The Day After..... and Handy Pandemic Gadgets

The day after seeing the bone doctor last week I woke up at 8:30 which was a full hour to an hour and a half later than I’ve been waking up during the pandemic. I’m not a morning person so it felt good to sleep in. I sprung out of bed as fast as a septuagenarian can spring which, in my case, is more like Red Foxx’s Fred Sanford character moseying around his junk yard while complaining about his aches and pains. I put the coffee pot on, then sat down at the computer like I do every morning. Fast forward two hours later I was still going down rabbit holes on the World Wide Web and I had forgotten to drink my coffee. I never forget my coffee. Never! Two cups usually goes with me when I'm chasing rabbits. I didn’t feel sick but what else could explain my coffee lapse? And don't say it's my age. I was only two days older than the last time the internet sucked me into its black hole of wondrous and fascinating things.

Not coming up with a logical explanation for missing my caffeine fix I got my act in gear and went to grocery store/pharmacy where my primary mission was to get my 65-flu shot. I waited until October last year and they ran out and I couldn’t get one until January and I wasn't about to let that happen again. My temperature at the pharmacy was 98.4 but the day before at the doctor’s office it was 97.6. Both within the normal range but pandemic paranoid me turned the burner up on my worry pot and I didn’t turn it back down again until a few days later when my temperature dropped back down in the 97s again. For several months last winter my temperature was holding steady down in the low 76s and, of course, I went to Doctor Google to find out why it was below the normal range and found out it "...usually happens from being out in cold weather. But it may also be caused by alcohol or drug use, going into shock, or certain disorders such as diabetes or low thyroid. A low body temperature may occur with an infection.”

I have a thyroid gland that operates at two-toed sloth speed, so I quit worrying that my low temperature meant that it was getting ready to spike high with Covid-19. Quit worrying until lately with all the back-to-back temperature checks required. And wouldn't you know it, just when I've gotten hair long enough to have bangs every place I go is asking me to push them off to the side so they can zap me with their temperature taking gun.

At the store I used my cool, new tool (photo at the top) to cut down on the things we touch. It opens doors on cooler cases, pushes buttons on key pads and acts as a stylus to sign screens. You can even use it in public bathrooms to flush the toilets and turn faucets on and off. I felt like I had a super power and I left the store feeling happy and upbeat. I had gotten my flu shot, bought some groceries and brought fewer germs home to breed and multiply.

Then on the way home that darn Prime Country radio channel ambushed me when they played Tim McCraw’s Don’t take the Girl. If you don’t know the song it starts out with an eight year old boy begging his father not to take the neighbor girl fishing with them and it ends with them both twenty-five and her life is in endanger after giving birth to their child. He gets down on his knees and prays:

“Take the very breath you gave me

Take the heart from my chest

I'll gladly take her place if you'll let me

Make this my last request

Take me out of this world

God, please don't take the girl."

Out of now where tears were racing down my cheeks. And I don’t mean just a few. It was like a dam broke and I had no clue where they came from. I’ve never particular connected with the song other than thinking it was cute in a sappy kind of way. But later on when I deep-dove examined my cry-athon I realized I was crying because I really, REALLY miss having love in my life. Duh, a widowhood issue, long buried and thought to be in the past. And it crossed my mind to question if maybe I’m reading too many romance books…or maybe I'm not reading enough romance books. I’m going with the latter theory because I’m not giving them up anything soon. They've become a pacifier to get me though the pandemic, taking the place of the human contact I was getting beforehand just being out and about in the world and down at the senior hall.

I’ve been reading the genre off and on since my 40s and the new crop on the market are holding my interest because they are so different from those I read back in the last century when I was hot and heavy into them to the point that one year in the '90s I even had a press pass to get into romance writer's conventions. The banter is different, most of the heroines are stronger, more independent and the sex/love scenes---well, they often have me thinking about the Twister board game and I’m not kidding. More than once I’ve stopped reading what I can only describe as bedroom gymnastics and tried to figure out how on earth it's possible for a hand or set of lips to be here or there while doing this or that some place else on the human body. And I've wondered if authors actually "fact check" those logistics with their husband’s. Do these guys have--- Okay, I need to stop writing before I embarrass myself.  

The bottom line: After having tried and failed to write a passable romance book or two I have an insatiable fascination with how authors work and I'm a sucker for non-fiction books about writers and writing. Do they have Zen-like offices, write in coffee shops, keep regular hours or do writing marathons when the inspirations strikes them? And why on earth is one of my favorite authors of romantic comedies so hung up on the number seventeen that she's used it a zillion times in at least two books before her editor made her quit? I did just learn from watching the You-Tube launch of her latest book that since the pandemic started she's been writing in the back seat of her car after parking it outside her local coffee shop while her husband is at home helping their kids with online schooling. I love how gender roles have blurred since my youth. But that's a blog topic for another day, isn't it. ©

 

NOTE: The no touch tool came from Amazon but I can't make the link feature work to give it to you. It’s the second one I bought. The first one I found at the grocery store near a mask display but it doesn’t have the retractable hook up or the sink faucet cut out at the top which are both great features. There are lots of other styles at Amazon, just put 'no hands tool for opening doors' in their search line if you want one.

