Tuesday, December 01, 2009

What’s “on Board?”


While driving back from the mall, I saw one of those “Baby on Board” signs in the rear window of the SUV in front of me. They (the signs, not the babies) were all the rage a few years back and I guess the fad is coming back.

I never really understood the value of advertising the arrival of the wee darling with a plastic sign dangling from a suction-cup hook spit-adhered to a car window. Do proud parents also display the same, but larger sign stuck in the front windows of their homes? Maybe those signs are to warn us that the baby is driving!

Could it be that the signs meant to tell the trailing drivers to back off and keep at least two car lengths away? In the traffic I was in, allowing one car length between their bumper and mine would invite the honking wrath of five or six other drivers. The good news is keeping a distance from the B.O.B.-signed car would allow three SUVs, two compacts, and a semi to slip in front of me, then it would be their problem. The bad news is it would take sitting through five traffic signals changes to get from the highway in front of the mall to the next traffic light.

While waiting to get through the intersection, I got to thinking that maybe it would be a good idea to develop some useful warning/announcement signs that would alert drivers to possible dangers lurking behind the tinted windows of the car in front of them.

Here are a few I came up with.

Loud Music on Board – Driver Partially Deaf

Job Seeking Driver – Résumés Blowing Out Windows

Politician on Board – May Increase Taxes

Mean Dogs on Board That Attack Tailgaters

Screaming, Sugar-High Kids on Board – Get Away – Far, Far Away

Teen Driver – Knows Everything

Mom Driver Late to Pick Up Kids – Get Out of Way

Driver Texting – Pass With Caution

Smoker on Board – Coughing May Impair Driving

Cranky Old Lady on Board – Ignore Gestures

~ ~ ~

Your contributions are most welcome as I’m sure you are thinking of a few right now.

© Copyright 2009 Suzzwords

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Garage Sale Shoppers

Sooner or later almost everyone will either have a garage sale or go to one. The seller doesn’t even have to have a garage – the sale can be in the yard, on the sidewalk, two flights up, or at the community center or flea market. The goal is same no matter where the sale: get rid of unwanted stuff and make money to get new stuff.

If you’ve given or been to a garage sale, you’ve probably noticed several “types” of shoppers. You may be one. Here’s my taken on the dozens of people who have trooped through my yard over the years picking and poking and asking, “This your best price?”

The Questioning Talker
“Hi, how yuduin? Nice day, huh? Had lots of shoppers? Got any (insert anything here from kid’s clothes to airplane parts). Got this in blue? Whatcha asking for this (item clearly marked)? Oh, never mind, this the price? Seen the stuff down the street? Will you hold this for me? Think it will rain?

The Life Story Talker
I really like this and would like to get it for Aunt Edna, but I don’t know if she will like it. She broke her arm last year ... and the kids ... since the car ... stress at work ... and on and on and on.

The Silent Type
Doesn’t say a word, just walks up, looks and walks off. If you say “Hello,” will nervously mumble, “’Lo,” and hurry away.

The Tribe
Six or eight people, an adult or two and the rest kids, will burst from an old Honda Civic and swarm the displays. Sticky kid fingers everywhere hovering above anything shiney, but sticky-fingers owners constantly warned by the adult(s), “You touch anything, and I’ll smack you into next week!”

The Eater
This shopper arrives eating or drinking something. Once had an older lady walk in eating a fried chicken leg. She would point the gnawed leg to an item that interested her, grunt “uhh,” and the little girl by her side would carefully hold up the item for the woman’s closer inspection. If not interested, she shook her head and grunted “uh uhh,” so the item could be carefully replaced as she moved on. After she looked at every item on every table and cleaned the chicken leg, she regally returned to the car, followed by her small helper. Not a real word was spoken.

The Bargainer
No matter the quality or price of the item, the bargainer will offer less. Men seem to particularly enjoy this “sport” and will haggle over a ten cent item. I once told a man that if he couldn’t afford the ten cent item for which he was offering a nickel, perhaps he should shop elsewhere.

The Examiner
This shopper holds up the item, turns it over, looks inside, checks every seam, corner, and crevice and often puts it back down and then moves on to the next item. Seldom do they buy; they just like to plunder through other people’s stuff.

The Specific Shopper
These people are looking for specific items and some of them are pretty weird. They don’t waste time looking, they just ask, “Do you have any” followed by the name of the item. If not found, they are off in a flash to the next sale down the street. Some Specific Shopper drivers will slow down at the driveway and shout out what they are seeking.

The Bargain Hunter
Ah, the best of the bunch. Bargain hunter’s will buy almost anything and often stack up a pile of stuff. They often ask for a better price, but since they cleaned off a table or two, it’s worth coming down on the total purchase. Bargain hunters are usually fun, talkative, and have a wad of ones. For them, it’s not so much the price, it’s the hunt.

