I’ve been on the road a lot lately, burning up the highway as they say, between here and Brooklyn since our granddaughter was born almost 9 months ago.

That’s given me a lot of opportunity to make some keen, if I am not being too modest, observations.

It seems to me that there are two overall categories of drivers.  First, are the ones, like me, who were taught how to drive following the universal, sacrosanct theorem of driving known as, DEFENSIVE driving.  And yes, when my father taught me how to drive, before he even allowed me in the car, the theorem of DEFENSIVE driving was instilled in me. 

And when he spoke of it, it did indeed feel like he was saying the word in all caps. It was said reverentially.  Like you were in Church.  Behold DEFENSIVE Driving, the savior of us all. It was created so that we might navigate the highways and byways of this great nation, safely. If you follow this path of DEFENSIVE driving, you shall have life.  Stray from this path, you will die.  Amen.

There are lots of double good stuff.   Double shots, double headers, double dates, double deckers, double mint to name a few.  I hesitate to include Double Stuff Oreos in this list though.  For me, the extra white stuff throws off the ratio of cookie to cream.

 But.  What is clearly not a good double thing is Double Voiding.

 This is a new term I just learned about the other day while at a check-up with my doctor.

If you ever go the Azores, a group of 9 Portuguese islands off the coast of Portugal, often referred to as the Hawaii of Europe, pack a lunch.  Breakfast and dinner too.  For as long as you will be staying there. 

Of course that might put you over the baggage weight limit for carry-ons as said limit is somewhere around, oh, nothing heavier than your big toe.  In which case, you will need to check your luggage, the cost of which involves some kind of new math calculation wherein the luggage ends up costing about 10 times the price of your ticket.

But I digress.

It seems that no one there really knows what is on their menu.  On at least 4 occasions, in 4 different restaurants when I asked what the soup of the day was, no one knew.  They stood there looking at me like, ‘’well do you want to order it and take a chance? I looked back at them, like, ‘do you want to go check and see what it is?’  One waiter said “I think it might have vegetables in it.”  

A little research goes a long way when planting trees in your yard.

If your research however only consists of walking around your neighborhood and thinking, “Oh, that is a pretty tree, I like that one”, you may be in for some surprises. 

Some years ago, when we put in a patio in our backyard, we needed a couple of shade trees.  My neighbor had just put in these lovely River Birches and I loved them.  The way the bark looked like paper, and peeled and curled, and the variegated color was just so pretty.  The leaves and the canopy were pretty too.  It was such a graceful and elegant tree. 

In went two River Birches next to our patio.  The landscaper put Spirea, Carpet Roses, Purple Sages and some other pretty flowers in the bed with the trees.  It was all so lovely.

Socks.  They keep your feet warm when it’s cold out.  They keep your feet clean, provide protection, moisture control, and comfort.

A simple enough concept.  One would think that a pair of socks would therefore be a simple enough thing.

But like a lot of other products these days, the sock has gotten quite the upgrade.  But let’s hold that thought for a moment.

Socks have come along way over the years. 

If you have ever been to a sporting arena or a concert venue, you will know what I am talking about here.

We’re in cold water.  And we want to be in hot.  Well, not even hot.  Warm.  Warm water would be nice.

For reasons I can only assume have to do with saving themselves some money, the water at these places in the bathrooms is always cold.  And not just cold.  Ice ice cold, baby.

Ah! Spring time.  Or, as it is known around here, When the Tulips Get Eaten But Strangely Not the Daffodils Time.

I planted some bulbs a few years ago, ever so excited for them to arrive the following Spring.  I thought a mix of Daffodils and Tulips would be lovely.

That first Spring that they emerged I was ever so happy.  In fact, so much so, that I bought even more bulbs and planted even more of them.

And that’s when I had realized I pushed my luck.

That following Spring, my Tulips were decimated.  Before they even had time to fully grow.  They had fully sprouted their leaves and the stem was starting to grow.

At which point, they were chewed all the way down leaving only a raggedy leaf or two here and there. 

The Daffodils, however? Untouched.

