My son blogging for the first time, all his own work:
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cat
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daddy
pear
bare
barbie
the end
I had a package to mail this morning and I stopped at a post office in South Burlington where I rarely go. I had been there once before and it was a standard transaction. I figured today would be the same, but it colored my day in a way I had not anticipated. It wasn’t a big thing, just something that made me think, pretty much all day.
I had to wait in line for a bit. An older couple were in line ahead of me with two packages, one that was in a box that must have held several pounds of Splenda, the other in an old slide carousel box–the kind that had once housed a round tray for photographic slides. The woman was looking through all the literature she cold fine there and it turns out she was seeking a change of address form. She couldn’t find one and her husband kept pointing to a large bin, insisting that they were right there.
“No,” she said. “That is just instructions for doing it online.”
His response: “For-GET it!”
I thought that exchange was interesting in itself, and it made me think about technology and how we adapt or don’t, how we sometimes stick to ways that seem to work for us and then one day find that those ways don’t work so well anymore. Those were the kinds of ideas zipping about my little cranium while I waited in line.
When it was my turn, I greeted the man at the counter and placed my package on it. I have mailed things many times and I always feel bad for the mail clerk who has to ask the same questions every time a customer comes to the counter. “Is there anything fragile, liquid, perishable or potentially hazardous…” and all that, with the added requests for my additional postal needs. That would pretty much drive me batty if I had to ask those same questions in the same way every time. So I tried to be helpful. I wanted to save time for many people who were now in line behind me and save the effort for my helpful postal worker. He was not, however, pleased.
I tried to offer that there was nothing fragile, liquid, perish…but he cut me off. “I have to ask so let me do my job. It’s like a cop stopping you. You let them do the talking.” He was curt. He was grumpy. I noted that I was just trying to be helpful but he merely returned to his list of questions, all of which I could have answered before he asked them.
I left feeling upset. Why would someone get so upset when someone else was trying to be helpful? It was uncalled for. If he had merely told me that he was required to ask the questions, even if I offered the answers first, I would have been informed enough to accept those questions. He was rude, however. As I drove off, I recognized that his emotions had transferred right to me. Now I was upset. Because I recognized that, however, I stopped. Take a lesson, I told myself: People feel like they do and I can’t necessarily understand why and I certainly can’t change it, so accept that and remember to try not to react like he did.
I felt as though I was not treated with respect. Note to self: try hard to be aware so that you treat others as we all would like to be treated. Thinking that made me feel better. My day was still off, and I thought about that interaction more than a few times, but I now thought about it in a more positive way.
My wife later pointed out that perhaps he assumed I was making fun of him. “People make fun of postal workers all the time,” she noted. “Why would you be any different.” She had a point. He perhaps made an assumption about me, regardless of my true intentions. While I was trying to do something that most people don’t do, he may have assumed that I was doing something that too many people do. It is too bad. I hope he was feeling less than stellar just today. I wish him more happiness in his work tomorrow. And every other day, while we’re at it.
Crank This Puppy Up
We all have our quirks. Some people are particular about how the toilet paper roll hangs. Some people have to load the dishwasher just the right way. Some people never use their turn signal. I like sharp pencils.
I know a lot of people don’t even use pencils. They yse pens, if they write things by hand at all. It’s not like people tend to keep journals these days, or write letters. Even the words I am writing now are not being written by hand, unless you count typing on a keyboard. Pencils seem so elementary school. But I love them. If I start a grocery list, I reach for a pencil first. Crossword puzzles? Gotta be in pencil.
The thing is, I like sharp pencils. A dull pencil is like a dull knife. Sure, it can get the job done, but it isn’t fun and it isn’t easy. A dull pencil makes for work. A sharp pencil makes for pleasure. A fine graphite tip scratching across paper–that is simply a joy. And those mechanical jobbers won’t do. A newly sharpened wooden pencil is a fine and incomparable thing.
I got a pencil sharpener from my grandmother a few years ago. She moved out and so cleaned out and gave me one. It hangs on the wall and has a hand crank. It is one of the most used tools in our house. I use it almost every day, in fact. I attached it to a post next to our desk downstairs. A few pencils sit in a bin above it. When my pencils start to wear too much, I crank it and start writing again.
One thing of which I am not a fan is an electric pencil sharpener. That seems like a waste of energy. That seems like it was designed for sloth. You can’t even wrap a couple of fingers around a little knob and make a few turns? You need electricity to sharpen a pencil? How lazy can you be? I guess if you have to sharpen hundreds of pencils (SAT test administrator?) it would come in handy. But otherwise, come on people.
