Posts Tagged ‘humor’
Unforeseen Complications
Far be it from me to point out another problem during this pandemic shelter-in-place directive, but I can’t be the only one facing this new dilemma. While people are panicking over the possibility they don’t have three months’ worth of toilet paper stashed somewhere in their homes, a whole nother kitchen calamity is looming large on the horizon for those not cooking new meals every day.
The Tupperware storage cupboard.
With trips to the store now a risky health hazard, I have taken to mining the depths of our freezer for containers of home-cooked meals put up in the recent past for just such occasions. Although, I don’t think Cyndie ever expected I would be dipping into these delicacies every single night for 4-weeks in a row.
After a couple of weeks of finishing each meal and washing the containers, I became aware of a growing challenge. I was starting to run out of space where the plastic containers are stored.
There’s probably never been this long a period of time where we only emptied containers without also putting some back into service again, storing leftovers.
Luckily, I quickly figured out a temporary solution until Cyndie gets home.
I don’t drink coffee, so the cupboard directly to the right where she keeps coffee mugs isn’t getting much attention. There was plenty of open space up above the coffee cups.
Overflow!
This only needs to work for six more days. Soon after, with a real chef back in the kitchen, we’ll be putting many of those stashed containers back into service again.
Last night’s dinner: Parmesan Chicken with pea pods and long rice. It was as tasty as the original night Cyndie made it and packaged up the leftovers for later.
I have been surviving this shut-in period with no other people in my home but that hasn’t been all bad. In particular, it’s allowed me to develop a great new appreciation for our freezer.
.
.
Now This
Last night, I received notification that the single organized group-bike-tour that I participate in every June has been canceled for 2020 due to some virus pandemic. The Tour of Minnesota will take this summer off. My intuition tells me there is a good chance my pedals and spokes won’t get much of a workout this year.
That tour was the incentive to get me spinning those wheels as early as possible every spring, oftentimes against my preference to rather not.
“I’m too tired today.”
“There are too many other chores I should be doing.”
“The weather isn’t ideal.”
“I don’t feel like riding right now.”
Despite those and other excuses, whenever I overcome the resistance and get myself out on the bike, I am always incredibly happy to be riding.
Without the incentive of the impending week-long trip of high daily mileage to drive my actions, I fear my endless collection of excuses will override my pleasure of gliding along country roads, especially during times of social distancing. Riding alone is nowhere near as fun as riding with a group.
On the bright side, now I won’t be thinking about a risk of becoming symptomatic with a virus that compromises lungs while needing to pedal for multiple 70-mile days and sleep overnights on the ground in a tent.
I picture myself choosing some less-taxing adventures close to home in the months ahead. For some reason, I keep seeing tree-shaded hammocks swinging in this vision.
That must mean Cyndie will be doing the lawn mowing.
“Don’t forget to wear a mask, hon!”
.
.
Don’t Cough
We’ve all done it. Accidentally inhaling our own saliva. It seems to happen at the most inopportune times, doesn’t it? I was near the front, center rows at a funeral service when I choked the choke that triggers involuntary spasms of coughing. You know it’s going to be bad, so you give it a couple of quick, full coughs in a vain hope of dealing with it all at once.
It rarely works. Then comes the following cough urges that you assume can be ignored by sheer will, but which subsequently get forced out as groans or squeaks that are probably worse than if you just let the coughs out naturally.
My lungs tend toward asthmatic, so I am prone to a daily period of throat-clearing and am no stranger to a random urge to cough throughout an afternoon. It’s usually an unconscious habit, but not anymore.
In the midst of a global flu pandemic, coughing is met with suspicion. I have no idea if I will sense a difference between my usual handful of coughs in a day and an early symptom of being infected with the COVID-19 coronavirus, but now when I feel an urge to cough, I’m noticing the question comes to mind.
I’m also noticing a little more self-consciousness about my tendency to cough.
“Don’t cough,” I tell myself. You will scare the people around you into worrying you may be spreading THE virus.
You know how well that works. Go ahead and try to suppress the urge. There is an inverse correlation in that the more you try not to cough, the more intense the urge to cough becomes.
Maybe I’ll start practicing the art of announcing my morning body temperature reading with each cough. Kind of like the “Excuse me” courtesy often uttered after burps, hiccups, coughs, and farts.
[cough!] “97.4.”
That’ll reassure them.
I’m not sick.
Yet.
.
.
