2020 Nutshells – Page 5 – Nutshellcity.com

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Florida, Health, In the News

Worried eyes and healing eyes as we all come to terms with coronavirus

March 18, 2020 No Comments

The two women in the grocery store checkout line were buying pudding packs. Lots of them.

“We’ll eat these first,” said the younger of the two women reassuringly. The older woman seemed frail. From a pocket, she pulled a tissue and dabbed her nose. The other woman took out a bottle of hand sanitizer and squeezed it into her hands. She rubbed them together.

The woman slowly turned her head and looked up at me. The older woman.

I was standing there with a cart full of groceries. This was the weekend before things got really “interesting.” Before you couldn’t find chicken or toilet paper or stuff you never thought stores would run out of. Or at least, not when there wasn’t a tropical cyclone spinning off the Florida coast.

That weekend, things were only slightly off-kilter. Slightly hushed. Slightly concerned. The reality wasn’t setting in yet. People who went to the grocery store that early in the morning looked at each other in ways I haven’t fully come to terms with. They jumped when they heard someone cough. They walked the aisles solemnly. They paused near the cleaning supplies or the respiratory relief pills and stared. Did they need them? Were they overreacting?

Sometimes they just looked at each other, like they didn’t know what to say.

Like the older woman dabbing her nose.

2020 Nutshells, Family, Getting old ... er ... older, In the News

When the ‘angries’ come to roost

March 12, 2020 No Comments

Don’t you round up my age, mama!

Boy, that makes me angry. And I was already a bit perturbed.

I had just canceled a trip to New York for a conference over concerns about the coronavirus.

I was reporting this to my mother, who thought it was for the best. For once in my life, I agreed with her … until she said something I wasn’t ready for: “You know, Brian, you’re 50 now, and they’re saying older people are at higher risk.”

Wait a minute … WHAT did you just say?!?

Fifty!

FIF-ty!

FIF-@%$&#-TY!!!

Hold on for just 47 seconds, because … I AM NOT 50. I am 47 years of age. Just turned 47. A whipper-snapper, when measured against the age of the galaxies. If you carbon date me – I dare you to try … I fight like a 17-year-old! – I wouldn’t even register. Well, maybe back to caveman days, but still pretty darn young.

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Health

How will the face-touchers go on?

March 4, 2020 No Comments

This just in from The New York Times: Want to stay healthy? Stop touching your face! Your FACE! Don’t touch it. That’s where problems start.

I’m not being cynical or sarcastic. I’m not poking fun. I’m not mocking health officials. It’s true. The article was a wake-up call and has me freaked out … because I’m not sure I can do it.

The headline read: “A hands-off approach to your face is prudent.” It was about the coronavirus and how experts recommend that one of the best ways to stave off infection and keep the virus from spreading is to do one simple thing: stop putting your fingers near the open parts of that orb on your neck.

Like your eyes. And your mouth. And your nose.

It actually makes total sense.

Our hands are constantly touching things, and picking up all manner of foreign particles and germs as we go. To make matters worse, we chronic face-touchers then give these germs easy access when we rub an eye or touch a lip. Seems so innocent and harmless, but it’s like an interstate on-ramp for a virus.

And I’m one of the worst.

2020 Nutshells, Technology

The future gets flushed down the drain

February 26, 2020 No Comments

I don’t know how the topic came up at dinner the other night, but somehow I asked my 14-year-old daughter what the future looked like to her. Because she already has handheld phones that display video calls from friends. She can pay for things with a phone or play virtual reality games with it. All sorts of futuristic things that can turn her brain to mush are within her grasp. You know, cool stuff I dreamed about as a kid.

But if you have it all, what’s next? Where do we go from here?

She said she didn’t know. She had no idea, and that was the problem. It seemed like all the “futuristic” stuff had been invented already.

Besides, she never wanted to look back like other generations and say, “You know, I remember way back in the olden days when I used to hold a phone up in front of my face to see a friend I was talking to. It was like the stone ages!” She is living the future, and it’s pretty awesome. Why have it go out of style or become old-fashioned? Why have it become old, antiquated technology that we look back on as the toys of Neanderthals who didn’t know any better?

Interesting perspective from a child of the future …

2020 Nutshells, Animals, Houses, yards and projects

Feline impediments to a freshly-painted porch

February 19, 2020 No Comments

Thirteen years. In 13 years, I figure I will have a freshly-painted porch. By that time, I also figure it will be a termite-eaten, water-rotted, sagging, splintering mess. Ready for replacement. But it will be done. Re-painted. A beautiful thing when hauled to the dump. It will take another 13 years to get to that point. That is what I figure.

It’s all thanks to the porch cat.

There is only one now. There had been two. Both were already up there in years when we adopted them from down the street. A duo. A pair that never went anywhere without the other one. Sunburst is the older male – a nick in his ear forever designating him as a former feral cat. He has only three teeth in his mouth and he’s completely deaf. Not likely to win any kitty pageants, but sweet as can be.

