Car Troubles

There are many speed bumps on the road of life, and I just passed over one yesterday.  Oh, the joys of trying to get from Point A to Point B!

I have a former student/friend that I have written about before.  (I called him Bruce.)  Bruce is autistic and lives in government housing in a community about ten miles south of where I live.  He has no driver's license or vehicle.  In fact, he has to rely on social services and friends just to exist "independently" in the world.  He has lived/is living a rather austere life.  I help out when I can.

Yesterday was one of those days.  Bruce has three pairs of jeans that he bought for work.  Somehow, he managed to snag a hole in one of them, so I bought an iron-on Star Wars patch to repair them.  I decided to pick them up yesterday (Sunday).  He also needed a haircut, so while I was there with the car, we would drop in to Great Clips for a new "do", PLUS, he needed to drop some things off at his mother's in another town (about ten miles away)...so we added that to the list.  And, of course, I was going to take him for lunch somewhere while we were out and about.  At least that was the plan.

It was a nice day.  I picked him up at his apartment.  We headed out, but first, we stopped at the Casey's convenience store at the top of the hill maybe a half-block from his apartment to augment the quarter-tank of gas I had left in my buggy.  When we were done at the pump, I turned the car on and stepped on the brake to put the vehicle in gear...and the brake pedal went all the way to the floor.  I'm no mechanic, but I do know my car.  It was instantly obvious that my brakes were shot.  Still, I doubted myself.  The brakes were fine when I pulled up to the gas pump but not when we pulled away from it.  I reached the edge of the fairly busy road and stopped.  There was just enough braking power to do so.  Had I actually pulled out onto the road--or got to the 4-lane highway that we would be on had we continued, God only knows what would have happened to us.  Other cars might have been able to avoid hitting us, but without brakes, I had no way to avoid hitting them!

I announced to Bruce that we wouldn't be going anywhere, turned onto the shoulder of the road in the lane going the opposite direction, and limped back to Bruce's apartment complex...and parked.  Whew!  Another crisis averted!

My brain, however, didn't consider the crisis resolved.  It was spinning.  How will I get back home?  And my car?  What to do with my car?  Obviously, it couldn't be driven.  I have  no local family to rescue me...and it was Sunday.  Bruce was looking things up for me.  I left a message for a former colleague who lives nearby.  Turns out, she was very sick.  Then I thought to call my cleaning gal/friend who dropped everything she was doing to come pick me up.  Then I started calling towing companies.  The first one went to voice mail (and never did get back to me).  The second one said it would take him at least an hour to get someone there.  I made the arrangements to have them tow the buggy to my house, and then my friend showed up to take me home.  An hour or so later, the car showed up.  Towing charge: $131.  (Could have been so much worse.  Still, it's a major hit to the budget.)

What are the morals to this lesson:

1.  Thank God I recognized the brake problem before I pulled out into traffic.  I shudder to think what could have happened had I not been alert to what I felt in the brake pedal.

2.  Always have a charged cell phone!

3.  Never underestimate how emotionally draining an event such as this can be.  I was useless for the entire rest of the day!

4.  Be thankful for the people who still work on the weekends!  I don't know what experiences the on-call tow truck driver was doing when he was called into service, but I sure do appreciate his sacrifice!

As Bruce said, "At least you were able to pick up my pants."  Yeah, Bruce...somehow the hole in your pants and the length of your hair no longer seems quite so important.  I get it.  I hope you do, too.

  

 

Zucchini Recipe

 I'm writing this recipe down to share with my friends who are interested.  If you aren't interested, you have my permission to move along.  

Zucchini squash is quite available this time of year.  It's considered a summer squash, however, so I'm always looking for tasty ways to use it up because it is quite tasteless on it's own.  (My mother always fried it.  Still tasteless to me!)  The recipe below is one that I have developed myself.  I made it yesterday, and when I thought about it, I discovered that it is probably devoid of carbs, so I'm sharing for my diabetic and keto-diet friends.  Hope you like it!

Let's call it PEGZINI.

Ingredients:

3-4 small zucchini squash. sliced in coin shapes.  (Small is all I can find around here.)