Trash Reading, Duck Tape and Bad-Boy Birds

I finally did it. I got my fill of reading military/action adventure romances. Yes, I know I said that once before but I had a relapse. I didn’t mean to do it, I swear. And you don’t have to tell me that I should be using my reading time to improve my mind, not giving my fantasies fodder that make me feel young and kick-ass strong again. But it was late at night and I couldn’t sleep and there was my Kindle begging me to download some testosterone-on-steroids to kick the pandemic worries out of my brain. One book later I left author Susan Stoker in the dust and for good this time, after being turned off by a third book of hers that was treating S&M like its normal. It’s not, ladies and gentlemen. It’s just not! I think she was trying to ride the Fifty Shades of Grey train back when that was ‘the thing’ and while my ultra-ego might like alpha males I want my alpha males to have a code of honor that does not include physical or mental abuse no matter how much the "little woman" claims to like it. If I could, I'd lock the Christian Greys of the world up in one iron cage and throw away the key. Okay, they might like that, so I’ll need to re-think that idea if I ever get put in charge of the world. Maybe a bullet in the head would be better. Ohmygod, am I turning into a blood-thirsty bitch or what!

But I do need to thank Susan Stoker for leading me to Pippa Grant. Apparently there is a trend in genre fiction marketing these days where 2-3 authors promote each other by using the same characters. A secondary character in, say, Susan’s book will appear as a main character in Pippa Grant's book. And all the authors work their way through a group of men who share the same careers to intro-connect their stories. Susan is into Navy Seals and Delta Forces, Pippa is into former boy bands and pro hockey and baseball players. The biggest difference between these two authors, though, is Pippa’s books are billed as ‘romantic comedies’ and I was hooked on her writing style from the first one I read, America’s Geekheart, which had me laughing out loud at 3:00 in the morning, pandemic stress be damned. I’ve since read four more of her books but that’s still my favorite. I’m going to sound like a guy who claims he only subscribed to Playboy for the articles when I say this but I’m only reading Pippa for the humor. Her 'players'---and I don’t mean sports here---are the naked photos I overlook. Well, as much as anyone could ignore the stud muffins in romance books. But believe me when I say this in my best Scarlett O’Hara voice, “As God is my witness when this pandemic is over I will finally finish reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace.” Ya, it really is on my Kindle and I'm planning on reading it to the very last page before I die. Don't let anyone tell you I don't have lofty goals.

Okay, only 427 more words to write to fulfill my minimum, by-weekly quota. It’s hard to come up with things to write about when stay-at-home orders are still in effect and I’m not doing anything but sorting out my past life through e-Bay sales. No doubt I’ll write about that topic again---after all my blog is my diary. But for now I’m bored by that topic so I’ll opine about the other big event in my life. Yes, the ghost in the house who likes to look inside the refrigerator and leave the door standing open. If you’re thinking I’m just getting old and forgetting to shut the door myself after all those pandemic grazing trips I make inside my Whirlpool, I thought the same thing the first couple of times I found the door standing up. On closer examination I figured out that along with the ghost theory there’s the other theory that the seal is wearing out. 

In my heydays of being a Spoiled Woman I could have just told---aka nagged---my dad or husband about the problem and like black magic they’d one day produce a new seal and repair the appliance. There wasn’t a single thing inside or outside of a house they couldn’t fix. And now days I bet I wouldn't even be able to find someone to replace a refrigerator seal. Darn! I. Do. Not. Want. To. Buy a new, expensive appliance when I don’t plan to stay in this house. So far, I’ve avoided using Duck Tape to keep the door from swinging open on its own, but I might buy a white roll to have on hand just in case it comes to that. Every woman needs Duck Tape and bungee cords in her tool box. They can temporarily fix anything and isn’t it nice that they come in colors, now, so you don’t have to be like Frazier’s father with his silver-on-green, taped-up La-Z-Boy in his son's fancy-ass penthouse living room. I loved that TV show back in its day. 

Ninety-nine words to go and I think I’ll use them by writing about the show of testosterone on my deck railing this week in the form of a pair of breeding mourning dove and a robin who seemed to think he should get in on the action. Yes, you read that right. A plump robin, an uncooperative dove with lady parts and male dove who seemed to up to the task of protecting her honor. In all the years the doves have been hanging around my deck rail and a near-by pine tree where they build their nest, this is the first time I’ve seen an attempt to throw off the balance of the species. Mother Nature is off her meds again! ©