The Can-You-Change-A-Twenty
This early morning shopper arrives within minutes of “opening” your sale, picks out ninety cents worth of stuff and presents a twenty. Yeah, like I can break a twenty. If I had a twenty, I would not be up at this awful hour, but later, would be in a restaurant ordering pancakes. This is not IHOP or Walmart.

The Dealer
Dealers are those guys and gals (who may be any of the above) who shop garage and yard sales on Fridays and early Saturday mornings looking for cheap stuff to sell at their flea market stands at double the price on Sundays. For some, it’s a way to make some extra money, for others, it’s their occupation. Some look for specific things like tools or dolls, others buy almost anything that is cheap and will resell.

The Thief
Yes, they come to garage sales, too. By the time you notice something is missing they are long gone. Some of the things taken are not worth stealing. Some come to check out your house with the idea of returning later. I’ve had more than one person ask to use the bathroom or phone or step inside to “try this on.” Tip: Keep all doors to the inside locked and suggest the service station at the corner for potty and phone needs. No “try ons,” it’s a quarter, if you think it won’t fit, don’t buy it. Don’t put anything in a garage sale you can’t afford to lose.
~ ~ ~
At last Saturday’s garage sale, I got rid of even more stuff I don’t need/use/want/like anymore and I’ve got this bag of change and onesies to take to the bank. I just heard there’s a huge neighborhood sale two streets over this weekend. Maybe they will have some stuff I want and since I do have all this loose change maybe I should stop on the way. Hey, you wanna go?

© Copyright 2009 Suzzwords

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Parts

One of the interesting things about getting older is that you find out where all your inside parts are, what they do, and what can go wrong with them.

When you are a kid, you have no idea where important parts, like your liver or epiglottis, are or what they do. By the age of six, however, you figure out that if you fall off of almost anything while on concrete, you scrape exposed knees and elbows and often bleed.

At six, you don’t know or care what blood does, its composition, or its origin. To a kid, the important things are if anyone sees you fall, how bad the owie is, and if bandages or stitches are required. Often screaming loudly whether in pain or not will often bring adults running and continuing to whimper long after the wound has been cleaned and medicated will result in a more impressive bandage to show off to the other kids.

As you age, the parts you didn’t even know you have start to misfire, creak, and leak. Things that should be down, like blood pressure and cholesterol, goes up. Things that should be up, like energy and muscle strength, go down. Seems like someone could figure out how to get these parts to meet in the middle, work out an exchange, and let you go about your business.

The space in the medicine cabinet where you once stored perfumes and after-after shave is now taken up by all kinds of over-the-counter and prescription drugs to keep your parts lubed, soothed, charging and discharging.

Some of us have added cumbersome appendages, like canes and walkers. Oh, bother. Some of us have gotten new parts, like hips, or upgraded the old parts with internal gadgets like pace-makers.

I’m just glad most of my parts still work and there are options to fix the others that don’t.

I’m also glad that strawberry ice cream is medicinal. What? It isn’t? Sorry, I can’t hear you, can’t find the volume control on this ear thing!

© Copyright 2009 Suzzwords

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Ten Reasons Why Double-Chocolate Fudge Ice Cream is Good For You

Oh, what the heck.

Who needs ten reasons?

Who needs any reason at all?

Heard that old saying?

"Life’s short. Eat dessert first."

‘Scuse me, please.

I have to go scoop and enjoy.

© Copyright 2009 Suzzwords

Monday, August 24, 2009

Modernized Cave Man

Some women are convinced that if it were not for us, men would still be living in caves. Oh, sure they would have big screen TVs to watch caveman football, coolers beside their recliner rocks for rot-gut hops, and a crispy pile of wild pig skins to munch on.

Modern-day cave men would not shave or bathe, sniff their armpits with pride, and smile toothy grins. They would have invented things like motorcycles, chain saws, and sports arenas. There would be no washing machines, soaking tubs, scented candles or chocolate.

Men would have developed complicated governing systems and then go to war with any other system they did not agree with. They would have also developed dozens of religions and war with one another to prove who was right. Some greedy men would go to war for no other reason than that they wanted to have what the other cave clan had.

Women would live in a sister-hood community several caves away and allow in only those men who had recently bathed, scraped their faces and their teeth, and put on clean animal skins. (Bathing facilities and clean animal skins could be obtained from entrepreneurial women.)

Thanks goodness, most men of today have evolved into a higher order of human beings.

Or have they?

P.S. Author Unknown: “If women ruled the world, there would be no more wars; just intense negotiations every twenty-eight days.”

© Copyright 2009 Suzzwords

Friday, August 14, 2009

Shock Radio – 1950s Style


Back in the old days, just the utterance of the curse word “damn” from a teen’s mouth brought the wrath of every adult in earshot. Talk of you-know-what among groups of teens, despite their rampant hormones, was strictly taboo.

