Routines in a World Gone Wild and Woolly

I’m such a creature of habit that it’s not funny. If someone wanted to kidnap me it wouldn’t take them long to figure out where and when to do it. Not that anyone would want to snatch a little old lady from the parking lot of the grocery store on a Saturday afternoon, I’m just sayin’ I like routine. And I wanted to say it with as many words as I could because writing during the pandemic has gotten increasingly more difficult and I have a word quota to fill, you know. By the way, the ‘wild and woolly’ in the title of this blog should not be confused with the 1932 short film, Wild and Woolly or the 1978 television film, Wild and Woolly. I’m referring to the 1917 silent comedy movie about a cowboy-obsessed Eastern who went on an odyssey to turn himself into a tough guy Westerner. Hasn’t the pandemic given us all new territory to conquer, new things to learn to survive?

Probably the routine I miss the most is my 1^st and 3^rd Mondays brunches with my Gathering Girls pals. We’re coming up on our third anniversary of meeting for those laugh-fests that comes with our food. I set up a private Facebook page hoping to keep us in contact that way but most of the ladies in the group don’t love and hug their computer keyboards the way I do. They don’t kiss them goodnight or hang around cyberspace looking for human interaction---Hey, sailor, looking for a good time?---so the Facebook page was a flop. Next I set up a private chat room hoping to do virtual lunches, but only three of us seemed to be technically savvy enough to enjoy that form of keeping in contact. I may try it again before I banish chat to the graveyard of Bright Ideas Gone South. One of the ladies in the group reaches out through text messages a couple times a week which is nice but I really hate those tiny screens and keyboards on our cell phones. I did discover I can use the voice feature to type but so can the TV on in the background which freaked me out when I thought my phone was possessed. There's been a few emails in our group and even a phone call. But nothing takes the place of poking fun of ourselves face-to-face in a restaurant. 

Another routine I miss is going to the post office every Monday and Tuesday to mail my e-Bay packages. The ladies that work the front desk are fun to interact with. One is so sweet I swear she’d taste like honey if you could lick her. Not that I have a desire to do so but I couldn’t think of a metaphor to convey how creditably upbeat and positive she is. The other woman who works the counter is near retirement age and is a bit cranky but you can get past that veneer with a few compliments now and then. I’ve made it my mission to make her feel appreciated because there isn’t a single question about postal rules she couldn’t recite forward and backwards. Like can I ship a be-be gun? "Yes, as long as there are no be-bes in the chamber." Can I ship a full bottle of prohibition ginger beer with a cork top? "Yes, as long as you tape something like a bladder control pad around the top and put the whole thing in a zip lock bag in case it leaks." She is my postal guru. I swear if I had a full sized submarine to mail, she’d know how to dismantle it and ship it piece-by-piece.

I also don’t enjoy the new routines the pandemic has brought of getting up early on Mondays and Tuesdays to get my boxes put out by the door for postal pickups. And the idea of getting up before the sun on Tuesdays or Thursdays to go to our designated senior grocery shopping time slot makes me crazy. I’ve tried ordering groceries online but the software at one store wouldn’t let me check out without clipping coupons and when tried doing that, I got kicked off the site. Three times! At another grocery store I got frustrated with their software. Apparently I do a lot of shopping by the color of the packaging which doesn’t help when you need to know brand names to put into their search line. After my husband’s stroke I made him a little picture book of products he was in charge of finding in the health and beauty department. I guess I need to make my own little picture book of product labels for online shopping. I didn’t know it for a long time but Don was often showing a marked page of that picture book to other shoppers who’d help him do my bidding. Oops. Even without words at his disposal he made lots of friends at the grocery store. I used to call him the Ambassador from the Planet Aphasia.

Back to routines: Every year for decades around my birthday I’ve done a biannual appointment with my internist. His office called wanting to set up a video appointment. The office personal who called seemed annoyed that I don’t have a way to video call. No Zoom, no Skype, no Duo. Ya, I’m smart enough to set something like that up but I pulled the Old Person Card and said I’m not tech savvy enough to do it. The idea of having to look good when the phone rings and worrying about the background the caller will pick up is stress I don’t need. Not to mention my face in selfies---which I presume all those platforms are basically showing to callers---is a bridge I don’t want cross over. Nope, I’m fine with voices only, old fashion Graham Bell where no double chins or wayward chin hairs could show up in a screen shot/meme titled 'wild and woolly.' ©

The Men in My Life

Monday was the dog’s appointment at the groomers. He was sixth in line with the schnauzer specialist and it wasn’t even noon. Glen says Levi has the best temperament of any schnauzer he’s ever met. I used to worry that I’d bring the wrong dog home sometime---that breed all looks alike---but the older he gets, the more I think that might not be such a bad thing. Puppies and old dogs spend more time at the vets. Glen says the salivary gland issue Levi has is common in the breed and to expect it to happen on the other side of his mouth as well. He says to rub a little Bag Balm on the area every day and that will help keep the gland open. One of the jobs my husband had growing up was to milk the family cows morning and night and they used Bag Balm on cow udder ouchies and he swore by it for healing and softening rough hands. It’s amazing that I’ve had that product in the house for nearly a half a century and I’m still hearing about new uses for it.