New Identifier
One of the most common initial checks being made to assess someone’s health during the COVID-19 pandemic is the measuring of their temperature. I rarely take my temperature, partly because I rarely have a fever. When I do develop a fever, I tend to notice it right away, without needed to measure it. Only after it feels a little extreme do I tend to dig out the thermometer for an actual measurement.
A week ago I had no idea what my normal healthy temperature usually ran. I do now, at least my morning temperature, anyway. Since the primary symptom being checked in the current coronavirus outbreak is body temperature, I decided to self-monitor my temp to determine a baseline reference for comparison, in case I do get sick.
Isn’t the normal body temperature always just 98.6°(F)? Not exactly.
I’m finding my normal morning temp is around 97.4 degrees. I think our current daily temperature should become attached to our names as a new identifier. Use it in the same vein as academic suffixes.
John W. Hays, 97.4.
We will all begin to sound like our own FM radio station frequencies.
Think about it, though. You would know right away if someone was coming down with something by the number in their greeting.
“Hi, I’m 101.2.”
Whoa! Back off there, fella.
I think my temperature probably went up a little bit yesterday afternoon on my walk through the woods with Delilah. Apparently, there might be an ostrich loose in the area. If those were turkey footprints in the snow, that beast must be bigger than Ms. D.
Those brown circles are Delilah’s paw print and that giant boot in the bottom corner is mine. The bird that walked along our trail must be half my height.
I should probably take up wild turkey hunting. Get it before it gets me.
97.4, …signing off for now.
Stay a safe distance out there.
.
.
.
That Moment
That moment when you zip the bag closed and purposefully end the binge, leaving the bag in plain sight, well within reach but committed to only sucking on ice cubes for the rest of the evening.
Yeah. No, I got this.
Of course, that comes shortly after retrieving one that fell on the floor.
“Did you drop one?”
“Yes.”
“Want me to come get it?”
“No, I can reach it.”
Pause.
“I’m going to eat it anyway. I saw you wash this floor once.”
.
.
Cookie Weekend
It’s that time again! Cyndie’s two-day holiday cookie bake-stravaganza commenced yesterday and continues through today. Two years ago Cyndie’s baking intensity triggered a high-level alert from the Wintervale Diet Observation Administration (WDOA).
Cooler heads are prevailing this year due to Cyndie’s smart inclusion of a number of assistants who willingly engage in the intense labor of mass production and, most importantly, take home a plate of the goods to distribute the calories across a wider stretch of midsections. (pardon the pun.)
Don’t worry about me. I will survive this storm of excessive irresistible sweetness using a number of avoidance techniques that have worked for me in the past. My primary difficulty is that I choose not to entirely abstain. I like to sample, so I strive to do so carefully. Small or misshapen specimens are a target of my attention. Convincing willing assistants to break cookies in half so I can have just a taste works well for bigger delicacies.
It may not be fair, but I also bring a platter to work, forcing innocent coworkers to share in the challenge of enjoying the sweet bliss of Cyndie’s incredible effort without overdosing on the amped-up calories per morsel.
Misery loves comfort, you know. Sweet holiday treats and the love and laughter baked into them are a misery I am willing to share.
Luckily this level of sumptuous indulgence only happens one time a year, resulting from Cyndie’s always impressive, “Cookie Weekend!”
.
.
Gravity Wins
The results are inevitable. The outcome, predictable. The slow slide to earth is a matter of constant change at an imperceptible pace. One day it’s there, the next it’s not. Eventually, the scattered pile melts and all will be forgotten. That is, until the next big snow.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
It was fun while it lasted.
The Wintervale bear mascot was there to witness the whole thing but never changes its expression. Permanently thrilled. Can you blame him?
Ideally, the bear would be holding a “perfect 10.0” score placard.
.
.
Don’t Click
It’s a game I play with myself almost every day I’m online. Don’t click on that bait. Sure, I’m curious about the 12 most outrageous ways some common thing we are eating/reading/handling/doing leads to these 16 unbelievable/startling/amazing/scary results that some doctor/study/company/environmentalist/yogi has recently revealed/published/announced/proclaimed/guaranteed.
One facet of clickbait-ology I am anxious to find out about is how the “number” is selected for these attention-getting carnival barkings. A quantity of 10 seems like a very dependable collection. It’s an even number. It’s double-digits. If I was making a list, my first inclination would be to shoot for 10. Maybe I just watched too many years of David Letterman and his Top-Ten List.