We have been trying to weed through all of the random crap in our basement lately. We have boxes with art supplies, kitchen supplies, office supplies, all of which are half unpacked. I keep wondering how one couple could have gathered so many damn writing utensils? We have hundreds of pens and hundreds of pencils. I kid you not. I have to keep changing the system for how we will store them to accommodate more. We have a whole bin of pencils on the kitchen counter, tucked behind the telephone. My sharpener has been busy.
This doesn’t count, of course, the pencils that my daughter brings home. Apparently someone at the National Education Association convention recently announced that all teachers will be condemned as half-ass slackers if they do not provide dozens of pencils for each pupil to bring home each month. And the National Halloween Federation must have passed a ruling that since candy is bad for you, the safe and smart alternative is to hand out pencils. As a parent this isn’t all that bad–hey, less candy to rot my kid’s teeth. But if I were a kid I’d be pissed–A pencil? Do that again next year and I’ll poke your eye out.
In summary:
OK that last one has nothing to do with pencils. Got a problem with that? Write me a letter. In pencil.
My son yesterday: Deerflies are the cousin of itchy bugs.
Itchy bugs are what my children call mosquitoes.
Some of the Puzzle Books I'm Taking On
There was a recent article in the Guardian, The Lifestyle to Beat Alzheimer’s, about what one can do to keep dementia at bay. The headliner was about coffee (this New York Times article has more details about that). Coffee drinkers, it noted, “will be clinking mugs in a toast to new research suggesting that just two strong cups of the black stuff a day can reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.” I’ll make sure to keep sipping the dark roast.
The article mentioned several other things that research suggests can keep one’s brain sharp enough to avoid slipping into forgetfulness. To summarize:
Other than speaking multiple languages, I’m doing pretty well on this list. I am working on the puzzle thing especially right now. I’ve got multiple books of them going at once, in fact. I have been tackling crossword puzzles, sudoku, kenken and new to me, kakuro.
My parents gave me five new books of puzzles for Father’s Day. My mother sees dementia every day, since she works in an elderly care facility. I guess she wants to keep me sharp for longer than other people. I’m good with that. My parents really do love me. Puzzles: the gift that keeps giving, even when you become an old codger.
I am afraid I could use some help with staving off dementia. Already, I forget crap all the time. If taking the time to do some puzzles will help, I’ll do it. It may get in the way of other things but that is the way of it. “Sorry, honey, can’t paint the house right now; I’ve got to prevent Alzheimer’s right now.”
Triptych
After Han-shan
1.
This farmhouse—my home at field’s edge.
Sometimes cars pass on the dusty road.
The woods so quiet, turkeys roost at night.
In the river’s shadowed pools, trout rising.
My daughter and I pick pears from a lonely tree.
My wife tugs carrots from the garden.
And in my house what would you see?
Walls of shelves filled with books.
2.
My father and mother taught me to be content;
I need not envy how others make their living.
Click, click—my wife knits by the window.
Zoom, zoom—my son with his trucks.
Apple blossoms swirl around my raised arms.
Hands in pockets, I listen to warblers high in the oak.
Who might notice how I pass my days?
Well, the mail carrier stops each afternoon.
3.
Walking, I pause at the collapsing barn.
The barn, slowly folding, fills the still mind—
Mornings milking despite drifting snow,
Afternoons stacking the loft with hay.
Where sumac tumbles from the window hole,
And gray walls tremble from swallows’ shadows.
In the old cemetery, the bones of those who built this place—
Their names fading, but written in stone.
I hung up a bunch of old CD’s recently over some garden beds, to keep out the birds. This morning I looked out the window to see a robin pecking at the dirt at the edge of one of those beds. Then it hopped right over the bed. It nearly got clocked by the spinning disk. It worked last time.
Our dishwasher has a whole slew of adjustable bars and rods, the better to efficiently stack all one’s dishware and cutlery. One of them seemed to have lost its adjustability recently. It flopped. I removed it today to find that it had rusted right through. The little rod was pointy, yet crumbly, with rust. I took out one half and wrestled with the second for a while before deciding to leave it for tomorrow. I figured a dishwasher is for lazy people anyway so I had good reason to be lazy with that task.
Our neighbors have a small pond, just over our property line. What its intended use what I can’t say. It doesn’t seem to get much human use at all–no swimming, no irrigation, no livestock watering. It just sits there, leaking onto our side, home for ducks and frogs. The bullfrogs are especially loud these days. The groan and croak at all hours, but seem to especially like the hours just after dark. All of us pretend to respond to them now and again. Cracks us right up.
