:  breaking into peals of laughter if your tech-challenged quinquagenarian pulls out a flip phone or a BlackBerry.  Remember--you're dealing with someone who might have fond memories of the busy signal or a typewriter or both."--Annabelle Gurwitch in The Care and Feeding of the Menopausal Woman in Your Life, Real Simple magazine, May 2015

And I promptly burst out laughing upon reading this.  Mr. A, my 61-year-old sweetheart owns and prefers a flip phone.  Occasionally I have to search amazon.com for a replacement as his is well-used and abused being the sole means of communication for his sign business.  About a year ago, some young soul at the Verizon store got him to *update* to a slide phone and he. hated. it.  My phone, a little rectangular number about 3/4" thick bit the dust, and I secretly coveted the slide phone he cursed daily.  

I finally found the flip phone he wanted and he happily relinquished the slide phone to me with the caveat that I'd hate it.  I don't hate it.  I just recently, though, figured out how to answer it, depressing a numeral as opposed to pushing the button which gives auto-text replies.  I first was in awe of a slide phone when my baby boy got one.  He bought it for himself with funds from his first job as a lifeguard when he was 16 years old.  He's 24 now, so in electronic years my phone is about 8.7 quintillion years old.  And that's OK with me, resident quinquagenarian at The Ponderosa.

Quinquagenarian--a person who is 50 years old or whose age is between 50 and 60.  That would be me, a word nerd who learned a new one today.  

The rest of Ms. Gurwitch's article dealt with other delicate topics such as vaginal dryness and the need for ocular assistance in reading restaurant menus. Once again, I hear my mother's quiet wit, usually reserved for those closest to her, "My mini won't pause."  

And oh am I reaping what I sowed when I used to kid her about wearing glasses perched on the end of her nose.  I'm also reaping for wishing my older son's sixth grade teacher would take a tweezer to those long white hairs on her chin.  Mine are black and I don't see them until I go on a search and destroy mission with the 5x magnification mirror.  (You can get one of those at amazon.com as well.)    

Oh, Mama, so far my mini hasn't paused long either and I breathing on 52.  Oh it's taken a few breaks, enough to scare Mr. A into thinking he was going to be a daddy when he's papa age and enough to excite me into thinking this cyclical madness has departed forevermore, but no, the occasional, "Surprise!"  Or as a boss lady I had when I was a teenager bluntly put it, "Damn bloody britches."  (Spell check just asked me if I meant "bitches."  Well, sometimes.)  It had probably been a decade or more since my gray-haired boss who resembled Madame, minus the flamboyant accessories, had that laundry issue, but her contempt was palpable.

In case you're not old enough to remember Madame:  

  

And I get it.  Like when my hairdresser, who is a year younger than I, said she "stopped" altogether a couple of years ago.  That hearkens back to pregnant women who said they were never sick a day when I had morning sickness all day long for six months.   Whose idea of a prank is all this?!

As a quinquagenarian who is quintessentially cold, I've found myself on the front porch at night trying to cool down a little.  I can't classify this experience as a flash, but more a surge, like the flush of humidity which can be felt before a summer thunderstorm.  Not long afterward, I'll be back to my old self, under a blanket in mid-April.  

Old.  Old enough to know better, oldest person in the gym, old enough to have learned how to type on a manual typewriter, but I have no fond memories of a busy signal.  Womp...womp...womp, how irritating!  

In fairness to Ms. Gurwitch, I do not care for the busy signal's solution, call waiting.  The long boooop interrupting my present call is downright rude.  The person on the other end of the line should just wait their turn though I can't think of an acceptable way to tell them so because I find leaving a message on an electronic machine just as cumbersome as carrying a manual typewriter. 

Despite my non-impressment with modern line-less telephones, I'm techno-geeky in my own way.  I can make my iPad air 2 dance--the instant messaging on it, using a Zagg keyboard, is far more efficient than texting.  Texting, talk about a 20-year step back in communication, hitting a key three, four times for the correct character and if you pass it by, starting over.  Wait, that's on flip phones.  No one uses those anymore.  Except Mr. A.  

And I sent my older son, a freak of nature when it comes to uber-intelligence, a voice message via iMessage, a trick I learned before he did.  For people I can't see i to i with, meaning those who do not possess an iPhone or an iPad, I found an app called textfree which enables me to nottextbuttext, again, using the Zagg keyboard.  I'm one qwerty kind of quinquagenarian, much more efficient than index finger hunt and peck communication.  

But you know the one thing you can't do with modern electronics when perimenopausal peevishness strikes?  Slam the phone down!  Try that with one of these modern numbers and it's back to smoke signals as the damage is irreparable.  

OK, I admit, smoke signals were ahead even of my time, but I have great memories of several relatives born in the late 1800s!