1 small/medium onion, diced.

1 tbsp (or more) of minced onion.  (2-3 cloves or more, to taste.)

salt and pepper, to taste.

1-2 tbsp Italian seasoning.

1 15-oz can of tomato sauce.

shredded mozzarella cheese--lots!

meat (optional)  This recipe is fine without any meat at all, but  I like to put in a small can of tiny shrimp.  Yesterday, instead,  I added a 3-oz boneless, skinless chicken breast cut up in tiny pieces that I added with the rest of the ingredients, still frozen  Worked well!  

Directions:

1.  In a large skillet, combine all of the ingredients.  Cover and simmer on medium heat for at least 20 minutes until squash is tender.

2.  Remove cover and reduce heat to allow liquid to bubble and reduce a bit until it doesn't overwhelm the other ingredients.

3.  Keeping the heat low, add shredded cheese and cover the skillet until the cheese is melted and stringy.  

Serve and enjoy!   Modify however your taste leads you!    

Procrastination, Thou Art a Heartless Witch

 Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?  Or later?  Everything in its season, so to speak, but today isn't season enough.  I have other things to do.  Take a nap.  Write an email.  Feed myself.  Phooey on the rest.  I'll do it when I have more energy and/or it becomes necessary.

Then, suddenly, Necessary is days or weeks ago.  Now I'm into Critical, and I have to stop everything to take care of something that would have been enormously easier had I done it earlier.  Yeah...it's that bad.

I'm not a hoarder, but I do have some hoarder mentality.  "Don't throw that away.  I might need it sometime."  Decades later, I have no clue where it came from or why I saved it, but it has taken up space far longer than any purpose for which it might have been useful.

And then there's the whole food thing.  My refrigerator is full of produce and milk that expired and spoiled long ago.  Why is it still there?  Because I'm going to take care of it all at once, when I get to it.  (Truth: some of it has been in there since June when my sister and husband visited.  I'm so ashamed!)  And the dishes, pots, pans, and eating utensils have piled up at the sink for a couple of weeks.  Some of the pots and pans were filled with water to soak before cleaning.  Now there is scum on the water, and as I finally clean them up, I wonder when I had a meal with rice in it?  And then I notice that some of the rice is moving and a mini-cloud of fruit flies are in my space.  (Are you scared yet?)

Why have the dishes and pans piled up?  I have a dishwasher, after all.  Well...the dishwasher hasn't been unloaded since the last load run.  Why?  I'll do it tomorrow.  Sometimes, I empty the dishwasher but don't fill it again right away.  I can do that tomorrow, too.

I mean well.  My intentions are to keep up with daily tasks, etc., but...but...you know how that goes.  Fortunately, I have a helper who tries to keep me on task. I'm really not a slob.  When someone is keeping score, I keep up.  On my own, however, I go with how I am feeling at any given moment.

At this given moment, I am cleaning up the kitchen.  When I am done, I will wear a halo for a day or two.  But don't blink.  The earth doesn't rotate on good intentions.  Time moves on, no matter what I choose to do.

As soon as the dishes are done, I'm going to take a nap.  There is a huge mound of laundry to do, but I have my priorities.  I'll do laundry tomorrow!

  

God Save the Queen

 I'm not a British subject, nor do I clearly understand the dynamics of British government.  (Need to do a deep dive into Google Land to determine when the UK went from absolute monarchy to a parliamentary democracy, with a royal family.)  Still, the long-reigning Queen of England, Elizabeth II, has died, and the rest of the world takes note and mourns with her faithful subjects.

Why?  Why should the rest of us care?   Queen Elizabeth represented an empire, of sorts.  She held a position of honor and grace.  She was the longest reigning monarch of Britain in all of history.  She deserved our respect in the same way that every good leader does.  

When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, other countries grieved with us.  The support was universal.  Heads of state from all over the world gathered in Washington, DC, to walk behind the caisson that carried his body from place to place.  There was no protocol.  No one walked first or last according to status.  No one cared, and it was beautiful...and sad.  Very sad.  The whole United States was shaken for months and months.

