The Hell of Earworms, Cell Phones, and Chatting Me Up

What is it with the universe that the minute I get an hour of free time for one thing or another, something happens or someone needs help with something? I mean really. Just now, I had an hour after the guys left for the Scout meeting at the pool but the neighbor came over to chat.  I didn't want to chat.  She chatted for thirty-five minutes.  Call me antisocial if you will. 

Truthfully, I usually like to chat.  I really do.  I have trouble getting out of the library in just a few minutes because the librarians want to tell me what they're reading. They wouldn't do that if I hadn't asked a million times what they were reading.  Hey, it's a good way to find out what's worth picking up.  It's just that even when I don't feel up to chatting, they still start talking the minute I walk through their doors anyway. 

It's like that at the market too. 

"What are you having for dinner," Jody asks.

"I don't know.  What should I have?" I usually reply.  Then we're off talking about stew, goulash, and tater tot casserole.  I've never made the tater tot casserole, but doesn't that sound good? 

The problem with all of this is that when I'm done chatting, I want to be done chatting and I don't want to have to listen either.  I'm a great study in black and white. 

Sleep works that way too.  This morning, I fell asleep for an hour after everyone left for work and school.  I figured I might get a total of seven hours of sleep if I worked at it some more.  It was one of those mornings.  My phone buzzed at least three times with reminders, texts, calls, and such. I finally figured out how to keep my phone from buzzing when my Scramble and Word friends played against me.  The damn phone was buzzing and chirping at all hours of the day and night before I got that figured out.  Right now, my phone buzzed to tell me that I have a meeting in a half an hour.  I know, I know!

My phone is a nag. 

This afternoon, the kids had the television on and I was already tired because I only really got six hours of sleep last night and there was no way I could concentrate to do my own thing. I crave the sounds of silence. The television can drive me absolutely batty.  I'm not one of those people who keep it on all the time just for the sound of it.  I'm fine with the quiet.  Besides, if you listen, there are a couple of clocks ticking, cars going by outside on the highway, the dog groaning, and the cat shuffling around inside the plastic bag that has my new quilt in it.  God forbid I give that quilt to someone who's allergic to cats.  He's had his paws in every level of the work.  He even pushes stuff off my work table to make room.

Yes, I crave the sounds of silence.

Now, that song is going to spin through my head for the next three days before something else catches up with it.  It could be worse.  It could be 'It's a Small World After All' or 'Tiptoe Through the Tulips.'  That can drive you nuts, can't it? It's almost as bad as the phone chirping and buzzing.  There my phone goes again.  It's one of Jack's friends asking what his Xbox name.  I have no idea.  He changed it over the weekend because of some software glitch. 

Yes, an earworm is preferable to the nagging of the phone.  At least I don't have to leap up to respond to the ear worm. How easily can you catch an ear worm?  For me, all it takes is a reference to a song.  Right now, 'Small World' is vying for the top spot with 'The Sounds of Silence.'  Frankly, I hope that Simon and Garfunkel win.  I loved that album when I was a kid.  It's ingrained. 

I give up.

I'm going to try to figure out what the Xbox name is before I have to go to my meeting. 

Thank you for listening, jules

Post-Apocalyptic Preteen

I'm not prepared for the next seven years. 

Is it just me or is raising a child agonizing at times? 

Oh don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about.  How do you feel when a middle school teacher says your boy is really kind and you snort back a laugh that you can't quite disguise? 

