WordSisters

Category: Humor

  • Time to Rewire My Brain

    Now that hands-free cell phone use is the law for Minnesota drivers, I was faced with a choice: A) buy a new car with built-in Bluetooth technology or B) retrofit the one I have. I have no quarrel with the intent of the new law, but my mind boggles at how awkward the retrofitting is.

    I have an old car.

    My 2011 RAV4 is a prehistoric gem with only 75,000 miles on it. Definitely pre-Bluetooth technology. Until now that wasn’t an issue, because I seldom used my cell phone while driving. When I made or received calls, I connected my phone to my old-fashioned earbuds (the kind with wires) and stuck the buds in my ears. Simple hands-free calling. Decent quality sound. Yay!

    Now that’s unlawful, so I had to get a phone holder. The several articles I consulted pointed out that attaching a holder to a vent is hard in a RAV4. Besides, I don’t want to block the AC during Minnesota summers or the heat during Minnesota winters.

    My best bet was a holder that attaches to the CD slot. Mmmmk. I don’t play CDs anymore. I listen to the radio, not even Sirius. Or I use the oldest iPod you’ve ever seen for music and podcasts. The Smithsonian museum probably has one in their ancient technology display. Originally, I was saving all that memory on my phone for photos, not music.

    That’s only half of it. I also needed a Bluetooth speakerphone thingy to clip onto the visor.

    I have an old brain.

    Retrofitting the car was step one. My brain needs rewiring, too. In the olden days, cell phones were for talking, iPods were for music, and Garmin was for directions. I do realize that my iPhone 8 can do all of that—in one delightful device—but I have an unreasonable and balky reaction to being bossed around by devices even when they’re trying to help me. Until now, I hadn’t taken advantage of all that seamless wonderfulness.

    Now, if I want to call while driving, I’ll need to tell Siri (Dang! I never use Siri, so I’ll have to learn that.) How long before Siri mistakes, “Call Margo S.,” for “Call Martha Stewart,” who I’m pretty sure doesn’t want to talk to me.

    For music, I’ll have to reach under the cell phone holder to press radio buttons or convince my elderly iPod to talk to the Bluetooth speakerphone. (Oh wait, my beloved iPod doesn’t have Bluetooth capability, so it and the speakerphone aren’t friends. Sigh.)

    It’s 2019. Time to rewire my brain and how I approach calls, music, and directions. I bought the devices and they work–sort of–but they certainly aren’t simpler.

    Maybe I just should have bought a new, fully-equipped car!

  • Pure Nostalgia and a Weird Convergence

    Seeing the paint-by-number ‘artworks’ decorating Hot Plate, a neighborhood breakfast place, plunged me into nostalgia.

    At 10, nothing was better than making art that looked ‘real’ or perhaps I should say, ‘recognizable.’ Horses fascinated me and I labored at drawing them, using my horse statue for reference. One birthday, I received a paint-by-numbers kit for a horse portrait. Dip the cheap brush into the dime-sized plastic pots of paint, dab it in the blue-outlined shapes and voilà—my horse looked like the one shown on the box! Success!

    A weird convergence.

    Until my husband read the historical note in Hot Plate’s gallery, I’d never known that the Craft Master Corp., which made the paint-by-number kits, was headquartered in Toledo, my hometown. At first I thought, “That figures,” then I reminded myself that Toledo is also home to the Toledo Museum of Art, at the other end of the art world spectrum.

    While crunching home fries and laughing at the paintings of questionable landscapes, sad clowns, and plucky dogs, I marveled at the paint-by-numbers concept. Someone had to curate images, analyze and isolate the placement of highlights and shadows, and choose the appropriate colors. Today, that function can easily be done in a graphics program, but in the 1960s that wasn’t the case.

    The appeal of paint-by-number kits (popular in the 1950s and 1960s) and Bob Ross’ PBS show, “The Joy of Painting”(mid-1980s to mid-1990s, now immortalized on YouTube and in popular culture) is the idea that ordinary people with little or no artistic training can have an outlet for their creative impulses and paint something they’ll be pleased with.

    On the paint-by-numbers box was the slogan, “Every man a Rembrandt!” We l l l, not exactly. But for my 10-year-old self, there was a real pleasure in making a painting that turned out.

  • Procrastination—I haven’t lost my touch!

    I used to be a pretty good procrastinator. Not a champion, but definitely a contender. My peak performance was from my undergraduate years into my early thirties.

    Paper due Monday morning? I’d get jacked up on coffee and start work by 9 p.m., telling myself, “I work better under pressure.” More accurately, it was the only time I worked. But I’d better have a draft by 2 a.m., because after that my brain would fizz out and all the coffee in the world couldn’t bring back coherent thought. Unfortunately, that system worked well enough to regularly give me B+s, which only reinforced my procrastinating ways.

    By the time I was in my 30’s, I was married, had two sons, and was working full-time. Way too many chores and too little time! If I didn’t attack a distasteful task like putting away holiday decorations, they would stay untouched for weeks, a constant depressing reminder. I learned to slog through scutwork more promptly because the alternative was worse.

    Fear of failing my clients and losing business kept me from procrastinating too much when I had my communications business. I’d learned that I had to build in time to write a draft, let the piece cool off for days (or at least hours), and then revise it before sending it to the client. When I had a particularly tedious project, say catalog merchandise copy or highly technical training materials, I might suddenly feel an acute need to do something I never do like alphabetizing spices or organizing my sock drawer. At very least, I’d clean the kitchen and switch loads of laundry (something! anything!) to postpone the icky project.

    When our sons were little, unwelcome tasks were constant: their toys were scattered everywhere, and they drizzled on their clothes so there was more laundry. Seeing two days’ worth of crusty sippy cups and soggy cereal bowls piling up made me want to run away from home. I realized that sometimes it’s better to tackle the work right away and get it over with. After all, I’m never going to wantto do dishes. They only get more gross the longer they sit.

    These days, I’m more inclined to get chores out of the way. Sort of. For at least four weeks the special tile cleaner I bought sat in the bathroom while I put off using it. Today, there’s a tricky part of an essay I meant to revise. Instead, I cleaned out my file entitled, “Blog Ideas,” and decided to write this!