Saw that coming

I put it off for more than a year because I knew what was coming. Finally, when in the darkness of a Vancouver afternoon, I couldn’t read a road sign in ample time, I knew that at least one of us in the vehicle had to see better if we were to survive the coming darkness of winter.

So I went to see my optometrist.  Reluctantly.  Four years ago, when I had to make the move to progressive lenses so that I could see both what I was eating for dinner and who was waving at me from across the street, the bill came to just under $1,000 and that was BEFORE the days of HST. 

I’m pretty sure that the blood drained from my face then, giving me that Goth look that was all the rage with the kids.  Not such an attractive look on me, even with my fashionable new black frames.  In an instant, my face went from Technicolour to black and white; sort of a reverse Wizard of Oz kind of moment.  Was history to repeat itself?

I’m pleased to report that I enjoy the health of a teenager as far as my eyes are concerned and the reflexes of an elite athlete.  (apparently, if I’m warned that the little puff of air is coming to measure my eyeball pressure, then I can keep my lids opened just a fraction of a second longer.  Who knew?)  I always love the moment in the exam when they show me the back of my eyeballs, retina and all.  Not that I’m ever worried that my retinas have been fried by the “sun” in Vancouver.  In fact, my eyeballs look like Jupiter…all glowing and orange in the photo, which apparently, is exactly what they should look like.

After the exam, where it was clearly determined that my prescription had changed, I was escorted to the next room to see “Bob”.  Bob has to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-90 years old; still working full time, still a wiz with glasses.  Bob always has the coolest, most state-of-the-art glasses himself; a perk of working there for God knows how long.  I could back the car over his specs and they would instantly spring back to their former shape with nary a scratch.  I know that this technology does not come cheap and Bob has long mastered the up sell.

He ponders my slip of paper and asks me a few calculated questions.  Did I have any trouble cleaning my glasses? (Cleverly disguised question about the current coating)  Did I still want them to darken?  (Transition lenses, check).  To butter me up, he informs me that I didn’t have to surrender my current pair of glasses in order to get new ones.  THAT’s a relief because otherwise, he’d need to loan me a Seeing Eye dog; presumably one that drives.

Finally, after bracing me for sticker shock once more by explaining that progressives are indeed more expensive, he renders a verdict.  $725 for lenses alone.   Trying to keep my blood pressure out of the red zone I said, “Bob…. what if we back up one notch on the thinness of the lenses.  Surely, I don’t need my lenses to be the width of a human hair.  What would happen then?”  “Well”, said Bob…they’d be slighter thicker around the edges.  No worries, I’m not usually viewed from the side.  “And they’d be heavier.”   Despite being broken once, my nose is not nearly as fragile as Michael Jackson’s once was, so I figure I can handle another ounce or two of weight.  Final price: $600 clams.  I saved $125 by not requiring the thinnest lenses the Japanese can produce.   Please try not to look away in horror at the sight of my coke-bottle bottom lenses, should you happen to see me in profile.

If I wasn’t so nauseated by the smell of my own flesh burning, I have these planetary eyeballs lasered in a heartbeat and save myself a grand or more every couple of years.  That this is fast becoming an economic choice as much as a cosmetic one is unbelievable.  But I’d still like a Seeing Eye puppy to drive me to work on occasion.

I could have had a V-8!

I think I’m turning into a vegetarian.  Well, not the tree hugging, Birkenstock wearing type…but some kind of pseudo-vegetarian, nonetheless.

That I would even remotely consider myself one is somewhat shocking to me.  I’m not sure whether it’s because I simply can’t be bothered to cook anymore or for health reasons, but more dinners than not are now meatless wonders. 

Hear that sound?  That’s the sound of my Mother dancing around in her grave, for once she believed that I would die of malnutrition from not eating any vegetables.  Who’s having the last laugh now?  She’s gone and I’m still here trying to figure out if I should eat a turnip.