What you see when you're with him is that he calls you weird when you straighten a crooked pile at the store, asks in disgust what better thing you have to do when you tell him you can't pick up his new video game tomorrow, and throws a tantrum because you won't let him spend all of the cash you gave him right now on a toy you planned to get him for Christmas.  He argues against taking out the garbage even if it's the only thing he's responsible for all week.  He leaves dirty dishes, piles of toys, and bits of food and garbage every time he moves from one spot to another.  He won't take a shower all weekend unless someone pretty who is his age happens to be coming to the house.  You get dizzy with all the television and video games he plays and when you ask him to read a book or, God forbid, to write a sentence, he looks at you as if you're an alien.  He hates exercise of any form, even if it's karate, which you pay an ungodly amount for every month because he swears it's his thing, but then he hisses at you when you tell him he needs to go more than once a week.  Yes, I said that he hisses.  It's a misery to get him to walk a single mile with you at the dog park. And don't even think about his spiritual state of mind.  He wants to join the military to fight in a war when you marched in the protest against it.  And he tells you he wants to kill something so he can make a leather-bound book from scratch.  Does that tell you anything about his spiritual state of mind?  Mind, body, and soul, you feel, at best, distaste and at worst, anger and futility.  And that was just today after he got home from his sleepover at a friend's house.

Then, for the second time in a week, your friend, someone who doesn't even know the above-referenced teacher, calls him kind. 

Just who are these people talking about? 

Are all twelve-year old boys like this?  Is this my fault because I was too strict with him or my husband's fault because he was coddled?  Will he change into a human being before I die in agony? 

My excuse is that I blame the television, but my husband doesn't want him to turn the damn thing off.  He wants him to log the time instead, then work with those numbers.  It's more likely that the log book will lie forgotten on the table beside the couch until I am driven batty from the sound of commercials next Sunday afternoon.  I want to take a sledge hammer to the television and let him earn the money for a small television by working in the yard, then I want to charge him to run that as well.  I would charge $7 per hour for TV time.  It would be nice if it were also hooked to a stationary bike and he had to pedal to see the screen.  Or maybe it should be hooked to the vacuum cleaner.  Why can't someone invent something like that?  Oh, that's right, they have, but where can I buy one?  Instead, our TVs are designed so that we need to move less.  Don't get up.  You can switch the TV on and change channels from your seat.  I'm amazed they don't come with little conveyor belts with chips and cheesecake swinging past now and then.  Some people put the mini-fridges next to their couches so they work as an end table and they need to do nothing more than lean forward to grab a quart-sized soda during a commercial. 

Okay, it's not just the television. 

I know it.  I've failed my son.  I'm going to have to give up on the things I hoped for his future.  He's not even going to be able to hold down a job as a landscaper.  Those people actually use their muscles.  I'm going to have to live with someone with whom I have little in common, who has only a small bit of respect or regard for anyone else in the house, who has almost no ambition to move or to educate himself, and who sees no beauty in the world.  This is not a self-sustaining system.

We're having a rather bad day with a forecast for more to come.

Thank you for listening, jules

The Correct Orientation

I hate trying to figure out which way the blankets go on the bed when I change the sheets.  The directions the flat sheets go on are nicely indicated by the wide hem at the top.  I like that.  Not so much with the fitted sheets these days.  They are gathered all around and I nearly always get the short side along the length before I realize I have it wrong.  They could do something about that.

Plus, that's about the time the cat jumps up onto the bed intent on playing.  Can he hear the sheets?  Really? 

Jack and I made the mistake of playing parachute with him once after Jack had his turn.  Now, he's a little monster, trying to get into position to play endlessly under the floating sheets.  I just wanted to get the stupid job done, not spend an hour trying to fly the queen sized sheet over his head all by myself.  Then, as I was routing through the linen closet trying to find the pillow cases I like, he jumped in. 

I do not want to imagine him in there, sitting on my hand towels and wash cloths with his naked butt.  Doesn't he realize this? 

He probably does.

But the worst thing about changing the sheets are the fleece blankets.  Don't they understand that if you're in a queen-sized bed, the blanket is almost square?  The problem is that it's not quite square either, so it matters if it goes on wrong.  And invariably, there's nothing to indicate which way is which. 

I know this is petty.  What, you wanted me to complain about politics some more?  Did you think this was about some referendum or other?

I just hate having to put the damn blankets on wrong each time.  Really, I should have a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right, but I don't seem to do that.  So with two blankets on three beds, I waste a lot of time getting six blankets on wrong before I put them on right. 

There should be a law about it. 