I am writing this on September 11, 2022.  On September 11, 2001, our country was attacked by Muslim radicals.  They hijacked airplanes and flew three of them into buildings, and one into the ground when the passengers got wind of what was going on and fought back.  The victims--almost 3,000 of them--were innocent sitting ducks in a drama that caught them unaware.  Our whole country fell into shock, disbelief, and fear.  And anger.  Through the days/weeks/months thereafter, there were expressions of solidarity and understanding from other countries.  And it helped me immensely to know that we were not alone.  

I specifically remember a band at the Queen's castle in London in a normal celebratory moment that was ordered to play another country's anthem for the first time in 600 years:  The Star Spangled Banner.  I cried, of course.  It meant so much to know that even the most noble in circumstance could care about the huge blow that America had endured.  And still endures.

Earth really is a small planet, as planets go, and we are simply fleeting guests on it.  I order to make our brief stays more livable, we need each other.  Where we live or how we look matters not.  How we feel and what we need does.  

The Queen's passing is history now, and we are all a part of it.  May God save Elizabeth II and give her soul rest.  

My Ancient English Lessons

 Building on my last post about how frustratingly confusing the English language can be, I'm here to present more, in terms of teaching America's children in Illinois and Indiana, over the span of 40 years.  Mostly, I taught 8th grade on up through 12th.  Thank God for that!  The littler ones were way too needy for me.  

Although education and America's kids have changed over the course of that many years, some things remain the same.  My students frequently complained about the same things I complained about when I was their age.  Number One on the list is/was, "Why do we have to learn this?"  For awhile, I tried to give them reasoned answers:   "It will give you so much background to understand what you read."  "You will be more well-rounded in your understanding of the world."   Yeah...the kids weren't having any of that.

My next approach was "It's in the school curriculum for the English requirement.  You have to pass this class in order to graduate."  Still not good enough.   Then, I resorted to "I had to learn it when I was a kid, so you have to learn it, too."   And when that didn't suit, I finally brushed it all off with, "We teachers just love to sit around at night thinking of ways to make your lives miserable!"  Aha!  THAT one, they believed!

Each year, with the older students, at least, the question came up in class about what makes words "bad"?  Who decides what is acceptable and what isn't?  They're just words!  When it came up, I usually suspended the rest of my lesson plan in order to address the question to the whole class.  What I covered was:

    *"Bad words" are used as insults and almost always refer to body parts, sexual and/or bodily functions, or parental lineage.  I never used the actual words, but the kids knew exactly what I meant.  And who decides?  Well...YOU do.  And the more they are used, the less effective they are.  Respect makes the difference.  Respect for self or others.

    *Society does judge you by your words.  "If you can't say it to your minister or your grandmother, don't say it at all."  (That was usually followed by a comment from the kids, "You don't know my grandma!")  

    *America has freedom of speech but not freedom from consequences of what is said.  People lose jobs and relationships over words.  

There was also an annual lesson in the "ough" words of our language.  I planted myself in front of the white board and asked students to pronounce the words I wrote:  cough, tough, thought, though, bough, etc.  I was trying to show that our language has no hard and fast rules for pronunciation, or even use.

And then came the lesson in "amelioration" and "pejoration".  Big words!  The meaning of some words gets better over time (amelioration); others get worse (pejoration).  The word "gay" in classic literature does NOT mean homosexual.  It means lighthearted and free.  I left it up to the kids to decide if it was amelioration or pejoration, as long as they were able to notice the nuances of meanings.

Usually, the previous lesson came with another on its heels:  connotation and denotation--the emotions evoked by word choices versus what they actually mean.  I used pairs of words that essentially mean the same but with an emotional twist:  trim/skinny, chubby/fat, killed/slaughtered, upset/devastated, etc.  I hoped the kids would understand that word choice make a huge difference in what they read in the news and elsewhere.  (Never too late, I hope!)    

Maybe this post is more about being an English teacher than our confusing language.  So "sioux" me!

English, The Absolutely 100% Confusing Language

 When did absolutely and 100% replace the word "yes" in the English language?   It seems that people are trying to amplify even the simplicity of an affirmative.  Do you like flowers?  A mere yes no longer suffices.  Do you like flowers?  Absolutely!  How about fake flowers?  One-hundred percent!  See what I mean?  