I blame Dr. Oz.  Every time I turn on his show, he’s not only telling me all the horrific things that meat is doing inside my body…he’s showing me!  And it’s not pretty.  Once ingested, my beautiful steak dinner turns suddenly turns into artery clogging, inflammation producing, fatty lumps of goo wending their way through my bloodstream leading to myocardial infarction.  Yikes.  It’s a wonder we don’t croak right at the dinner table.

Mind you, meat is not what it once was.  It used to actually taste like something.  If you buy grass-fed beef from the Farmer’s Market, you stand some chance of it tasting like something you’d want to put in your mouth, barbequed or otherwise.

Here’s what’s been happening lately.  I begin to get hungry.  My mind tells me to eat a big juicy burger.  I ponder that event…roll it around in my mind a few times.  During this period of reflection, I recall all the fatty horribleness and by the time I get home, I either munch on a carrot or quickly make myself a salad.  Or pasta.  Or anything that doesn’t involve a burger.  Funny how I never fanaticize about eating a vegetable…any vegetable.

I can honestly say that only once in my entire life have I ever craved a vegetable and that was when I had my wisdom teeth out.  Note to self: do not try to eat crunchy salad vegetables when your mouth is sore post surgery.  That little experiment ended badly.  My poor body, in starvation mode from not eating anything hallucinated that a vegetable would save it.  Fat chance. 

I can only surmise by this that tofu is next.  I have briefly tried tofu and the conclusion that I came to is that it’s a wonderful invention for those who have never tasted meat.  I’m not terribly crazy about the texture, but then I once said the same thing about mushrooms; a vegetable I can’t be without now. 

The value of tofu for me is lessened by the fact that it doesn’t appear to have any taste of its own. Beware things that have no taste, for they can kill you.  That’s how I came to find out that I am allergic to zucchini.   Yes zucchini!  People laugh at this for reasons I have yet to determine.  Not a lot of yucks about people stabbing themselves with Epi Pens having had the misfortune to sit near someone eating a peanut, but zucchini sends them into guffaws of laughter. 

Having surmised it had no taste, I ate a dinner plate full of it the first time I ate it.  Spent the entire weekend being sick.  For me, the worst sight of all is a piece of lasagna half eaten by yours truly when I suddenly notice a layer of zucchini.  It’s like realizing that you just ate half a cockroach.  At least if I did eat a cockroach, I guess I could consider it meat.  Bleck.

Mid-life worth celebrating

In my first blog post, I alluded to some of the freakier parts of reaching mid-life.  This time, I thought I’d examine the lessons learned so far.

Friends make the world truly enjoyable.  When you are 12 and trying to fit into any kind of social structure, you don’t deliberately pick your friends.  By the time you reach mid-life, you choose very carefully based not only on mutual interests, but on values, philosophy and if you’re like me, whether you can share a laugh with someone.  You’ve also met a vast number of folks and by now, you should know the kind of person you like and the kind you abhor.  I’m very lucky to have met some wonderfully interesting people and spend time with many who share my values.  Life in this arena is rich indeed.

Caring what other people think of you is a waste of time.  THIS one took some doing, but I’ve finally taken a cue from my dearly departed Mother who seemed to have been born with this genetic code.  Like me?  Don’t like me?  Believe that I’m doing the right thing or not…I really don’t care.  By now, having gained a wide breadth of experience, I’m pretty confident in my choices.  If I end up making the wrong choice, then I can cope with that too.  God knows, it’s happened before and I’m still here.

Money is less important than you think and more of it won’t necessarily make you happier.   That doesn’t stop us from wanting it though….especially in a society where money is greatest benchmark of all.  When Paul McCartney’s late wife Linda was dying of breast cancer, Paul, one of the richest men in the world, couldn’t save her.  He could throw millions around for the best doctors, the latest treatments and still, he couldn’t save the love of his life.  Frankly, he hasn’t seemed very happy since.  That’s when I realized that money won’t bring us happiness, love or anything terribly real.  It will bring you a nice house with lots of things inside, but if the love of your life isn’t in the house with you, how happy are you?

With every birthday, you get another opportunity to make your life better; whatever that means to you …better job, better relationships, better health.  Those who check out early don’t get the chance.  Seize the day. 