Thank you for listening, jules

Mortify Me

It was a good day to embarrass myself.  I cried while telling a story at a meeting this morning.  Oh, I hate when I do that.  It's bad enough that I stop everything to tell a story about my grandfather, and worse still when I get all snuffly about it.

Then, it turns out that the article I was asked to write for the Veteran's Day ceremony was turned around on its head and instead, I was interviewed.  Oh, I do not want to have my name in the newspaper, or worse, my picture.  Oh man.  Can't I just write the article?  Please?

Then, to cap it all off - yes, you thought that might have been enough embarrassment for one day, but no - someone asked me if Mike was my son.  Mike, the Scoutmaster, the guy I'm hugging, my husband.  I was hard to straighten that one out.  I was silenced.  If only I'd been silent at the meeting this morning, or when the reporter arrived at the Veteran's Day ceremony and started asking me questions. 

Mike, to his credit, didn't laugh too hard and later told me that the old guy who asked must have been really old and must not have very good vision. 

Thanks for listening, jules

Some Votes Are More Equal Than Others

I want the presidential election to be one voter, one vote. 

Why isn't it?  I have never heard a decent justification.  The only thing I've heard is that we've always done it that way.  Well, that's just plain stupid. There are no good reasons to continue to use the electoral college.  It's wrong.  It's a way to fiddle with the true results and the candidates use that information to manipulate their campaigns. 

I looked it up and got a great explanation on YouTube from C.G.P. Gray who talked about how the electoral college works.  It kind of made sense to use the electoral college back before we had such good methods of communication.  Not so much now.  Actually, not at all now. 

Thanks to this C.G.P. Grey, I can see how a candidate with only 20% of the popular vote might get elected to be president.  It's what happened in 2000 with George W. Bush.  The man would not have been elected if we'd used a system in which each person got a vote that counted as one vote.  I felt totally disenfranchised after that election. 

Don't fiddle with the results of my vote.  I want one vote.  I'm not asking for more influence because I'm better than you or anything.  I just want my one vote to be relevant, to be equal to everyone else's vote.

So cut out the funny stuff. 

Thank you for listening, jules
 

The Election and A Cyber War

So I can't get the Internet to work right now. I have email that needs to go out before I'm done for the day. I'm telling you-I am done for the day. It's 1:21am!

Suppose someone finally did the cyberwar thing and implemented it at midnight on Election Day? That would be really creepy, plus it could ruin the election. Aren't there people out there who have to vote electronically? Oh, what do I know?

I'm going to bed. Email and cyberwarfare be damned.

Standby Expenditures

I hate that I can't open my dishwasher in the middle of a cycle without having to restart it when I close the door.  Can't it figure out that I'm likely to want that load washed anyway, that I only opened the door to add a fork I dirtied before it got too far along?

And what the hell is going on with the recessed instructions.  It says where it is in the cycle, but you have to lean over and look in at it from an angle when the door is closed.  What is the problem with having the buttons and cycle information right where I can see them?  Oh, it's not pretty to have buttons on the front.  I tell you, if they do that with my next oven, I'm going to scream!  I want to see the settings.  I don't need lights, just an indicator that tells me where the damn thing is set. 

And what is it with everything and their lights?  I have more than one appliance that has a light on to indicate that the damn thing is off.  Really?  Do I need the little red light to tell me that?  No. I don't.  I just need the little green light to turn off and then I know.  I'm actually pretty smart here.  How much energy do we expend on appliances that are busy indicating that they're off?  Wikipedia calls it 'standby power.'

Did you know that up to 10% of our power consumed is from standby power?

It's something to think about, isn't it?

I wonder how much money people saved on electricity in New Jersey this week? 

Last winter, we didn't have power for seven days after an ice storm and our bill was no less than usual.  You'd think that a decrease of 25% of the monthly consumption would have lowered our bill.  Why didn't it?

Now, you need to sit and think about these things, don't you?  I guess if you power off, you're really only in standby mode too. 

When are they going to figure out how we can power our own houses using the kinetic energy from the people playing our video games?  Now, I'll buy one of those appliances, even if it does have a little red dot on the front telling me when it isn't running.

Thank you for listening, jules