I wrote some time ago about the concerted efforts of everyday objects, created to ease our lives and make everything safer and more convenient, often have the opposite effect. They work pretty efficiently to make my life more difficult. That attractive new soap dish that I was refilling and . . . . . you can see where this is going. More times than I can count, Herself and The Daughter have been on the phone chatting amiably when something inanimate is misbehaving and I respond accordingly. I can hear the conversation now – “What is dad fixing?” I’m going to quote again that famous narration in the movie, “A Christmas Story”. You know the one, where the father is down trying to get the furnace working. To quote, “in the heat of battle, my father wove a tapestry of obscenity that, as far as we know, is still hanging in space . . .” Yes, indeed. I work in profanity the way Picasso worked in sharp angles.
So, what’s up with those little bits of life that seem to have it in for me? Why do bottle caps fall on the floor, which I could live with, before it decides to “drop and roll” under some cabinet or piece of furniture? Why does the kitchen faucet, the new one that I’m getting used to, like to spray everything in sight? Why is it that the ketchup and mustard containers just gaze up at me as I squeeze and squeeze, until all of a sudden, I get a gusher worthy of an Iraqi oilwell? Why does that ink cartridge always run out at the worst of times, like the first page of a recipe I’m making for dinner TONIGHT, and that was my back-up cartridge. For that matter, why is it that the printer won’t work when the magenta cartridge is out? I just want to print this up to send to my publisher, but no, it’s flashing a leering grin at me and has otherwise shut down. Yes, I’ve spent many an hour doing battle with the printer. Somewhere, an engineer is laughing. (Must be the same one that set up OH NO, GO BACK! on the Publishers Clearing House website when I decline to make a purchase.)
One of the things that thwarts me the most, and I may have mentioned this before, is the “panic button” on my car remote. That must go off at least two or three times a week. I feel some times as though I should stand in the driveway with a bullhorn, announcing “This is only a test.” Some incredibly bright engineer decided to put the panic button right in the center of the remote, where every key is sure to touch it and set it off. One day, the car started honking and the keys were hanging on the rack by the back door. I was nowhere near it. Gravity must have rearranged the keys and set the darned (not my first choice of descriptive word) thing off. Fortunately, nobody in the area came running. We’ve all become immune to the alarms because we hear them so often – at the grocery store, at the mall, across almost every parking lot in the world. I speculate that in a major car crash, the last thing working on a burned-out wreck at the bottom of a ravine is the car alarm.
As many of my faithful readers know well, technology has never been my friend, and in all probability, never will be. Even on this website for my blog, I set it up on Twitter, at which point my daughter, who is also my tech support, told me that it somehow was connected to her Twitter account. Possibly because I didn’t, to my knowledge, have a Twitter account. Still, I have no idea how that happened. She managed to straighten it out. What I might do is tie this in to the White House Twitter. It’s usually an angry rant anyway, and will fit right in with what goes out from the president. Nobody will notice for weeks or months. Meanwhile, she also mentioned that I should install the “read more” feature after the first paragraph. I used to do that, until they changed the format, and now I can’t find that feature. Where the heck is it? I’ll keep looking. For the time being, you’ll all just have to read the whole thing.
Since she came home from rehab, Her Ladyship has an oxygen compressor. That’s a great device to keep her healthy. It’s hooked up to a tube that is long enough to get her into downtown Boston should she wish to walk that far. Don’t really think she will. The nice thing is that the tube wraps about itself in nice, swirly loops to the point where it would require a team from the Army Corps of Engineers to untangle it. I try, valiantly, at least once a day to get at least an untangled length of three feet. At night, of course, that needs to be disconnected and we plug in to the face mask apparatus, which is another tangled mess of tubes and wires. I must say that cords and tubes complicate our lives. Everything made from now on should be totally cordless and wireless. Cords always, always, loop themselves around doorhandles and chair legs. So . . . here are some questions that I’d like you to ponder if you will, most having to do with items that disobey, some not quite so inanimate.
Why do band aids stick everywhere except over the wound you’re trying to cover up?
Why do large birds with urinary issues always find the windshield of my car? Particularly when it’s parked in front of the garage? These birds have skills military snipers would envy.
Why do tissues stick together, forcing us to pull out a big wad all at once? And why do rolls of toilet paper and scotch tape never have a clear starting point? We have to search for them.
Why have the newspaper people never developed an ink that doesn’t turn your hands black?
Why does paper towel never tear evenly at the perforation, but keeps tearing diagonally across the next three sheets?
Why do gusty breezes always come up just after you’ve swept the front porch?
Why do we have a supply of 100 million screws neatly organized in those little plastic pullout drawers, and none of them are the right size for what we need? Too long, too short, too thick . . .
Why does everything we have on a shelf tilt outward until . . . . . like an avalanche in the Alps?
Why does something important, like a garbage disposal, a furnace, a hot water heater, a refrigerator, or central air conditioning, always break down on a weekend or when someone is coming to dinner?
In that vein, why does the cable go off in the middle of a show we’ve been waiting all week to see? (Yes, I probably should have taped it, but I figured “no need” – I’ll be free on Thursday night.) And further again into that vein, why are we at the “season finale” when there have only been three or four previous episodes. Sooner or later, every series will only have an “opener” and a “finale”. Nothing in between. Spoiler alert: that will be another blog!
What in the world was the inventor of wall-to-wall carpeting thinking? So too, the developer of fitted sheets, or as I call them, “the devil’s handmaid of bedding.” And why is putting on pillowcases often like trying to put sausage back into its casing? If we can build jet aircraft, can’t we solve the tight pillowcase issue?
Cling Wrap – enough said.
I'm Thinking...No! 