For Father’s Day I got a book of crossword puzzles. I am pretty hooked on crossword puzzles and have been working my way through a book of 200 of them from the New York Times. This new book is a little different. One of the clues was this: Royal mistake maker. The answer? Dumbshit. Cracked me right up.
We have been watching old science fiction movies lately. You know, the classics. The Day the Earth Stood Still, for example. Last night we watched the original 1950’s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It was pretty well done, eerie and even a little scary, but not gore-filled. All of these movies have the year listed on the sleeve from Netflix. Last night’s said 1956, but when the film opened it said 1955. The other films have had this same one year discrpancy. My guess is the the film posts the copyright date and Netflix notes the date the film actually was released. I guess they used to do things a little slower back then.
We went up the road this afternoon to pick up our share of produce. This was given to us as a gift again at Christmas. Great gift. As we walked out to the field to pick strawberries, the children found a mud puddle. Well, maybe puddle isn’t quite right. It was a mud puddle and had become a thick bowl of muddy paste. The children were wearing mud boots so of course they slopped about in it until their footwear was gray and wet. They had a blast. Then they sat in their dirty boots and ate all the strawberries we picked while I picked some daisies to bring home.
The cucumber beetles are starting to hatch. I have been slow to attend to them. I hope to get some Neem and see what that does. I have heard good things about it, that it makes the beetles go away. I want them to go away. I picked one off a pumpkin plant today and slayed it. They are beautiful little bugs. And I want them to live far away from here. I want some cucumbers this year, dammit.
I was chatting with a coworker today and she noted that I must be looking forward to having some time off this summer. My job allows me a couple of mostly-free-of-work months over those warm days. She said at first that I was lucky, then said, “No you’re not lucky. You made it happen.” That got me thinking.
I think we tend to attribute far too little of our success or fortune to luck. I think back on the key moments in my life and there were some lucky moments. If I didn’t have a particular teacher or supervisor or friend I might have taken the path I took. I had not seen the newspaper on the right day or if a housemate hadn’t taken a class on the right date, I might not have found this way in life. Luck had a lot to do with it.
Sure, hard work matters. In fact, it is what one does with the lucky moments that makes the difference. Get lucky and land a good job? That matters a lot less if you are a slacker, or if the people with whom you work hate you. You need to make it happen, as my coworker said. To clarify, hard work matters a lot, but luck matters too.
Think of the big ones. How about where you were born? That kind of makes a difference in the opportunities one has. How about other members of your family? Whether one has abusive parents or the most loving on the block makes a difference, and that has nothing to do with hard work. Yes, with some struggle one can overcome these tricks of fortune, but that is my point. It takes more work for one born into more challenging circumstances.
One can be successful if one is mostly lucky and one can be successful if one works terribly hard. I believe it is when one takes full advantage of the circumstances that simply happen to him or her that one can be most successful. Sure, chalk it up to hard work. I just don’t buy it. Everybody gets lucky, whether he or she acknowledges it or not.
Here’s Thomas Jefferson: I’m a great believer in luck, and I find that the harder I work, the more I have of it.
I’m with that.
So which is bigger, a bazillion or a gajillion? I vote for a bazillion but what do I look like? A mathematician? I feel like we use superlatives so often that they often have no meaning. So really, what the hell difference does it make?
One of my least favorite superlatives is “extreme.” While it isn’t as popular as it used to be, there are approximately a gajillion things out there labeled “extreme.” There are fast food meals, frozen pizzas, video games, even underwear (“extreme comfort”). I think it is a little ridiculous. Hey, some marketer says, let’s hop on the extreme bandwagon. Extreme sells.
I finally had my fill of extreme when I saw an advertisement (on a restroom wall poster of all places) for “Extreme” truck bed liners. These were spray on liners for the beds of pickup trucks. Extreme? I mean, I can see how a climb up a remote rugged peak can be extreme. I can see how an athletic event can be extreme (run across the Sahara anyone?). I can even see how a hot pepper can be labeled extreme. But a spray on truck bed liner? That went too far.
So I am in pursuit of some answers. Maybe you can help me out. Which is bigger? I really want to know what you think. Let’s give some meaning to these terms. I don’t need a number. I know they aren’t real numbers. I just need an answer: Which do you think is bigger and why?
If I get at least 100 answers in the comments I will send a rubberized foam velociraptor to the best answer. An extreme toy, if you will. I look forward to hearing what you think.
Mercury on the Move 