Resourcefulness is a dying art.  If you’ve made it to 50, you’ve probably had to be a little bit resourceful.  You probably know that duct tape, a can of WD-40 and a piece of string can fix just about anything.  If you’re like me, you’ve probably purchased a week’s worth of groceries with $20 or less.   You’ve had to do something tricky to make it this far….and you were successful!

Chocolate IS every bit as good as sex.  Chocolate won’t tell you that you’ve gained a few pounds, always leaves you satisfied and causes a surge in endorphins. It won’t hog the covers, disagree with you ever or make you cry.  It’s cheap, readily available and it tastes divine.  Not that one should stop having sex….

A little bit of pampering is good for the soul and money well spent.  It will make you look better, more importantly feel better and you’ll probably live longer.  Living longer looking good is not bad either.

$5 for a loaf of REAL bread is a bargain.  BUT ….only if it’s really, really good.  It has to smell like bread…contain nothing more than the usual bread-like ingredients (flour, water…things that I can pronounce)….it should go stale after only a few days and it should mould in a few more.  It should be super crusty on the outside and soft, chewy and moist on the inside.  And with a little butter added to it, it should elicit a noticeable…ummmmmm from deep inside your soul when you eat it.  For that, I am willing to pay big bucks. 

What lessons have YOU learned to date?

Would you like gravy with that?

I love my cat.  And yes, I want to provide him with a nutritionally sound diet full of all essential vitamins and minerals.  And gravy.  The more gravy, the better.  In fact, I even add extra water to his food just to make him more gravy so that he’ll be happy and stop his incessant whining.

I’ve yet to meet a cat who doesn’t like gravy. When exactly did gravy become a staple for cats?  Have you ever watched a cat eat wet food with gravy?  They lick all the gravy first and then they eat the food, IF there’s time.  It’s like they’ve gotten down to the bare essentials, which in this case IS the gravy and if they need actual food, they’ll think about that later.  After going outside, after playing ball….after everyone in the household is asleep.

I have a million dollar idea: Poutine for Cats.  Why stop at gravy when we can add artery clogging cheese curds?  They could be tuna flavoured for added enjoyment.  I’m quite certain it would be a surefire hit in the feline community.  Overweight North Americans just LOVE the idea of providing similar junk food for their furry children.  Heat it up, eat it cold…your cat won’t care.  He’ll just revel, like you do, in the delicious goodness of excessive gravy.

Television of the past: bad picture, better view

For most of my childhood years growing up, we owned exactly one television.  It was a piece of furniture that must have weighed 100 lbs and sat in the corner of our living room.  It was entirely encased in wood, the bottom half of which was THE speaker and the top half was the picture tube.  It was a black and white set and it had knobs on the front that you actually had to get up and turn: to turn it on, to adjust the volume or to change the channel.  If it malfunctioned for any reason, there was very little recourse, short of hitting the side of it and trying to stabilize the horizontal control.

My father told me that on the wood just below the knobs were indents where the finish had been worn away from my brother and I resting our little kid feet up on the set.  That would have put me at about one foot away from the flickering frames and I’m quite sure that we were forever being told to sit back from the set.  Perhaps the initial source of my failing eyesight after all! 

The channel knob didn’t go very high…probably only numbers one through nine and the picture came in via the antennae that was hoisted high above our house.  Living in the Greater Toronto Region meant that not only could we get Canadian channels, but we were a clear shot to Buffalo which brought all of the American offerings as well.

Not that I was allowed to watch it as it came on past my bedtime, but many a Sunday night at my house was a cat and mouse game of me sneaking out of bed slowly and quietly down the stairs and peeking around the corner unnoticed to watch the Ed Sullivan Show.  Every Sunday I would beg my parents to let me stay up and watch along with everyone else, and every Sunday night between 8-9 p.m. the charade of putting me to bed quickly (so as not to miss any) would ensue and the cat and mouse game began.  IF I was lucky and I heard in the intro that my beloved mouse Topo Gigio would be making an appearance, I could sometimes win my case to stay up.  Needless to say, I’m still enjoying watching reruns of this beloved show that I almost saw the first time.

