Category: life

Unpopular

Been thinking about NewMexiKen’s observations on Twitter and Facebook, and the old fogeyism that may be alive and well.

The Good Man and I talk this topic over quite a bit and have vowed, together, that we are firmly anti-Facebook. Nope. Not going to do it. You can’t make me.

So there.

Although, making this decision, we also find ourselves in the minority of our friends and coworkers. My mother has a Facebook page for crimeny’s sake!

No, TGM and I stand together. Then I discussed it with my sister. She, too, is in the “no way, unh-uh” club.

We were starting to think it was just the three of us, but then TGM found some supporting evidence online…

From The Weekly Standard:

“… no matter how long I live, no matter how much pressure is exerted, no matter how socially isolated I become, I will never, ever join Facebook…”

and

“…collecting Facebook friends is the equivalent of being a catlady, collecting numerous Himalayans, which you have neither the time nor the inclination to feed.”

Ouch. Ok, maybe I’m not quite as adamant as Matt Labash, who goes so far as to use the term “facetards”. But still….

I…just….can’t.

And then there is Twitter. Ok, I’m signed up, but I do not Tweet.

I’m hoping now that the Republicans have made Twitter and Facebook cool, they will both die the painful deaths they deserve…until the next cool internet meme comes along.

I remain,

Your Luddite blogger using email and *gasp*, my phone to stay in contact with my actual flesh and blood friends.

When reality reaches up and grabs you by the throat

I have a milestone birthday coming up in May. It is an age I’m not sure I’m happy about being.

Ok, fine, I have to get old. Everyone does it (barring the alternative, of course). I’m ok with it.

Until I’m reminded clearly and plainly how old and out of it I am.

It began, this past weekend, with the shopping excursion to procure new jeans (see previous post for my thoughts on that). While out and about, I wandered into a store called Anchor Blue.

I’d seen an article in a trashy gossip magazine last week while at the dentist’s office about “the best jeans.” There was a pair of Anchor Blue jeans featured that looked like I’d be happy with them.

So. Anchor Blue. I’d seen the store but had never actually been inside before.

Well. If you go to the webpage (linked above) you’ll see several fresh, dewey-faced CHILDREN on the splash page, showing you just how cool and beautiful YOU can be if you wear their clothing.

Walking into the store, I practically coughed dust and picked cryptkeeper tendrils from my person as I looked around and the clerks looked at me.

I did, actually, pick out a few pairs of jeans to try on, none of them the fabulous pair I’d seen in the magazine, of course.

So, yes, happily, the jeans I’d picked fit me. Well. Sort of. I mean, I could get them on and button them.

But to look in the mirror, you could see clearly where the jeans ended (below my hipbones) and my (evidently) granny panties continued on.

Now, I don’t wear old lady briefs (yet)…what I wear are respectable cotton bikini chones. But in the spotlight of Logan’s Run (In case you missed that film, everyone is executed at age 30), my respectable bikini yonderwear appear to be practically up to my ribcage (just below what they must believe to be my sagging boobs).

I may as well give over to the white belt and Velcro shoes ferchrissakes!

So I gave up on those jeans, but continued to look around the store. I checked out accessories.

They had quite the assortment of Che Guevara-style caps for the ladies. I want to look like an Argentinean communist revolutionary why again?

I looked at skirts. I have this little cloth that I use to clean my glasses. That cloth is larger than these “skirts.” Even if I could get a lens cloth skirt to fit me…no, it’s too terrible, I can’t even go there.

Fine. Thus ended my shopping trip.

Sunday rolled around and The Good Man and I traveled up to Muir Beach to meet with some friends. “Take a walk,” they said. Oh, sure, yes! A walk on a sunny day would be nice. Maybe even help me work off some calories in hopes of wearing that lens cloth to dinner!

These folks are all about my same age…well, TGM and his best friend are a year younger. And the best friend’s wife is a couple years younger still. Ok, so I’m the matron of the bunch, what of it?

So we walk on the beach a bit and then decide to hike a trail. Fun!

An uphill trail.

What?

So evidently that one-year age difference between TGM’s and me is a huge gap, because all of my friends scampered up the hill while I was in the back gasping for air and feeling my thighs wobbling.

Now, the other lady in our group is in knockout shape, I forgive her. But TGM and his buddy have no excuse. They billy-goated they way up the hill with ease, leaving me with hands on knees feeling like I was going to puke.

I was further insulted when a tiny fourteen year-old dog named Chester paced me, turned and ran halfway back down the hill to greet his people, then turned around and paced me again.

His legs are three inches long!

Damn you Chester!

Now it is Monday and my legs hurt. My lungs still burn a little and I’m faced with my group of fifteen employees, not a ONE of them over the age of 30.

I remember 30. That was a good year. My thirties…yes, a fine decade. *sigh*

I have the power!!

[evil, maniacal laugh] bwa ha ha ha ha ha hee haw heee….*cough, sputter, cough*….ahem.

I’m back now.

Anyhow, I seem to have learned to use a fabulous power first taught to me in my youth.

The power of guilt.

Oh yes.

First example:

The center dial on my bathtub is broken, meaning that it will only shower, it won’t bath. This is upsetting. I am a fan of the hot bath. Especially in the winter. Particularly when it’s cold and stormy outside as it is today.

