Professional Rules

It makes me think when professionals do not follow their own guidelines. One of my pool friends is a dentist. Why is he the person that brings Skittles to the pool and offers them to everyone? I work with a doctor who is a marriage counselor. Why is she getting a divorce? My internist tells me that I need to lose weight. How come he can no longer button his shirt without gaps in it? Is this a "Do what I say not what I do mentality?" If it is, maybe what you say is not what is best for me.

Phones

I hate to renew my cell phones. It is a tedious job. I share a plan with my son and every two years we need to renegotiate it and update four phones. Yesterday was that day. No matter when you go to the phone store there is always a wait. There are 10 workers milling around but only four can help you. The others  are greeters. It was finally our turn. I let my son speak to the representative as I wanted to sit and talk to my grandson. Of the four new phones we were entitled to, three were on back order and have to be delivered to our homes next week. It took over an hour to do this. I am glad that we are locked in until 2018.

Food Phobia

I have been going to my town pool for many years and have seen a neighborhood man there many times. He is friends with some of my pool friends but I never spoke to him. The other day the pool was very empty so my sister and I sat next to him. My sister, being the friendly person she is, started a conversation about restaurants. As each restaurant was mentioned, the man said that he had eaten there but stopped because they touched his food. The pizza place touched his pizza as it went into the box. The next pizza place touched his calzone. The Chinese restaurant touched his egg roll. This went on and on for at least a half hour. He now goes to another county for food. Hopefully they won't touch his food or he will have to go out of state. I never knew that this man had a food ocd phobia. We were better off not speaking to him as now we think he is a nut.

July 4th

Happy 4th of July. For some reason my neighbor from across the street must have thought that yesterday was the holiday. He shot off hundreds of fireworks. Grucci would have been jealous. The problem is that besides the noise, it is dangerous. The flames of the fireworks were shooting onto my roof. Just as I thought it was over, a new round started. The debris that remained is still in the street. I am sure that some of it is on my lawn. If it is, I will pick it up and toss it onto his lawn. I am nobody's cleanup woman. The street looks like it is in Manhattan with litter all over it. At one point when the noise was not stopping, I hoped that he would just blow off a finger, so he would have to stop. I know that is mean, but I qualified the thought by hoping it was only a pinky.

Timing

Timing is everything. Last night we had tickets to the Met's game. It was fireworks night. My son bought us these tickets for Hanukkah. As Murphy's Law would have it, my husband was scheduled to go to work at midnight. For an entire year he waited for this job to come through and now there was a time conflict. In order to do everything, the game needed to end at 10:15. The fireworks needed to start at 10:30 and last only 15 minutes. We needed to get back to the car at 10:50, drive home and arrive by11:20 and get my husband out the door for work by 11:30. For some reason the stars aligned and that is exactly what happened.

Saving Memories

There is a lot to be said for modern electronics, but sometimes there is a downside. Years ago we took pictures, had them developed and put them into albums. When we wanted to see them we just got out the book. Now everyone takes pictures on their phones. The downside to that is when the phones need to be upgraded, the pictures do not transfer from every phone. I have an older type of phone that does not transfer. We are upgrading on Tuesday and I need to go through all of the pictures I have taken and send them to my email so I can save them to my computer. I have about 300 pictures on my phone and now I need to filter out the best ones to transfer. I have been doing this for the past hour and need to stop for a while. This is the time when I wish I had a Kodak camera.

No Recall

Now that I have grandchildren I get to watch them grow and learn. I have no recall of my sons doing the things that my grandchildren are doing. I am talking about the basics. In my mind, my sons were born walking, talking and potty trained. I do not remember teaching them any life skills and for sure, my husband did not either. I know I am sounding ridiculous but when I am asked for advice, I can only say what I would do now and not what I did then. Maybe we are not supposed to remember everything.