Your Weekly Antics Keep Your Feet on the Floor, 8-25-22 Edition...
- lisaalkap
- Aug 25, 2022
- 8 min read
Warning. We are in the final week of summer. With the final week there will be cranky anxious kids dreading the start of the new school year. Kids trying to soak up the last remaining hours of their summer of no routines, no schedules, late nights and late mornings. This effects all of us, not just those with school aged children. With the start of school comes the influx of school traffic. Parents dropping their precious children off at school; crossing guards stopping traffic so that America's future leaders can get to the doors of their respective schools safely; school buses hosing up the roadways; kids on bikes; kids on foot; kids on skateboard; kids being dropped off and heading for the woods to skip school...for those who go in to the office, the last 6 weeks of easy and carefree commuting is coming to an abrupt halt as of Monday August 29th...this is your public service announcement for this week. Plan accordingly.
1. “The Cobblers children have no shoes”… if you’re not familiar, according to grammarhow.com this phrase means that "the shoemaker is often too busy with his own work to spend time making shoes for his children. This phrase can be used for just about any profession, provided it allows someone to showcase their talents somehow while also not being able to provide said talents to their families…" Let me tell you how this phrase applies to us here at The Antics, or more specifically to me…does the name Sue Miller ring any bells???
2. Despite my efforts and knowing a thing or two, Sue Miller has been having an ongoing war with the ceiling fan in her bedroom. Now I’m not the first one to go to battle with this fan on her behalf, the first person who attempted this feat was Deb. Our good buddy Deb fought valiantly against said fan, and some, myself included, are of the opinion that Deb did in fact win this battle. She may have, but the fan has since revolted, has demonstrated that it has a mind of its own or, it's difficulties have been due to operator error. Can anyone guess who that operator may be?
3. This brings us to just stop touching things… one day, not long ago, this friggin fan worked perfectly fine when it was in sync with the wall switch. Someone somewhere messed with the whole contraption. Some somebody was not being patient when the fan didn’t do what it was supposed to do when using the wall switch. That someone just started pulling the separate strings that are attached that operate the light and the fan so they can be used separately. If things don’t start up, or stop or change immediately, sometimes it’s in your best interest to give them a second to catch up. Now I realize I sound like an old man, but in my experience, some old guys know a thing or two and you should probably listen to them. Be patient. Quit pulling the damn strings…
4. The strings are pulled separately, together, in unison, not quite in sync, all while going back and forth to the wall switch. No evidence of sparks sparking and luckily nothing has blown up or caught fire- but a certain someone decides screw it, do I want light or do I want cool air? Cool air it is - she tells me she’s been wandering around in the dark all summer because she’s said screw you fan, I’m doing things my way. So this certain someone has been navigating getting in to bed and out of bed in the nighttime hours in the dark. Why would she want to bother either of her children or any of her grandchildren to attempt to correct this? It’s way easier and far more fun to attempt this on your own. Doesn’t matter that your kid, who has made it her life’s work to try to improve the lives of elders in our community, had to find this out on her own while you were trying to go to bed in the dark.
5. How does one solve this problem? Night lights…that’s all well and good, but when you have a perfectly operational ceiling fan that has a light and a fan that can be used together or operate separately, it seems a bit redundant and over kill. Normally if this were one of my Crisis clients I’d say, better to be over prepared that under prepared and try to wander around in the dark, right? Sure, but again…there is a fully operational fan/light that is not being used. That’s right, just keep plugging in night lights. Pretty sure before long that house is going to be lit up like the under used runway we have here at the Worcester Airport - not like anyone uses that either…at least Sue Miller uses her night lite lit path she's provided herself to get successfully to the bathroom. She doesn't have things lit up just for nothing.
6. What do you do when your body has made it perfectly clear that you should keep both of your feet planted firmly on the floor? Watch where you’re walking. Make sure you don’t trip on throw rugs or furniture, or I don’t know, that 50 feet of oxygen tubing…let’s concentrate on that. I’ll tell you what you don’t do…you do not under any circumstance climb up on the bed, or a chair or a step stool to mess with the ceiling fan and the light. That has disaster written all over it - I know that Leah Hazard keeps unretiring from retirement, but I’m not sure that she’s taking on any side clients at this time. Parenteau hasn’t shared the number of her burner phone with any of us, so she's out, we can't call her in to manage this situation. Let’s eliminate the fall risk all together and quit climbing up on chairs … as I lovingly tell all of my clients, let’s limit the climbing just to climbing the stairs needed to get in and out of your house. Leave the stools and the chairs and ladders and whatever the hell else you have to get your 5 foot self up off the floor alone.