It was in front of this monolithic television set that I watched the moments that would define my youth: the Vietnam War, Neil Armstrong landing on the moon and the very first Canada vs. Russia hockey series with Paul Henderson scoring the winning goal.  My first brushes with American culture came from here whether it was watching Jackie Gleason or Captain Kangaroo.  I fondly remember being allowed to have breakfast in front of the set watching the Santa Clause Parade or watching the many beauty pageants of yesteryear along with my Mother and all of us picking our favourites.  We rarely missed an episode of “I Love Lucy”.

Today, my television images come through my phone line to my feather light flat screen where I can watch more than 600 channels in high definition colour without ever having to rise from my seat. Television is no longer an event.  In the span on my lifetime it has become a never-ending rerun of flimsy, forgettable content.  No longer a place where families gather, it has instead divided families who all watch different shows in different rooms. Today, if we watch at all, we endure the 24-hour news cycle and “reality” shows that are no more real than the soap operas of the past.

As much as I enjoy watching shows now from around the world, whenever it’s convenient and recording them instantly if I can’t watch them live, I miss the singularity of it from the past.  There is no more “must see” TV.  There’s too much competing for our attention.  The picture has gotten better, but the view has gotten worse.

What’s your favourite television memory?

Inventions that clearly need work

In my humble opinion, the following gadgets need to go back to the drawing board.  I can’t make these things work and God knows I’ve tried.  For years.

 

The self-serve check out machines at the grocery store:

I’m done with this and not because I like to chat with grocery store clerks.  It doesn’t seem to matter what I scan, within seconds these machines give up and want some kind of secret code entered before they’ll continue.  Not to mention their sheer inability to cope with non-plastic bags.  Maybe we need Al Gore on this just to rid us of plastic bags…but if someone doesn’t fix these silly machines, I’ll be doomed to a life of lining up to exchange pleasantries with cashiers young and old.  I think this is God’s way of making me more sociable. 

My propane patio heater:

We received this as a wedding gift and I LOVE the idea of wiling away a beautiful summer evening on the deck whilst not freezing to death.  But doing the hokey pokey to get this thing ignited is becoming too much for me.  To begin with, the entire operation is so high above my head that I must stand on a ladder to work it.  The fine print of the instructions that I must read each and every time because the mere act of turning it on is so convoluted, is too small to read…in the dark…Sigh.  The logic of the operation of this is odd to say the least.  The instructions begin: “To light…depress knob and turn clockwise to the off position.”  You’ve lost me right there.  Isn’t it “off” to begin with?  If it’s not OFF right now…what the hell is it?  Push in, counter clockwise and then pull out clockwise…with each instruction it sounds more and more like a kinky sex act.  AND WE DO THIS IN FRONT OF PEOPLE ON THE PATIO!  We even get them to join in!  On each and every occasion that we’ve used it to date…it has never come on before at least 3 separate attempts by 2 different people, all of whom have graduated from institutions of higher learning.  Seriously, there has to be a better way.  There is: it’s called a blanket.

My gas fireplace:

Maybe it’s just me and natural gas, (fear of flame perhaps?) maybe it’s the fact that this unit must be more than 20 years old, but this one’s problematic.  I romantically imagine all the wonderful evenings that Ken and I could be having (see paragraph above!), not to mention warding off the chill of a damp Vancouver winter, only to be foiled once again! Apparently, I have yet to perfect the art of pushing while turning at just the right pressure and angle.  No wonder I never got pregnant.  Maddening to start to see the small flicker of a flame, only to have my hopes dashed that I can’t actually ignite it in less than three attempts.  If I owned a gas stove, I would probably starve. 

What’s the worst invention that you’ve ever used in your daily life?  Let’s rise up together people and force designers to build a better mousetrap!

Inventions that I love

This may sound silly, but I may be in love with my front-loading washer/dryer.  Actually, I think it was love at first sight. 

I’m the kind of gal who believes in hanging onto things.  If it ain’t broke, keep using it is the motto that I live by.  My PC was at least a decade old before it finally gave up and I was forced to purchase a new one.