I am not really very fond of camping.  If, by camping, you mean anything that involves sleeping outdoors in anything that lacks four solid walls, a roof, running water/modern plumbing, and heating/cooling.  I have heard tell of this thing called Glamping.  I think it may approximate something a little more closely to my preferences, but still likely falls short.  Don’t know for sure though, as I’ve never glamped.

I have, however, camped.

My first foray into camping was as a girl scout.  I come from a family of scouts.  My dad was a scoutmaster, my three brothers were scouts, my brother-in-law was a scout master, and my nephew made Eagle Scout.

Growing up with my dad and my brothers I was entranced by their stories of camping.  I loved the smell of the cedar foot locker they took with them on their trips.  I loved the mess kits, the sleeping bags, the flashlights, the canteen, and all the gear associated with camping.  I loved how my dad would come home from camping and hiking the App Trail with a scruffy beard and the woodsy aroma he carried with him.  Ok, maybe I am being a little kind there calling it a woodsy aroma.  Unwashed body for 4 days with a hint of the woods, is more like it.

Top o’ the mornin’ to ya! Seeing as we just celebrated St. Patrick’s Day this past week, day drinking is top o’ the mind with me.

These days, day drinking is defined as a couple of cups of hot tea in the morning and as close to 64 ounces of water as I can get.  And that about does it.  In the summer we can get a bit wild with it and have some unsweetened iced tea.  Maybe a lemonade. There might be perhaps a small glass of milk if I am eating a cookie. Thankfully, I have not yet reached the age where prune juice is de rigueur.

But that was not always the case.

 Exhibit A:  The college years.

 To be fair , in the college years there often was no delineation between day and night drinking.  It was pretty much round the clock.  Especially during football season.  One would break up the drinking between day and night with a well-timed power nap and a cheeseburger and fries.

Ernie and I had a conversation about straws the other day.  Lest ye judge the seeming lack of excitement in our relationship, do note that when you are married for nigh on 39 years now, sometimes the conversations can tend towards the mundane. 

And to be fair, we were in a car on a two hour drive to Brooklyn to visit the grandchild.  In between my singing Ain’t No Mountain High Enough and Stop! In the Name of Love, like I was a 4th Supreme, we found ourselves talking about straws.

Amusement parks.  They are a bit of a misnomer for me.  Nothing I find really amusing about them.  Oh, don’t get me wrong.  I did think they were a lot of fun for like a brief blip on what is my now aging timeline. Sometime in my childhood, where those years now seem like nano seconds.

 The fun years, where I enjoyed amusement parks, began when I was like 7 or 8.  Our Catholic grade school, St. Denis, held its annual fundraiser, the May Fair, in it’s asphalt parking lot which doubled as our playground every other school day of the year. 

My sister has recently spent some time in jail. Her crime? Liking too many Instagram posts.  Now, fortunately, Instagram Jail is not nearly as formidable as a real jail.  No orange jump suit required and you can eat, sleep, shower, and bathe any time you want and you are free to go about your daily business.

But for someone who loves photography, who enjoys it, is great at it, as much as she is, it was pure torture.

Let’s start with the irony of it.  Instagram is an app that encourages you to share pictures and to interact with each other.  That is it’s raison d’etre.  So it is truly bizarre that one can be banned, albeit temporarily, for doing the very thing for which it was designed.

I thought closed caption TV was for the hearing impaired or anyone watching Derry Girls.  I was wrong.  Unless you count me and all the people I know over the age of 60 as hearing impaired.  Which does have some truth if we are defining hearing impaired as needing the TV at 70 on the volume scale to hear it.

My BFF Kathy and I were having a text conversation on this the other day.  We were chatting about a TV series we both like, The Empress.  She commented that she thought the dubbing (it’s in German) would be annoying but the closed captioning eliminated that problem. 

Me: Closed captioning? You watch tv regularly with closed captioning?

Kathy: Yes, always.  My girls got me hooked.

I didn’t follow up on that, but was quite curious because her girls are in their late twenties and early thirties.  Young people watching TV with closed captioning? Is this some new trend? What? Why? When? How?