While the dog was enjoying his spa day I had errands to run---get the car washed, go to the post office, go the candy store and have lunch at the Guy Land Cafeteria. I forgot how busy everything gets so close to Christmas. The first carwash I went to had twenty plus cars in line so I went to another where I was fifth in the queue. I hate that second carwash but I hate waiting in line even more. At the post office I was also fifth in line with ten holiday-jolly people behind me and the window wasn’t going to open for another ten minutes. I try to avoid the post office this time of the year but I had my two 23 & Me DNA kits to mail and I wanted to get them to their lab before all the people getting kits for Christmas come flooding in. Registering that 23 & Me health kit took FOREVER. If you don’t want to answer a bunch of questions about your health history, don’t get one. If you plan on living a life of crime, skip both the health and the ancestry kits.

I also had thirty-something Christmas cards to mail that I could have dropped in the outside box but then I would have missed seeing the woman sitting on the post office floor boxing up her gifts in priority boxes and the others in line not prepared for the task at hand. Who waits until they are standing in line before putting addresses on their Christmas cards? My cards included a one page, typed letter and the first paragraph read: “Dear Family and Friends, I’ve been writing Christmas letters for many years and I’ll bet a few people wonder why I keep doing them when even sending Christmas cards is falling out of fashion. The answer is simple, it really is but I forgot what I was going to say so there you go.” The letter went on in this silly manner and ended with, “As you can see, I’ve been keeping myself busy since my second __th birthday and now if I could only remember why I keep writing Christmas letters you might not be inclined to start a rumor about me losing a few too many marbles in aging my head. Wishing you a holiday season full of whatever makes you feel well loved and happy.” 

The candy store was so busy I couldn’t find a place to park so I decided I could do without buying the little boxes I usually hand out like---well, like candy---whenever the situation moves me to do so. At the Starbucks window, on a table along with my tip, in line at the Dollar store, to the Salvation Army bell ringer, etc., etc. This place makes all their own, pricey chocolates and you can get tiny gold boxes that hold one perfect truffle. So this year, another long-standing Christmas tradition bites the dust here on Widowhood Lane. I didn't even bring the wreath for the front door up from the basement.

At lunch an old guy two tables away was either staring at me or sleeping with his eyes open or dead. I couldn’t decide which. He was a grumpy looking man in a flannel shirt and an Elks Club hat with an untouched coffee cup sitting in front of him. He creeped me out and I tried looking anywhere but straight ahead at him. Off to the right was a guy in a pink tie who was a fine piece of eye candy who came dangerously close to making me remember what it was like to be horny. To my left was a roly-poly guy chewing on a plastic straw and using it like a tooth pick to clean his teeth. I was fascinated that anyone could do that. 

At one point the guy with the straw threw it on his plate, then picked it back up and licked ketchup off it before sticking the unchewed end back in him mouth. While it was on his plate he was an animated talker and telling a story that required him to pretend he was peeling bills off a stack of money. I didn’t have my hearing aids in so I could make up my own version of what he was telling his co-worker and I was writing in my notebook as fast as I could about the lap dance he was probably getting. Grossing myself out on that story, I glanced over at Mr. Pink Tie. Except for the blond hair, he still looked just like Princess Charming and so out of place surrounded by men like the dead-eyed guy and Mr. Roly-Poly who was dressed in Carhartt bib-overalls. Those overalls and his wind-whipped complexion pegged Roly-Poly as a man who works outdoors in the winter. Finally, these men in my life left. Sighing my disappointment, I closed my notebook. Thank goodness for the Guy Land Cafeteria. It's the best people watching place in my kingdom. ©

P.S. Lest you think I'm vain about my age, my actual Christmas letter did have that blank filled in on the copies I mailed. I've been blogging on the internet for almost two decades in one place or another and from the start I've had a rule about making it too easy for bot crawlers to find my the exact date and place of birth and other information that can be abused.