This has gone unfixed for quite some time, despite reporting it dutifully to my landlord. He said, “I need to find a new set of knobs…I’ll get to it.”

And he didn’t.

The landlord’s son lives a street over and came by our place about an electrical problem two weeks ago. So I bugged him to bug his dad about the bathtub. The son promised he’d fix it himself.

He didn’t.

A couple weeks passed.

This weekend, the son was mowing our front lawn. I said, “sorry to ask, but I need to remind you about the bathtub.”

This young man was *immediately* doused deeply in sheepish guilt, he apologized a bunch and promised to fix the bathtub, which he did on Sunday morning. And apologized some more.

Aaaah. Guilt is good.

Next example:

After my dental work yesterday, I woke up with a swollen face and a nifty bruise on my cheek. I’m thrilled to have to explain this to my coworkers.

My dentist, being the kind sort that he is, emailed me today to check to see how I was doing after the work. I emailed him back a photo of my bruised face and suggested he won’t be getting any new referrals from my coworkers.

He called me right away and apologized profusely and told me this sometimes happens (nicked a blood vessel when he did the injections) and that he felt terrible this had happened.

A man who inflicts severe pain for a living feels *terrible*.

Heh.

This feels gooood. I’m learning what my mom has known for years…guilt is quite the propellant.

In case you are still in training wheels and need to learn how to properly give the guilt, here’s a wikihow to get you over the hump.

Only downside? This power can be used on me, too.

Damn my Catholic upbringing!

Replacement Parts

Sorrowfully, I had occasion to visit with my dentist of twelve years today. He’s a good guy and when you have that kind of trust with a dental professional, you don’t take it lightly.

The reason for my visit today wasn’t an easy peasy cleaning and check up, no. A couple weeks ago I bit down on something hard and felt pain shoot up the side of my face.

That *can’t* be good.

So I was unsurprised when the good Doctor told me I had three cracks in my tooth. The same tooth that was home to not one but two fillings.

Feeling myself headed for “you need a crown”-ville, my dentist looked at my xrays and said, “good news, we can use the machine.”

The Machine?

What the [insert dental-fear inspired curse word here] is “The Machine?”

I guess if you need something more than a drill and fill, but something less than a crown, they have this cool device that takes a scan of your scraped out tooth, then creates a puzzle piece-like filling that slips right in there.

It’s milled out of a block of dental porcelain right there onsite, same day.

So the dentist drilled out my tooth, and then I read a magazine while the machine churned and groaned and soon enough, they showed me the little piece of tooth looking porcelain. Add a little dental glue and ta daa! New tooth!

As The Machine worked, my dentist talked about science’s ability to make new body parts, like my homemade tooth. He said, “I laugh when people get up in arms over athletes using steroids to increase their body’s capabilities. In ten to twenty years they will be making new joints, ligaments and tendons, you name it. Athletes can be created, and steroids will be looked on as quaint.”

I replied, “That’s weird, man. In a good way, but weird.”

Oh well, in about an hour and a half all in, I was fixed up and sent on my way with a droopy drool-y smile and a bit of ache in my freshly manufactured body part.

Weird.

Image from The Searcher’s Flickr Photostream.

Keep it to yourself, sister

The weather outside yesterday was what they call “low cloud cover”. Low ceiling, gray clouds, occasional sprinkling rain.

This makes most people think, “brr, cold” and toss on all matter of arctic gear.

This is not true for me. Low cloud cover means the heat is held in and the drizzly rain means humidity.

See, I was brought up in New Mexico and my body has been attuned to be a convection cooled device. Or, more accurately, an evaporative cooled device. I sweat. The dry desert air slurps that up, thus cooling my rig and allowing me to continue on.

I’m attuned to this and it suits me just fine.

When it’s warmish and humid, I cannot effectively evaporative cool my hard working human mo-chine.

You can ask anyone who knows me, my internal temp tends to run a little hot anyway. The frosty pawed feline doesn’t favor me as a sleeping device because she thinks I’m nice, ok?

So what all this means is, even on a cloudy drizzly day like today, I don’t want anything to do with a jacket.

This tends to make the biddies and would-be work moms crazy.

“Aren’t you cold!?!” they shriek.

“Where is your jacket?!?!” they demand in harpy voices.

Look, I have a mother. She’s a fine, upstanding lady. She taught me to be self-sufficient. If you are cold, put on a jacket. If you aren’t cold, don’t. If you are cold and don’t put on a jacket, it’s your own damn fault.

Mom and I have been in agreement on this for years.

Yesterday, I was wearing a sweater dress with a long sleeved sweater over, tights and knee-high black boots. That is practically Nanook of the North for me, and yet, one of my menopausal coworkers eyed me up and down and screeched “Aren’t you cold!?!” because I was sans jacket.

It was close to sixty frapping degrees outside, but it was drizzly, so that must mean everyone should wear an overcoat.

An overcoat? Hell. No. I was hot in what I was wearing!

But if I had said to her, “Hey, you look a little hot, why don’t you take some clothes off” I would have been reported to HR.

It’s a bizarre up world out there, and I’m but a passenger on this carnival ride.

Image via FreeFoto.com