When I was in college studying English as my major, I was taught that clarity was achieved through an "economy of words".  In other parlance, make your point clearly with forceful simplicity.  Layering modifiers tends to lessen the forcefulness, so keep those down.  The example used was "I love you".  Sweet.  Simple.  Meaningful.  According to this one instructor, however, adding "very" to the mix lessened the message.  "I love you very much" wasn't as impactful.  (Not sure if I agreed with that, but it did give me something to think about back then.  And I still think about it.

 My favorite TV show is Big Bang Theory, now only in reruns.  In one episode, Penny is talking to Leonard when she tells him she'll always have feelings for him, no matter what happens to their relationship.  That convinces Leonard that she's going to break up with him because "always" makes things worse.  "I'll have feelings for you", to him, was more positive than "I'll always have feelings for you."  

I simply can't listen to any of the Kardashian sisters--or any of the Valley Girls--because they cannot speak without using the word "like" every fifth word.  It's ingrained.  I'm not sure it can, like, be beaten out of them if, like, their lives depended on it.  You, like, get the picture.

If nothing else, our language is fluid.  It changes over time in the same way that we do.  Examples: In elementary school, we had spelling lists and tests over how to spell the words on the list each Friday.  I was a lucky kids with a good visual memory.  Once I saw a word, I usually could spell it (for the most part).  There were some tricky ones, however.  For instance, Halloween was spelled with an apostrophe between the two e's.  Hallowe'en.  On the test, if you left out the apostrophe, the word was counted wrong.  Horrors!  Not so now.  (In fact, no one believes me on this one.  Google it.  It's there!)  Also in those days, seasons of the year were capitalized.  Nope.  Not now.  Words that ended in "f" in the singular were pluralized by changing the "f" to "v" and adding "es".  Scarf became scarves.  Dwarf became dwarves.  Knife; knives.  Hoof; hooves.  Roof; rooves, etc.  But wait, there's more!  These days, many of those words have now been accepted without the changes, yet there seem to be no rules, rhyme, or reason to which is which.  Scarf is now scarfs.  Roof is now roofs; hoof is hoofs....but knife is still knives, and dwarf seems to be determined by whatever you are reading at the time.  Ugh!

After college, I saved my three-inch thick handbook Perrin's Guide to English.  For a long time, it was my go-to book to answer my questions about the mechanics of grammar.  I threw it out a few years ago because so much of it no longer applies.  

I can't keep up.  It seems that it is no longer required to have a double space between typewritten sentences.  Blasphemy!

My granddaughter uses terms I've never heard before:  agism, ablism, cis gender. gender fluid...and so it goes.  Things that were once cool, neat, or groovy are now sick, lit, or fire.  Okay...  Not a day goes by that I don't have to look something up to see what it means in today's usage.

Yes, I'm not a kid, but I'm not stupid, either.  I actually try to stay current on important things if for no other reason than not to make a fool of myself.  As a 40-year veteran English teacher, I spent an enormous amount of time harping on things like subject-verb agreement and pronoun-antecedent agreement.  Now the newest generation comes along with its requests for pronouns.  A single person may wish to be called "they".  I do respect calling people what they want to be called, but so much goes against everything I ever learned/taught about pronouns, I usually have to beg for forgiveness when I slip up.  

I am a Baby Boomer in the U.S.  Apparently, "we" have a bad reputation for wanting things to stay the way they were in prehistoric times.  That's not me.  I'm a live-and-let-live person with a huge penchant for fairness.  I try to roll with the punches--and all of those other cliche' things.  I'm running in place as fast as I can.  Does it matter?  Absolutely!  100%!  

Losing Things in Old Age

 True story:  Just two days ago, I had to do the math to remind myself of my age.  For a few moments, I couldn't remember if I was 74 or 75.  The ugly reality is 75.  And therein lies the content of today's post.  When we get older, we lose things.  It seems that memory is first.  This is one of the reasons that I try to write down memories in this venue.  If any of my potential descendants are the least bit interested in me or my life, they won't run into brick walls.  