 

So I endured a 15-year-old top loading washing machine for no other reason than because it still came on week after week.  Whether it actually cleaned my clothes is another matter.  Not to mention that the last time I unwrapped a wad of clothing from the agitator, I’m not sure that all of my garments survived the untangling.  It was often an orgy of doom in there. 

This ended, however, when on a visit to my Dad’s place outside of Toronto, I needed to do some laundry in his fancy top-of-the-line front loader.  Very little water usage, barely any detergent required, whisper quiet and the clothes were practically dry when they emerged unscathed an hour later. I was sold.

As soon as I returned home, the search began and having had my “new” machines for almost a year now, I can honestly say…I’m not sure why I waited so long.  Not only am I energy efficient and clean as a whistle, my laundry room has never looked better.  I can now get almost all of my precious belongings into one load!  So quiet, we removed the laundry room door as my washing machine no longer exudes the decibel level of the space shuttle taking off while spinning.

Seeing that it doesn’t take much to make me happy, here are a few of my all time favourite inventions.  Easy to take for granted, these items just make life easier. My gratitude to the team of geniuses who made them possible and brought them to the marketplace.  Time well spent my friends, time well spent.

The humble Post-it note.  The efficiency of this is what I love.  Small, portable and available in an array of fashionable colours, I can’t be without them either at work or at home.  They’re like the Twitter of the written word.  Be they a modern man’s love note or a great memory jogger; small is beautiful.

I’m also extremely grateful to the designer who believed that upon entering my Ford Fiesta, a little light should come on to illuminate the ignition and then have that same spotlight turn off immediately afterwards.  Brilliant! Literally.

My Acer notebook computer.  When my monster sized PC gave up, I decided not to spend $1,400 on a new system ever again.  Not when I saw my notebook computer on the Home Shopping Channel of all things, for a mere $400.  Can you believe that I actually dialed the phone to the Home Shopping Channel?  When I finally got my hands on the smallest thing that I can actually see and type on, I was in my glory. It’s the portability that I love AND the fact that it can fit in my purse without giving me a hernia.  Oddly, fitting the PC into my purse didn’t seem practical.  Not with all those cords hanging out. 

My PVR.  Finally, I can record a show on TV at the push of a button.  Two pushes record an entire series.  The only thing left to add to this magnificent invention is the ability to electronically send the recorded shows elsewhere…like to my YouTube account.  Do you remember what we had to do in the past to record a program?  Enter in 10 digit codes from the TV guide?  I know what you’re thinking…. what the hell’s a TV guide?  In the very early days of $600 VCR’s, you couldn’t even record two programs at once.  Imagine! 

I think the test for new technology should be this: if either a 3 year old or an 80 year old can make it work, then it passes. If not, it’s back to the drawing board.

Next time, inventions that should be thrown off a cliff, were it not for the litter.

What’s your favourite, all time invention? The thing that makes your heart sing every time you use it?

Picture yourself here

As a public service and because this was so popular last time, I present you with some more real estate gems, but this time, some vacation rental ideas for you.  Not that I wouldn’t like to purchase each of them if money were no object!  I’d be happy to call any of these properties home…even for a week or two.  Of course, longer is always better when you’re ensconced in luxury like this!

I found out about the area of Alberobello, Italy by watching an international real estate show.  Located near the heel of Italy, this is a Unesco World Heritage site.  Homes called Trulli’s, were built out of stone with no mortar.  Small in size, so as not to be highly taxed, they could be dismantled quickly and rebuilt if necessary. 

Check out this little beauty….

Puglian charm

Couldn’t you just see yourself doing morning laps in the pool?  Need more inspiration?  How about sipping wine by this poolside and saying “Chao!” to passersby?  If the pool doesn't suit you, it's a short drive to either the Ionian Sea or the Adriatic Sea.

I'm Trulli, Trulli in love with you

For those of you looking for something a little closer to home, here’s a reasonably priced Hawaiian condo in Maui.  Maybe even a possibility for this winter?  I say, pass the poi!

2 bedroom Maui beachfront

All of this just goes to show you, you have to get out more!  And if you do end up renting any of these for yourself....call me!