Don’t know about the boys, but among teen girls information about “that” was a popular subject discussed endlessly behind closed doors and accompanied by giggles and sighs.

When one of the local radio stations burst forth on a bright sunny morn with Daddy Rabbit, teens all over the city spread the word faster than a teen today can Twitter.

Daddy Rabbit began his morning patter with, “Hello, boys and girls, it’s your ol’ Daddy Rabbit with the gotta-have-it-habit.” Although it was a time of innocence, most of us got the message.

For the ‘50s, that was a suggestively scandalous statement and the talk got even racier from there. We teens loved it! Those among us lucky enough to have radios in our rooms memorized every word of Daddy Rabbit’s titillating patter to share with non-radio friends before school’s first bell.

One of the most popular of Daddy Rabbit’s platters was the 1954 song “Work With Me, Annie” written and recorded by Hank Ballard. The FCC went nuts and banned the song for its overly suggestive lyrics. Too late. We knew EVERY word.

Nationwide, the song sold over a million copies and topped the R&B charts for seven weeks. The answer songs, “Annie Had A Baby ” and "Annies's Aunt Fanny" soon followed, sold a million copies and were also banned.

Daddy Rabbit, despite having the number one morning show, and his choice of music, was too soon and sadly banned from the airwaves. His fame, however, lives on among us old folks with young memories and if asked, a few of us can still sing a few bars of “Annie had a baby, can’t work no more.”

P.S. Amazon. com has several Hank Ballard and the Midnighters albums. Click the link and scroll down to hear snippets of the famous oldies.

© Copyright 2009 Suzzwords

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Step Away From the Salt Shaker

As we’ve aged, many of us have heard the dreaded words from our physician, “Cut down on the salt.” or worse, “No salt for you.” The American Heart Association recommends less than 2,300 mg of sodium per day. One-fourth teaspoon of salt has 575 mg of sodium!

If you are brave enough to check the labels of processed foods or enjoy the yummy taste of fast foods, you can understand what the doc has advised. One microwaved dinner or a trip to fast-food land and you can kiss your salt allowance goodbye for the rest of the day. With some restaurant meals, plan on water only for three days after because the sodium content is so high! (Nutrition information is available online for most chain restaurants. It will scare you.)

After the initial shock wears off from adding up your present daily sodium intake and you clean out the fridge and pantry to remove the temptation of popcorn, pickles, bacon, Ruffles and Cheez-Its. you may find yourself left with only healthy, but blaugh-tasting foods. If you get most of your meals from a drive-through window, you may also have to (brace yourself) cook.

Don’t despair. Help is on the way. Many of the restaurants are responding with “healthy’ choices. In some fast food places, on request you can even get unsalted fries. Oh, what’s with the face?

In time, your palate will adjust to less salty flavors. The compensation for diligence is that you can sneak in some ice cream with a big squirt of chocolate syrup now and then. (Hey, look, I’m only taking about sodium here.)

Food processors are responding to demands for low- and no-salt canned, bottled and packaged foods. No, that doesn’t mean you can still grab the package of sandwich meat and canned soups. It means if you search them out, there are low-sodium processed foods are out there. One exciting find for me lately has been Hunt’s Tomato Ketchup No Salt Added. If you haven’t had ketchup for five years and you find this in your grocery, try to not scream “Yippee,” jump up and down and hug the stock person. (I’ve been banned from the grocery until the meds kick in.)

A few weeks ago I had the brilliant idea of starting a second blog for us sodium-sensitive folks, but a Google search turned up a zillion other sources of information. Now I’ve decided to just add a column of low- and no-salt food items to this blog. Your input is very welcome and I hope you will pass along your food finds.

We have released control of your salt shaker and returned you to an upright position. Go forth and shake not.

© Copyright 2009 Text and Photo SuzzwordsThe American Heart Association

Monday, May 25, 2009

Gnewly Engaged


Mr. and Mrs. Gnorman Gnickols announce the engagement of their daughter, Gnelda, to Gned Gnewton, son of Mr and Mrs. Gneil Gnewton. The couple is planning a Fall wedding, with gnuptials taking place in the gnome home of the bride. After a honeymoon to Gnew Orleans, the couple will reside in Gnome Gnook.


© Copyright 2009 Suzzwords Text and Photo

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Ol’ Betsy


She was big, she was bold, she was beautiful. She was a 1966 Pontiac 2+2 coupe. One day, long ago, we went out on an unopened portion of an Interstate highway and as I held my foot down on the gas, she easily soared to 120 mph.

It was glorious as we flew over the concrete for a scant few seconds until my timid brain began screaming, "What the hell are you doing, you idiot, slow down!"

