I’ve been going to the same CPA to get my income taxes done
for decades. I trust him and so I was glad when he got married late in life and
had a bunch of kids who are now approaching their college years, keeping him
from retiring. With any luck he’ll be in the work force until after I die. The
drive through town to get to his office takes from twenty minutes to an hour
depending on traffic tie-ups, construction and accidents. It was a twenty
minute trip this week and for that I found out I’m getting a large refund.
As soon as it comes I’m making another trip through town to the Apple store where
I’m buying myself an Apple Air IPad. I’ve been fighting the urge to get one for
a long time. I mean how tech connected does a woman my age need to be? I have a
great, desk top computer with a fabulously big screen and ergonomic keyboard, a
laptop with a light-up keyboard, Wi-Fi, a Kindle, an IPod, three cable TVs with
remotes so cantankerous I swear they’re possessed by demons and I’ve got a
smart phone which I might as well call a texting machine because that’s about
all I do with it.
The last time the furnace man came to the house to clean it,
he tried to talk me into getting a programmable thermostat and I said, “No way!
I’m already in tech overload.” If I screw up a TV remote it’s just an oh-well
inconvenience, if I screw up a thermostat it’s a hand-wringing service call because
it would happen in the dead of winter. When the time changed recently I had to
reset digital clocks in devices until the cows came home and there are still
two I can’t do---the one on my electric tooth brush and in my CD player. I
refuse to spend a half day trying to figure them out because the set up buttons
are so tiny a stalk-eyed fly would have trouble seeing them.These Asian flies,
by the way, have incredible eyesight and their eyes are at the ends of long
antennas. And from the department of Useless Trivial is the fact that the male
with the longest antennas always win when two of them go-face-to-face to gain
the rights to mate with a girl stalk-eyed fly. I guess males throughout the
kingdom of living things are all obsessed with measuring the size of their
external equipment. Wow, how did my
stream of conscience take me from my CPA to stalk-eyed flies?
After the tax appointment I had another appointment at the
shoe store. Yes, you read that right. This shoe store is a specialty place
where you go if you need great support for problem feet. I’d never been there
before but all the foot doctors in town highly recommend the place. When I got there
I had to fill out a history of my feet issues and they took measurements of
things that had never been measured before plus I got a lesson on foot anatomy
with the help of a moving model of foot bones. That was interesting. It showed
how shoe pressure in the wrong place can make your foot hurt and in the right
fit can relieve pain. A half hour later I walked out of the store with a new
pair of walking shoes, a pair of sandals---sandals with so much support I
literally ran around the store!---and on order is a pair of gun-metal grey Mary
Jane’s that are made in Israel. I’ve never paid so much for shoes in my life---$168.00
for the Mary Jane’s---but I was way over due for dress shoes I can wear to
weddings and funerals that don’t come with three days of pain after wearing
them. This is huge because now I can wear skirts and dresses again which I’ve
shied away from buying for decades.
Also this week: With my Movie and Lunch Club (which is
sponsored through the senior hall) I saw The
Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I knew the committee would pick that one
because of the large assemble of elderly actors and actresses in the cast. It
was an okay movie to me, but not anything I’d recommend. It didn’t seem like a
stand-alone film to me and of those in our group who had seen the first
Marigold movie, they said the first one was better. Even so, I was the odd man
out; most of the fifteen ladies loved it. I agree with the movie reviewer from
IBNLive who wrote, the film is, "warm and fuzzy…but also over-plotted and
occasionally contrived.” And don’t get me started on the romance between
Richard Gere’s charming character and a sour-ass woman. Gag me
with a spoon then stand back so I don’t vomit on your shoes. But no movie is a waste of my time if I come
away with a few great lines to savor, and I did. 1) About being terminally: “There’s
no such thing as an ending, just a place where you leave the story;” and 2) about
being afraid of taking the offer of love before you: “Sometimes it seems the
difference between what we want and what we fear is the width of an eyelash.” ©
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| Stalk-Eyed Fly |