From that bias, I find myself puzzling over why a title would feature a list with 12 or 13 items, or even bother when there are only 5 or 6. I saw one once that boasted 17, which starts to press the boundaries of believability. I’m skeptical the source was really able to come up with 17 of anything on a topic that worked for a click-baitable headline.
I wonder what I could come up with to entice people to click through to a page of mine that has no redeeming value to offer in return.
“Never ever give in to the urge to read 10 answers to the most essential question ever pondered.”
You know, the number 10 doesn’t seem to work so well, after all.
I get it now. It’s too status quo. It’s ‘ok boomer.’
Instead, the more ridiculous, the better.
“Eleventeen reasons why things you are already doing won’t make enough difference to matter.”
“These 16 ideas never worked before, but they will now after you’ve read this!”
“Take a penny, leave a penny by clicking this article 7 times a day for 13 weeks and feed a hungry kitty that looks exactly like a unicorn.”
For the record, I don’t always win at my own game. One time, I clicked to see the umpteen most amazing images since the beginning of time. Then, I clicked and clicked and clicked about umpteen more times. Each image was on a unique ad-filled page that took a painfully long time to load. Luckily, the first thing to pop into view for each page was the table of new clickbait ads across the bottom with strange quantities of subjects for me to try “ignoring.”
No one said this game was going to be easy.
.
.
Good Start
Blessed with a day between drenching rains, yesterday we made great headway on the deck resurfacing project. Mike arrived about the same time daylight did and Cyndie primed our energies with a grand breakfast feast in preparation for the long day of labor ahead. Setting the first board required immediate customization, which is a part of the project I would have struggled to accomplish without Mike’s wisdom and experience.
After solving that challenge, the work settled into a board-placing routine that wasn’t particularly complicated but tended to eat up bigger chunks of time just doing than it seems it should.
Along the way, there were pauses to re-measure spacing and then tweaking the board gaps. Even simple board selection adds minutes, pondering how to minimize waste while selecting around imperfections in the lumber.
Eventually, we would reach a railing post and be faced with doing some customized cuts to enclose the obstruction. For the post below, Mike engineered two pieces that required multiple cuts which resulted in a pretty slick looking continued flow.
The thinking involved to plot where seams fall gets a little mind-boggling for me, but Mike helped to achieve a repeating pattern that I really like.
By lunch we had covered the bottom level, which was honestly my main goal, knowing in advance that progress most likely would be hampered by something. Nothing I have ever worked on goes so smoothly that I get more done than expected.
Most important for me was proving the process. I thought I would be able to do this in place of hiring professionals, but I was a little wary about the unknowns like detailing around the railing, mastering the seams and spacing, and even where to start, and how to finish the last board.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
We’ve got boards cut to length and positioned, but not all of them screwed down yet. By the end of the day, we probably were just under halfway finished with the resurfacing. There is a lot of lumber yet to replace, but the number of complicated decisions left to be addressed should be less.
If we ever get another dry weather day, maybe I can work more on the project.
Actually, today’s rain has me wondering if we shouldn’t have skipped the deck project and focused on building a boat that could hold us and our pets instead. I’m worried our house might just float away if it keeps up like this, and we live on top of a hill!
Apparently, the atmosphere holds more moisture when the planet warms and is able to dump more precipitation as a result.
I wonder if we have any circumstantial evidence to back that up.
I wish I could remember where we put our PFDs.
.
.
Unglamorous Reality
I think it’s only natural that our minds tend toward the fantastical when attempting to interpret an unexpected scene in our otherwise staid environment. Why would the first impression be the simplest option, when a more unlikely one is possible?
When I got home from work yesterday, I discovered a mysterious disruption around the front of my closet. There had obviously been some sort of disturbance. Several odd shoes had been pulled out, shoes I haven’t worn for some time.
I suspected someone had been looking through my shoes, but it was possible my footwear had been incidentally dislodged by a person looking for something else. What could someone have been after?
Well, I can narrow it down a little bit. The only “someone” around here all day would have been Cyndie. The most likely scenario would be that she was pulling out items to be laundered.
Not all that exciting, after all.
The truth was even less glamorous than that.
When Cyndie came in from trimming fence lines, she offered up a set of facts I had failed to consider. Pequenita had barfed in the vicinity and Delilah stormed in to take care of cleaning it up before Cyndie could react.
Lovely. Sometimes things aren’t quite what they initially seem.
.
.
Relative Something 