We slowed to a crawl and after I stopped shaking with exhilaration and terror, we turned around, went home and never confessed to "himself" what we had done. It was our secret.

A year later, he got custody of Ol' Betsy and I never saw her again.

I really, really missed Betsy.

April 27, 2009, 9:01 AM -- General Motors ... is killing the Pontiac brand (Wheels section of the The New York Times).

Sigh.

Betsy and I, we had a special bond. She's gone now, but I'll always remember that day.

Here's to you, kid.

Copyright 2009 Suzzwords

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Enough Already

Did a group (or groups) of people slip over the edge of sanity while I was out mowing the yard? I just ran across this web site for Extreme Grooming . Here are some photos from that page.

Extreme poodle grooming!? How can dog lovers actually do THIS to a proud breed descended from the hard-working German water retriever?


Ninja-Turtle

Cock-a-Poodle-Doo

Have our brains overloaded on the quest to compete and excel in anything, even it it’s stupid?

Here's an idea: Combine Extreme Poodle Grooming with Competitive Eating (Yes, Virginia, there is an International Federation of Competitive Eating . I didn’t believe it either.)

The poodle groomers compete first by seeing how many hot dogs they can swallow in three minutes, then present their extremely-groomed dogs.

Following the presentation, the dogs chase their presenters around the ring and be scored on how many nips they inflict on the presenters in five minutes. The groomers “win” by running off the gorged hot dogs and the idiotic-looking dogs "win" revenge.

Win-Win.

For those who have never seen a hot dog eating contest, here’s Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest 2008.

Their contestants' mothers must be so proud; their cardiologists horrified.

© Copyright 2009 Suzzwords

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Sunday, April 05, 2009

Hellooooo, Spring!







© Copyright photos 2009 Suzzwords

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Questions, Questions, Questions

How do those automatic faucets and flush toilets in public restrooms work? Yes, I know that when you “break the beam” they activate, but what powers the “beam.” Are they battery-operated, wind up like a clock or just magic? If they are battery-powered, does the housekeeping personnel now have to carry around pockets-full of AA Duracells? (Bet you never thought about that one did you?)

Does your heart really stop when you sneeze?

If an approaching weather front is called a “front,” why is the back not called a “back?” Or is it? If so, is it called a “front back?”

Why are Brussels sprouts not illegal?

Do kids of today still play hopscotch?

Are there piles and piles of hula hoops in a warehouse somewhere just waiting to make a comeback?

Where does the tide go when it goes out? Does it get dressed up or just go casual?

Just what does a “mean streak” look like on an x-ray? Is it anywhere near the “funny bone?”

After deciduous trees drop their leaves, do all the surrounding fir trees whistle? Is that where the expression “wind whistling through the trees” came from, only the trees are actually doing the whistling in the wind?

Who gives cars their silly names?

Have we reached the saturation point with challenge and reality televisions programs?

Over what domain does a drama queen reign?

Do dam-building beavers have taste preferences for particular trees? Is an elm more tasty or an oak too chewy?

Who came up all this transition to digital television anyway? What were they thinking!?

What store sells thinking caps? I just wore mine out.

© Copyright 2009 Suzzwords

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Unscientific Reasons Why M&Ms Are Good for You

“Watson, come here. I need you.”

“Ah, there you are. For today’s scientific analysis, we are going to examine M&Ms for their visual nutritional value.”

“Here, you take a handful of the green and blue M&Ms and I’ll take the yellow, orange and red.”

“Our experiment is to determine if the outer candy shell that protects the tasty inner chocolate has any relationship to actual healthy foods.”

“Watson, you go first. Taste a blue one.”

“What?! You ate ALL the blue ones already?! Okay, okay. What is your analysis?”

“Ah, so you believe the blue M&Ms are a visual reference to blueberries which we all know are high in antioxidants."

“Humm, interesting."

"Now I will taste the red, orange and yellow ... uumm, munch, munch ... M&Ms individually.”

“Maybe a handful would be better.”

“Ummm, why yes, Watson, they DO melt in my mouth.”

“Oh, right, back to the subject. Well, um, ah, let’s see. The red ones, now that could possibly remind us of cherries, and of course, the orange (By the way, what rhymes with “orange?”) and yellow ones make us think of citrus fruits. Conclusion, cherries and citrus are wholesome and nutritious.”

“Your turn again. What is your analysis of the green?”

“Brilliant, Watson! The connection between the green M&Ms to grass that is eaten by cows to produce milk which is a good source of calcium is now apparent.”

“All righty now, our experiment is complete for today. What shall we do with the remaining pound of M&Ms in this large bag?”

“Excellent suggestion, Watson. I say we get right to it.”

© Copyright 2009 Suzzwords

P.S. Check out what Wikipedia has to say about the nutritional value of chocolate.