Kathy: Conversely, Mike (husband) hates it but needs to turn the volume up to 75.  And he still misses dialog so then we have to rewind and I’m like, ‘how about we try closed captioning?’

I saw something recently from the National Archives asking if there are any people that can read the cursive writing on some historical documents. 

They are looking for “anyone with an internet connection interested in volunteering to transcribe these historical documents and help make the archives’ digital catalog more accessible.”

I would ask, is there anyone left out there under the age of 50 that can read any cursive writing, let alone cursive writing from 1776?

Remember when your TV was just a TV?  You know.  When it was simply a device to watch shows that were served up to you on a schedule.  You got a little book called a TV Guide.  You looked up the shows you wanted to watch. Seinfeld is on Thursday nights at 9 pm on NBC.  Got it.  Turn on the TV. Turn the channel to NBC.  And voila.

Nothing that require an advanced degree to operate it.  The biggest advancement was when remote controls came along.  And suddenly you didn’t have to get up off the couch to change the channel.  Saving many a child from being human remote controls for their parents.

This is true of so many inanimate objects.  Suddenly, it seems, everything is “smart” these days.

Remember when grandparents were simply known as Grandma or Grandmom, Nanna or Nanny, MomMom, Grandpop or Granddad, PopPop or Pop?  I might be missing a couple. Meemaw anyone? And Bubbe and Zayde, if you are Jewish.  But you get the idea.  Basic. Traditional.  A name that clearly identified your relationship to the child.

Like a lot of things exposed to the passages of time, and the proclivities of both the Boomers (don’t call me old) and their Millennial children (don’t call me traditional) who are now becoming parents, these names have changed. Oh, some grandparents today may still go by these names, but that is becoming a rarity, kind of like the Eastern Lowland Gorilla which is to say, on the critically endangered list.

There are two kinds of people in this world.  Those who believe the GPS and those who don’t.

I am now in the Those Who Believe the GPS camp.  But it wasn’t always that way.

First, we have to go waaaay back.  Like 1985 way back.  For those of you who may have read one of my previous blog posts, my first job out of college was as an Area Representative for Westinghouse Credit Corporation.  I was responsible for the Tri-State area (PA-NJ-DE). 

My job consisted of mainly traveling each day to the companies on my list that required inventory checks.  This is pre-GPS folks, when people had to use these things called maps to figure out how to get to places with which they were unfamiliar or to which they had never been.

I had a tri-state area so that meant lots of places with which I was unfamiliar.  Maps? I had so many maps I needed a milk crate to hold them all.  State maps. County Maps. Street Maps.

‘Tis the season.  Ergo, time to make the cookies.  Nothing says Christmas like cookies, tons of cookies, feverishly baked as if you are in an endurance marathon of some sort where you will die if you don’t get them done in time.  You consult your carefully planned out calendar.  It’s Tuesday. That means it’s Snickerdoodle and Chocolate Chips day.

Truth be told, I am not much of a baker.  Too much precision is required.  Unlike cooking, which is far more forgiving.   A little too much oregano in your chicken scallopine isn’t going to ruin the dish.  Miscalculate your flour when baking? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Had really hoped to close the book on Unwanted Houseguests at Chapter 3.  No such luck.

A couple of weeks ago, Ernie called out to me, saying, “Hey, Mary! Come here a sec.  Does it smell in here to you?”

He was in the downstairs powder room.  I wanted to yell back, “I don’t know, did you just go?”

However, I assumed this was not a case of typical bathroom odors as he is not in the habit of asking me if it smells in there. 

I approached the bathroom trepidatiously.  I leaned my head in and whoa!

 “Yes,” I answered.  “It smells like dead fish.”

I speak dog fairly fluently.  Not Cesar Milan fluency level.  But well enough.

 Which is why I was completely surprised the other night to discover perhaps not as well as I thought.

 But first, a little context.

 Regarding my boast of my dog speaking skills:  We are on dogs number 4 and 5. Daisy, age 10 and Winnie, age 8.  Altogether it has been over 30 years that dogs have been members of our family.  So, you know.  After all that time, you learn to speak their language.  Nothing inherently talented about it.  It just goes with the territory and you soak it in, like osmosis.