2021 RESOLUTIONS: FOR A YEAR THAT BETTER NOT SUCK

I am not making nice resolutions like losing weight, making friends with my neighbors, or making any kind of self-improvement. I could be nicer, I could be improved, I could voluntarily make more friends…but I’m not interested. I’d rather do things I find interesting and rewarding.

1. REFINE MY SHIT LIST. A few people have fallen off the list because I just don’t give a shit about them anymore OR I’ve discovered that life has punished them in an appropriate manner. Death, dismemberment, disease, bad divorce…these are the things that will get a person off my shit list. However, the plan remains essentially the same: 

• Do not divorce the dude so he can’t testify against me.
• Take the old truck and leave in the middle of the day when he’s at work.
• Pay for everything in cash and make the cash last.
• Have fun and remember it will be like driving over a watermelon and squishing it, backing up, and driving over it again. 

 2. READ MORE BOOKS. This isn’t Self Improvement, it’s just what I like to do. I found another box of books in the garage and HOLY MOLY but my bookcases are getting full! With all the Covid shit and Trump circus going on over the last year, my attention span for long books is shot. I can manage free/cheap books on my kindle (and I will kill anyone who says Romance Novels out loud) but anything that requires concentration has been almost impossible to read. I watch way too much stuff on Netflix/Amazon/Hulu but I really need something to pass the time. The plan is to find a book on the book shelf, set a timer, and really concentrate on what I’m reading for a short amount of time. Problem solved.

 3. HATE MORE THINGS. Why should I pretend to like things I hate? For example: I hate the Tex Mex food out here. I will eat it to be nice because it’s not terrible…but I don’t think it’s good enough to waste stomach space on at this point in my life. I hate enchiladas with a tomato paste sauce if I can taste the tomato paste. I hate salsa with chopped onions in it because I hate eating fresh onions. I hate feeling like I have to eat food that is too spicy just to be polite. 

 4. I WILL NOT EAT AT CHIK-FIL-A. I hate the company’s politics. I hate that they are closed on Sunday as if that makes them super Christian do-gooders when their staff probably needs the hours to make rent. I hate getting their gift cards at work because CFA is “so good” people will drive across town just to pick their shit up for lunch. And when we have a catered lunch and it’s CFA… I feel angry at having to show appreciation for this crap. It’s not good food. It’s not good for me. And the company is a fucking leach on society. (Don’t tell anyone, but if I get a CFA gift card, I take it home and rage-cut it up into a thousand little pieces.)

 5. DIG HOLES. Yes, dig holes in my yard. I promise to have the gas line marked, and then I am going out there with a pickaxe and shovel and I am digging holes.

 6.  I WILL NOT DRINK SWEET TEA. Ever. And none of this half-n-half bullshit. There is so much sugar in it, even watered down it’s lethal. If you’ve ever been pregnant and had to do the blood sugar test, this shit is as noxiously sweet as that orange flavored crap I couldn’t keep down when I was pregnant with my first kid. I think it’s a ploy to get all the northern carpetbaggers to drink it so we die early from diabetes and therefore cleanse the South.

 7. DO LUNCH MY WAY. I will continue to either eat lunch in my car or drive home for a quick lunch. Because of Covid, I won’t eat in the dining room at work because some people take their masks off, walk around the room talking their damn heads off like it’s some kind of a house party, and then sit by me and TALK TALK TALK with no mask on. Lunch isn’t a time-out from catching Covid and dying! A tiny part of me (about the size of a grain of rice) feels bad that people really enjoy talking to me at lunch and miss the interaction with me. I have hocked up that tiny feeling of guilt and spat it out on the sidewalk. Three people who loved having lunch with me for the past few years have gotten Covid. I’ll see you all once you are vaccinated. I kinda wish those that refuse to be vaccinated for no good, scientific reason would have a big, red V tattooed on their foreheads so the rest of us could yell SHAME every time we see them in public. 

8. ENUNCIATE MOST OF MY WORDS. I have a little trouble keeping two syllables in the word “oil.” I totally get it when I hear “might could” or “might can’t” and “y’all.”  But as God is my witness, I will never say “all y’all.” It reminds me of a former small town we lived in where some of the residents said “out town” when they went more than five miles from their house. I will continue to have three distinct words if I need to refer to a bunch of people and I will travel out OF town. 

 9. HANG THE FLAG. I am getting a new American flag and flag holder for the fence. I will have to bite my tongue when people assume I’m Republican because I’m white and flying the flag. But I’m going to fly the damn flag this year!

10. MOVE MY ASS A LITTLE MORE MAYBE. I might use the elliptical more. Maybe not. I should. But I probably won’t. I might bribe myself with watching movies while I use it. Or not. But I’m not hanging my laundry on it!

 

 

How Many Facemasks is TOO MANY Facemasks?

 Do you remember when you bought your first facemask and tried it on? And you thought There is no way in hell I'm wearing this thing all day! I can barely breathe! 