What else do we lose with age?  Certainly, everyone is different, but the general public seems to follow the same path as I.  In no particular order:

1.  Teeth.  I've already written about mine, and the situation isn't getting better.  I'm facing dentures or implants, although I'm not eager for either.  I've lost many but still have enough that I don't look forward to having them all removed at once.  Trust me: this won't be a quick decision.

2.  At least one sense.  Humans are known to have five senses:  sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste.  (There is current discussion that we have more than those, but that's what I was taught in school.)  Typically, we don't lose any of them completely, but it does happen.  My vision isn't great, nor is my hearing.  Can't smell a thing, unless it is crushed garlic or the alcohol in hand sanitizer, due to long-term sinusitis.  (Smell and taste are supposed to be connected.  Thank God, that hasn't happened in my case!  I can still taste my food even though I can't always smell it!)  Thankfully, my sense of touch isn't affected.  I can still feel things.  In fact, I can feel things crawling on me that aren't there, thanks to circumstances beyond my control.  And so it is.

3.  Bladder/bowel control.  Indeed, this happens occasionally to everybody, no matter their age, but it happens more frequently to those of us who have a few years on us.  Youngsters make fun of it in social media, but their turn will come!  We need to de-shame this, even for men, because it's a fact of life!

4.  Dignity.  HA!  All a woman has to do to lose her dignity is to get pregnant.  Thereafter, she will be poked and prodded in every way possible, with many people witnessing her most private and personal moments.  Now, with state laws all over the USA making it difficult to end a pregnancy, it gets worse.  There are moments for ALL of us that take away our ability to preserve our dignity--the things we don't wish to make public about how life is for us.

As an example, my dear grandmother developed a benign tumor on her spine.  By the time it was discovered and removed, the damage had already been done.  She never walked again, spending the last 15 years of her life in a wheelchair.  She was too heavy for family to lift her out of her chair into bed, so they bought a hydraulic lift  that had her "flying" through the air, with her naked bottom in full view of anyone who happened to be around.  My mother worked and worked on her mother's rear end to prevent pressure sores, which meant that Grandma laid on her side in bed, bare, with a heat lamp aimed at her butt.  This woman...this woman...was the darling of the rural gentry.  She was beautiful.  A leader in the church, directing the choir, etc.  Also directing all that went on with the huge garden and inside the home.  Everyone that I knew respected my grandmother as the matriarch of an honored family.  Of course, they didn't know how hard it was for her behind the scenes to lose her dignity in those moments.

5.  Autonomy.  The older you get and the less you can do for yourself, the more you are at the mercy of others who think they know what is best for you, regardless of what YOU think.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I do admit that there are times when I don't tell some people about some of my trials and tribulations because I know that they will begin to supervise my decisions--perhaps before I am mentally prepared to deal with them.  (I am a world-class procrastinator!)

Of course, things I used to do for myself I now have to pay for.  I had to give up yard work first.  Although I love to garden, mowing became a chore that knocked the strength out of me.  In the early days of living in my little house, my Egyptian Muslim neighbor, Abdul, would stop me and say, "You shouldn't be doing this.  This is too hard for you."  I think my sweaty red face gave me away.  I smiled and nodded and thought to myself, "Are you gonna do it for me?  It won't mow itself!"  No...in those days, I did everything I could by myself.  It wasn't/isn't in my nature to ask for help.  Of course, and perhaps because of that, people close to me get passive-aggressive about "hinting" what I should be doing.  Yeah...I'm not ready for "the home" quite yet, but coming, I'm sure!

6.  Hair.  I know I'm not the only woman whose hair has thinned dramatically with age.  It actually started way back in college.  In fact, I'm probably lucky that I still have as much as I do, but it sure irritates me!  Men understandably regret their baldness, but women are supposed to be protected from that by hormones.  Yeah, right!  I never had morning sickness during pregnancy, and never had mood swings or hot flashes in menopause.  Do I even have hormones???

I'm begrudgingly learning to accept the things I can't change.  Focusing now on how to get through the last days with the least amount of regret.  There is no other way!