7. I’ve been yelling at, I mean advising, people for years to make sure they have adequate lights, limit or completely eliminate throw rugs, are careful not to trip on oxygen tubing and electrical chords, wear their Personal Emergency Response System pendant in case of falls, access their walker, all that good stuff. Just do it. I know that you think I'm a moron and know nothing because I'm not your age yet but I've found a body or two over the years fully clothed or not to know what the culprit was that precipitated such events. I realize that I too will be a pain in the ass, refuse to take help and do things my own way, but that day isn't here yet, therefore that will be a problem for my kids and my nieces and nephew to manage. They can feel free to pull this issue of The Antics up out of the vault and use my own words against me when that day comes. In the meantime it would be nice if any of my people over the age of 60 would heed this advice, or any advice I give them. Help me, help you. Keep your feet on the floor.
8. Here’s another tid – bit for ya…expiration dates. According to Grandmothers everywhere, there is no such thing. So if you find a box of Jell-o pudding mix or Oodles of Noodles with expiration dates on them, no need to pay any attention, because expiration dates don’t really mean a damn thing as long as the packaging is in tact. You go to pull out that box of whatever you’re going to mix up and there it is... that tiny black print stamped on the package. They’re just on those boxes to get inside your head people and make you second guess yourself. Now General Mills or Nabisco or whoever it is who boxed up your food type item filled with chemicals and preservatives, has successfully penetrated your inner psyche telling you that your normally good and sound judgment is steering you down a dangerous path of thoughts… is it still edible? Will I give my family botulism or some other crazy disease? Will I grow an additional limb? What if you’re up baking a store box cake at 1 am and the expiration date was yesterday, just an hour earlier, do you toss it? No of course not, it's still edible, get it together. Common sense tells us if you open the box of whatever it is and it doesn’t seem quite right, toss it. I’m not recommending that during your Stranger Things marathon you break out and bake that box of brownie mix from 1989 that you found hidden in the back of your Grandmothers cabinet for the sake of nostalgia – come on, you’re smarter than that. And this theory does not apply to perishable items such as milk, eggs, other dairy products or opened items that have been sitting in the back of your fridge since some time before 2015. But then again, who am I to question the judgement of America’s Gramma’s? Want to read further? Probably not, but just in case, there’s more here…
Exhibit 1, Do you think the stamper of the expiration date on this bottle of Kool Aid got a chuckle out of this or did it go unnoticed? photo creds, Tom & Marj St. John
9. The Kelly Square peanut. Now forgive me if this offends anyone, but it is my opinion that it sucks. I long for the days when you came upon Kelly Square, closed your eyes, and just gunned it hoping for the best. I don't care what kind of order that the higher ups and city planners think they instilled in Kelly Square, but they mustn't drive through it very often. I still try to avoid it - for one, no one ever remembers that the formerly two laned Madison Street by Enterprise Rent - a - car now funnels in to one lane. By the time you're driving under the bridge and past our fine Polar Park, you're either swearing or thanking the angels who guide you for keeping you from getting sideswiped. Coming in to the peanut from Water Street is even better. Why? Because everyone driving directly at you is either coming off of 290 or from sitting in traffic on Vernon Hill and is just plain pissed. I am not a fan of the peanut...the end. #bringbackkellysquare
10. I'd like to publicly thank Tim, the poor guy who has been assigned the daunting task of helping the fine ESW employees like myself set up and navigate through our new agency cell phones. By the time this weeks Antics is published, there's a really good chance that I've either lost or broken my assigned phone. At least I admit my faults, past present and potential.
11. And last but not least, from the mouth of one of our fearless leaders Taryn Lee Turgeon… “I think it’s time to get your Mom some longer pull strings for her ceiling fan.” This is why she makes the big bucks people…always helping people like myself see the forest through the trees, or the obvious, however you'd like to look at it. Either way, it's sound advice.
Have a great weekend! 😊
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