Teagrass was the ailing female who started losing weight dramatically and had just gone on thyroid pills. She must have been 16 years or older. One morning a month or so ago she came home, sat on the kitchen floor without eating and just kind of alerted the world to her presence. It was like she wanted to say hello … or maybe goodbye. Afterward, she wandered off and we never saw her again.

2020 Nutshells, Childhood

That dreaded fear that is parallel parking

February 12, 2020 No Comments

There were lots of things I feared while growing up. Lightning strikes that could make my fillings pop out. Gingivitis-stricken rattle snakes. A giant oak tree branch falling down on my side of the house, trapping me under its gargantuan branches. Or worse: Destroying my prized Nintendo.

There were smaller things that kept me awake at night, too. Just as worrisome, but not quite on the same scale: A jagged bone left in a chicken nugget that might nick a major artery while I swallowed it. A smaller oak tree branch falling and destroying my prized Nintendo. My white polo uniform shirt turning pink after running with the wrong laundry crowd, and then having to wear it to school the next morning. (Wait, that one actually happened!)

But maybe worst of all, or at least right up there with the worst of them (like being bitten by a rattlesnake WHILE enduring a lightning strike!) was this: Passing the parallel parking portion of my driver’s test.

Oh, mercy, mercy me! Talk about a full-on horror story. Sleepless nights. Sweaty palms. Thoughts of fleeing the country for one of those places that loves bicycles.

2020 Nutshells, Houses, yards and projects, Technology

Attack of the electronic zombies

February 6, 2020 No Comments

Maybe it’s that I had just – that very same day! – read an article about how smoke detectors don’t last forever. Every … I don’t know, I didn’t pay close attention … 9 or 10 years you should replace them, it said. Get new ones because they wear out.

“Hmm,” I thought deeply. “I wonder what I should have for lunch?”

And that would have been the end of it … IF THE DANG-BLAST SMOKE DETECTOR HADN’T GONE OFF THAT NIGHT FOR NO APPARENT REASON!!!

No smoke. No fire. No fine powder floating through the air. No, it was as if …

IT WAS READING MY MIND!!!

Do you have another explanation? Some other plausible reason why such a thing could happen? Just mere coincidence? No way! It’s further proof – I have more, people! – that our appliances are conspiring against us. Up to no good.

2020 Nutshells, Family, Getting old ... er ... older, Parenthood and Children

Does the mirror think I’m old, too?

January 29, 2020 No Comments

They’re not big numbers. Not on their own. As individuals. Leave them by themselves and people would think you were very young. A pup. So cute. Adorable, even!

But combine them as an age – just like that little gremlin of a daughter did to me the other day – and they sound pretty horrible. Angry. Tired and worn out.

I won’t say the two numbers that when put together mark my years on this Earth. They’re kind of painful.

But she did.

We were riding along, making idle chit-chat. Because she’s 14 and most of the time I don’t know what to say to her, I just pick random things that pop into my mind. Things I think a 14-year-old might find fascinating and REALLY cool. So, I said, “Can you believe it’s almost February?”

“Yeah,” she said, with the enthusiasm of a can of corn. “And you know what else? That means it’s almost your birthday.”

If she had just left it there, it would have been one of those “warm your heart moments.” What a sweet angel. She remembered my birthday is coming.

But … she didn’t leave it there.

2020 Nutshells, Family, Parenthood and Children

Lessons from a child going away

January 22, 2020 No Comments

The kid is back. After 5 days, a tremendous amount of cell phone data expended, countless hours on a giant bus and all manner of historic sites explored throughout Washington D.C., my 14-year-old daughter has returned from her middle school trip. In one piece. With all the stuff she left with. (How’d that happen?) Without getting home sick or demanding we come get her. And without getting left behind at a monument when she was supposed to be on a bus, but instead went looking for a pretzel. (How’d that NOT happen?)

To think just a couple weeks ago, my wife and I were worrying about getting her ready, getting her off and then what we would do with our time once she was gone. What it would feel like to be empty-nesters for a week, and whether it would take a psychological toll on us to have our only daughter go away.

Turns out it wasn’t that difficult, or different. There weren’t as many drinking glasses and candy wrappers left all over the house, and I never had to scream, “You had to walk farther to put that wrapper over there than if you just put it in the garbage!!!”

Boy, that was nice.

2020 Nutshells, Family

Coming to terms with some lousy, no-good tennis skills

January 15, 2020 No Comments

What a horrible tennis lesson!

Hold on … let me re-phrase that. Because the guy who gave me the lesson will probably read this and think: “Wait, what?!? Hold on … WHAT DID HE JUST SAY?!? I’m gonna’ find that guy!”

See? My coach isn’t the problem. Let me state that very loud and clear so he doesn’t come beat me up. He shall remain nameless to protect the innocent. HE is innocent. I am not. I’m guilty. Guilty of being a terrible tennis player or tennis learner. And for that reason, it was a horrible tennis lesson.

In my defense, I’ve never played tennis before. My daughter does. She takes lessons and plays on a team and knows how to keep score. I can basically sit there and watch a match and say technical and insightful things like: “Hey! It went over the net. That’s a touchdown, right?” or “Serve that ball good!”

My daughter does not allow me to come to her matches anymore.