Category Archives: Humor

Thoughts on the Urge to Purge

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Loads of articles encourage retirees to declutter our possessions and purge decades of accumulation. My generation is repeatedly reminded our kids won’t want our stuff. True. They’ll want it after we’ve given it away. Or never. 

Purging sounds so virtuous.

The philosophy of decluttering or purging goes like this—discard what you don’t need. Pare down your belonging to the essentials. Ideally, give your stuff to someone who can use it. The process is also supposed to offer emotional benefits:

  • Get rid of what weighs you down—the boxes full of old files, the clothes that don’t fit, the shopping mistakes. Let go of the emotional weight of caring for all these things. The sense of responsibility and guilt are bad for you. 
  • Think how light and refreshed you’ll feel when you have less stuff. Less to take care of. A clean slate. (Who the heck even knows what a slate is? Well OK, I do. It’s a personal chalkboard students did schoolwork on. I have one in my office closet that belonged to my grandfather. I’m not even that attached to it. Would a history museum want this artifact? Probably not, since my brother crayoned on it.)

The decisions and matchmaking are what short circuit the urge to purge. 

Neighborhood Buy Nothing groups make it easier. You feel good about the matchmaking. The groups are well suited to offloading housewares and furnishings you no longer use. When we got a king bed, someone wanted our queen size mattress and bed frame. All I had to do was snap a photo and post the items. The neighbor who wants your stuff picks it up. No more loading up the car for a trip to Goodwill and driving bags and boxes around for weeks until you do the drop-off. No more staging a tedious garage sale only to find you still have to dispose of what didn’t sell.

Local Buy Nothing groups do a brisk trade in kids’ clothing, toys and equipment. I recently acquired a second booster seat for family dinners and I often scan posts for age-appropriate toys. My granddaughters’ wardrobes are supplemented with barely-worn-before-they’re-outgrown clothes and shoes from active Buy Nothing groups. The amount and quality of free stuff is astonishing. 

People of my generation used to take things to Goodwill or similar charitable organizations. Sometimes I still do—mostly clothes. Recently, an energetic friend’s clean sweep inspired me to pack up a load of clothes and old purses I don’t use. Won’t use. I do feel a bit virtuous. 

But right now, I’d like to purge any additional demands to declutter. Unload all those reminders and the associated guilt. It’s yet another thing that would be good for me . . . that I don’t feel like doing. Besides, the slate doesn’t take up much room in my closet.

Let’s Talk Turkey

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Spending last week with a ten-year-old and a three-year-old, daytime conversations focused on important topics like glitter glue, building Lego structures with or without directions, how many cookies equal too many, and the dangerous wild turkeys wandering nearby.

One night we strapped on headlamps to walk in the meadow, away from houses, turned off the lights to look at a sky ablaze with stars. The granddaughters, bright eyes plastered upward, were thrilled until remembering it was December and cold.

Star gazing in the meadow is the kind of memory shared in social media posts, but we talked about the wild turkeys longer. Burning off energy with the younger child, her father saw many turkeys roosting in trees along our driveway. Since a neighbor told me that the turkey brood pecking through our neighborhood slept in our trees at night, I had been reading about them. Mostly about self-protection. Our smallish dog has been rushed more than once by a mom turkey protecting her poult. When he made it to the house before me, she turned attention my way. Nothing stopped her approach. We’ve been captive in our house as turkeys peck through the garden.

Mom turkeys can sit on their eggs for a month and have not one hatch. About 20% of eggs will hatch with only 25% of those surviving their first months. Clearly not cute, poults, or baby turkeys if you prefer, are fragile and a snack for many predators. Turkey poults require loafing and roosting sites. Got to like a youngster that requires loafing territory, or fancy word for shelter, during their food search. 

Turkeys spend their day on ground pecking for edibles and their nights roosting in trees. Our garden and grassy areas provide easy shopping for mom turkeys. We are annoyances in their family protection effort. Woodlands provide some shelter while the poults are too young to fly up to the roosting zone.