That was a long time ago in a world far, far away. Once I got over the feeling of being slowly suffocated and found masks that fit properly, I can wear a mask all day and feel just fine. I started out with sticky notes on the edges of my computer screen reminding of the essentials of hygienic mask-wear:

1. Don't touch your face!

2. Stop adjusting the mask every 5 seconds! 

3. If you JUST ADJUSTED the mask, use hand sanitizer!

The key is to find masks that fit your face, don't bend your ears in half, and don't make glasses fog up because nothing says highly competent professional like someone with stickin' out ears, foggy glasses and a mask that either slides up or down when you talk. 

After spending approximately $93847293487203420349023.99 on masks, I finally found the perfect mask. What makes a perfect mask? Well...

1. Extra material on the bridge of the nose to stop gapping and to fit under glasses so I can see where I'm going even when I'm huffing and puffing up and down the stairway.

2. Extra material under the chin to make a soft seal and keep the mask from hiking up or down when I talk.

3. A combination of ear loops and a soft, stretchy neck strap attached to the loops to take the pressure off my ears. That way, nothing is actually behind my ears and contorting them into unnatural shapes. 

4. Your head is probably bigger than you think, so definitely try the adult LG/XL. 

And don't forget filters. Some masks need them, some masks don't. If you can blow out a candle or a match through your mask, you need another layer between you and the next disease vector you encounter in the grocery store. I bought filters to use on trips and when I'm around a lot of people during the day. Otherwise, I use half a coffee filter trimmed or folded to fit in the pocket of my mask.

Now the sticky notes on the edges of my computer screen say:

1. Remember to stop and drink more water because you are always hot in that mask.

2. Turn on the fan! You are HOT in that mask.

3. If you're hot, you're doing something right!

So now that I'm wearing comfortable masks, I can really enjoy not having to wear makeup. Yep. No makeup. What's the point? And with so much of my face covered up, I feel less like people are looking at me...which is a personal problem...but I expend a lot less mental energy worrying about what I look like because you won't recognize me if you see me again anyway. 

Someday we won't have to wear masks all the time...someday. 

MEMES, THY AFFLICTION IS MEMES

Hello, my name is everyone who has a smartphone, and I am addicted to memes. All kinds of memes. My phone is so loaded down with memes it's a wonder it has enough memory left to answer phone calls. Not that I want anyone to call me. The purpose of my phone is to have access to memes wherever those memes are lurking on the internet.

There was a time I didn't think I was so attached to my carefully curated collection of memes, but in one surreal moment, everything changed. I dropped my phone in the toilet at work. 

I never take my phone to the restroom. The idea of all those germs aerosolizing when I flush the toilet and drifting around until they can land on my phone is disgusting and totally avoidable. And to all the people who have dropped their phones in toilets and fished them out...gross! Just gross! Flush it and buy a new phone!

But there I was in the bathroom stall with my stupid phone balanced on top of the toilet paper dispenser. I clipped the corner of the phone with my elbow as I stood up and turned around to flush... and just like that my phone was cartwheeling into the toilet. What are the odds that I would bump it at just the right angle to send it directly into the toilet? 100% that day.

As the phone tumbled through the air my brain screamed MY MEMES! MY MEMES! I needed to save my phone! After years of making fun of people for grabbing their phones out of dirty toilets, I finally understood the horror of losing all the things saved on a phone that was not backed up to the cloud. It was Death. Not literal Death, but an intellectual Death, an existential Death, a Death equal to all the hours I had spent trolling for memes to express certain thoughts and feelings. Death to the laughter and exploration of the deep ironies of my existence in this time and place. 

I can do it, I said to myself. I can save the phone! These hands have cleaned up dogs who rolled in rotten fish guts and poop. These hands have caught vomit from my toddler's mouth rather than let vomit full of Kool Aide, peanut butter, and grape jelly land on my new, white, living room carpet. These hands have wiped baby butts, plucked dead pheasants, squashed spiders, thrown cockroaches out the front door because I couldn't bear to squash them due to the crunch factor, and picked up sticky traps with half-dead mice watching me with frantic eyes accusing me of murder. My hands are no strangers to awful things.

Just as the phone plopped into the toilet and began that graceful back-and-forth motion as it sank below  the surface of the water, I grabbed the phone and hauled it to safety. I burst out of the stall and steaked over to the sink to let the phone drip as the screen darkened and the apps winked out of existence. And then the phone shut down. I wrapped the electronic corpse in paper towels and commenced to disinfect myself from my elbows to my fingertips while hysterically counting to 20 several times.

I saved the phone. I had yanked it out of the toilet so fast, only a few drops of water had gotten inside the case. I had a stash of alcohol wipes for cleaning my glasses and I used them to wage war on any poop germs stuck to the phone. After that, I left all the pieces in front of my little desk fan and hoped for the best. 

Like the trusty little electronic soldier that it is, my phone turned on and rebooted the next day. We have been happily trolling the web for memes ever since. I learned my lesson:

1. Back up the phone every night.

2. Never EVER take the phone to the bathroom at work. 

3. Stop making fun of people who grab their phones out of toilets BUT it's okay to make fun of people for taking their phones into bathrooms in the first place. 

Sooner or later, I know exactly what's going to happen to them.