Thanks to tended gardens, grass and woods, our local turkey population expands. Mom and the recent four poults joined a multi-generational wintering flock of about two dozen spending each night. They prefer multi-story stands with mature trees. I’ve read that up to a hundred turkeys might roost near each other. 

This potential does not thrill me. Even our current community leave enough excrement on the driveway or in easement near the trees. As a popular toddler book says, everybody poops. In the human neighborhood, poop is not cute. The turkeys don’t care.

“Why, in my day . . .”

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Growing up, I recall elders recounting tales about life before some innovation. Today, the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) is a hinge moment like so many technological advances I’ve experienced in the last 40 years. I look back on past breakthroughs with wonder and nostalgia. I’m trying to come to terms with current developments.

1984 – Desktop Computers

I roll my eyes when young volunteer coordinators enquire if I’m comfortable with computers. In 1984, my boss handed me boxes for an Apple IIe desktop computer and an amber monitor (orange type on a black screen) and told me to set them up so I could write marketing and training materials. 

1989 – Internet

Today, that old setup is quaint and humorous—a one-color monitor, 5¼ inch diskettes, a computer that didn’t connect to the Internet . . . because the World Wide Web wasn’t mainstream until 1989-90.

When the Internet became commonplace, we used painfully slow telephone dial-up modems with their crackling static and rubber band sound. Modems meant I no longer had to courier work product files to my customers on diskettes, which had shrunk to 3½ inches. 

1994 – 2001 – Search Engines and Websites

In the mid-1990s, search engines like Yahoo, AOL, and Netscape came on the scene and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helped people, products, and businesses get found. Google started in 1998. It’s hard to imagine a time before Google, when research meant visiting a brick and mortar library to use printed resources that might be checked out to someone else.

As websites grew common, having one for my business became important. A friend and I designed and rolled out mine in 2001. Several versions followed until I retired it several years ago.

1996 – Cell Phones 

For me, the next technological cliff came around 1996 or 1997 when small cell phones arrived. They made calls. That’s it. If you had the patience to tap number buttons repeatedly, you could eke out texts. No camera. No Internet. No email. No music. No maps. Next, I owned a different dumb phone that opened to a qwerty keyboard. Around 2005, I acquired a fancier flip phone with a camera. Woohoo! Before long my 35mm digital camera was obsolete.

2007 – Smartphones

The world shifted dramatically again when the iPhone was introduced in 2007—the best of the available smartphones. Cell phones had enabled me to keep up on client calls and emails seamlessly when I was away from my home office—in other words, an early version of remote work. Staying connected with family became immensely simpler too.

2007 – 2008 – Facebook & Twitter

The advent of social media—Facebook and Twitter along with their many step-children—has transformed the world. How we discover, understand, and consume news. How we see ourselves and connect with or demonize others. There’s no denying social media’s far-reaching impact. Despite my mixed feelings about Facebook, it’s where a number of readers find our blogs. 

Now – Artificial Intelligence

Evidence of artificial intelligence is everywhere—Siri and Alexa, helpful spelling prompts in texts and emails, blank-eyed, AI-drawn models in ads, and who knows how many AI functions we are unaware of. 

AI makes me uneasy. But I don’t want to be a Luddite, so I’ve told myself I really ought to dig in, try to understand its scope, possibilities, and implications . . . insofar as any non-AI developer can. I’ve begun experimenting with ChatGPT as a research tool (think of all the data it accesses), but it’s never going to be writing my blogs! Count on 100% Ellen, all the time.

Five years from now, when the next technological wonder launches, who knows what we’ll be saying?

Sandwich Party!

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Before surgery I read up on painkillers. Bottom line, I was grateful that options existed and realistic about accepting possible reactions. Jimmy John’s sandwiches were never mentioned in that patient information.

My first night post-operative I looked around my room, stared into what I thought was a giant security television screen (aka a dark window), pulled together all the visual clues available, and determined that there was a sizeable Jimmy John’s sandwich party happening across the hall. Giant carts of food appeared to be going into a room with people following. I thought I saw, or heard, that the party was in honor of my surgeon. 

Not eating in the prior thirty hours made a sandwich appealing. I think I’ve only eaten a Jimmy John’s tuna salad special at a corporate lunch meeting. I remember because I was the last person choosing a box. Tuna salad, tuna salad, tuna salad. Three boxes of the same choice. The only decision was if I was hungry enough to eat a Jimmy John’s tuna salad sandwich.

According to hospital people watching me that night, I decided I needed to freshen up before heading to the party and attempted to get out of bed dragging tubes and lines and monitors. I asked for a clean gown, something less revealing, and my personal bag so I could brush my hair, wash my face, and find my undies. I was ready to socialize. Maybe celebrate that surgery was over, chat about the joy of warm blankets, or share escape plans.

What’s fascinating is how in a somewhat dark situation, something deep in my mind took stock of what it could observe and found the potential for a few minutes of joy as well as the possibility of grabbing a sandwich, maybe a cold soda, and a little time to chit chat with absolute strangers. I am an introvert, and not fond of fast foot sandwiches on small loaves of bread. In normal times I would need a serious reason to head into a room of strangers, especially if wearing a lousy hospital gown. But that night a party sounded awesome.

Physicians have known since Plato that there is a direct correlation between the mind, body and health. The psychological and physical are not separate but are vitally linked in healing the body. When the painkillers were not taking care of what my body was experiencing, my simple belief is that my mind accepted responsibility for creating a happier framework. In the absence of other stimuli to distract focus from what was hurting, I planned that party room. I made decisions about whether I was ready to have chips (not), if a diet cola or a lemon-lime soft drink would taste better (lemon-lime), how to blend in with all the people in uniforms or street clothes (unresolved). My problem solving and creativity pulled me through a night that could have been worse. 

This is the power of human vitality. We can live, grow, develop in many situations, not only on sunny days but also during threatening storms. Be gentle with your expectations if this is not a time to go for the stars. Share a Jimmy John’s with a friend. Enjoy a mini party, if only in your mind. Wear a robe if your gown hangs open in the back.

Hiding Out

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Porcelain, cardboard, tin, and plastic Jack o’ lanterns grin from a ledge in the laundry room. I moved them to the basement the morning after Halloween along with candy corn lights and a gauzy witch that cackles when someone walks past. Here’s my sad secret, Halloween is nowhere near my favorite holiday. I find it kind of scary for other reasons.

In Luxemburg, WI there was no trick or treating. We wore our costumes to school and at night a parade happened on Main Street. Candy and substantial treats were thrown from the town’s firetrucks. Many of the town’s 400 or so residents, including many who drove in from their farms, stood on the sidewalk to collect the goodies.  Then everyone joined the parade for about a six block walk to where a bonfire burned at the fairgrounds. Adults and kids partied and danced way after a school night’s normal bedtime.

When we moved to Milwaukee my mother declared her children were not going to ring strangers’ doorbells to beg for candy. She called the city’s Halloween traditions dangerous. And she wasn’t going to encourage others to ring our doorbell. So instead of a parade or walking the neighborhood with other kids, our parents took us to a shopping mall for the special treat of dinner out. If stores offered a treat bag, we were allowed to accept. 

My brother managed to weasel out of the family outing after a couple of years. He claimed he was going to help a friend distribute candy so the parents could walk with younger siblings. I snuck out one year with a girlfriend whose mother called to invite me to a sleepover party. It was a ruse because they felt so bad that I had not experienced the joy of running around in the dark with a pillowcase to collect candy. 

Only I didn’t really find it all that fun. I heard my mother’s disgust with kids begging for candy and caution about the city’s danger. I was kind of afraid of scary costumes and decorations. I worried my parents would drive around the neighborhood and recognize a cheerleader wearing white tennis shoes as their daughter. By high school Halloween parties frequently included booze or pot which weren’t my thing.

Fortunately, I was great at disguising my fear of Halloween from our children who adored the holiday. A granddaughter’s enthusiastic participation in anything connected to Halloween is awesome. I still decorate and usually keep a treat bowl filled, but I’m more comfortable spending Halloween in the basement reading a book.