Senior Moment

I had an experience at the grocery store yesterday that really threw me for a loop.

I had just dashed in on my way home from Rotary to pick up a couple of items, including a twelve-pack of Yuengling, and was at the express checkout. As I swiped my debit card, the cashier, dragging my beer over the scanner, said, “Are you over 60?”

What?! I haven’t been carded for alcohol in a looong time, but this was my first reaction, followed by the immediate realization that surely the drinking age hadn’t been raised to 60 while I wasn’t paying attention!

Belatedly it dawned on me. The supermarket I patronize has changed hands several times in the last few years. Grocery stores in general are struggling in competition with Wal-Mart and other superstores, and this store, originally owned by a local family company, has been lucky to survive at all. The most recent new owners had just celebrated a Grand Reopening last week (to coincide with the Grand Opening of a new Publix), boasting hundreds of price reductions and other new features, including a senior discount (2½%) on Wednesdays.

Although it took just an instant for the penny to drop, and I immediately gabbled that yes, in fact I’ll be qualifying for Medicare in just a couple of months, I was so rattled by this blip in my routine that I momentarily forgot my PIN and had to actually think before punching in the numbers, usually a purely reflex action.

As they say, getting old is not for sissies—but it does have its perks. Now I just have to figure out how I’m going to squander the fifty-two cents I saved with the discount.

Beyond Comprehension

“How great is our Lord! His power is absolute! His understanding is beyond comprehension!
Psalm 147:5″

These were the words I read on the card.

When I went out to get the paper this morning, I discovered that sometime during the night someone had also delivered a new phone book. An orange plastic bag on our front porch contained “The Real Yellow Pages” (does anyone else think this is the tail wagging the dog?). Inside the house, removing the phone book from the bag, I also found this card, presumably inserted by the contractor who delivered the book.

I turned the card over and saw this:

Words (almost) fail me. This seems to me the ultimate illustration of why copy editors are needed for everything, no matter how small.

The first thing to strike me, of course, was “You are going to like are work.” I confess that I don’t always distinguish “our” from “are” as carefully as I should in speaking, but I certainly know the difference in writing!

Then I was struck by “Mr. & Mrs. Smith Granicrete.” After some consideration, I came to the conclusion that “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” must be the name of the company (analogous to “Smith & Sons Tile”) rather than of the contractors, but it still has an odd ring.

Passing over such minor technicalities as the superfluous period after “installer” and the defective spacing of the phone number, the email address is just sad. Quite aside from the misspelling, its inappropriateness for a countertop installer is pathetic. As far as I know, Yahoo email addresses are free; why not get one just for the business?

It is beyond comprehension to me that someone would try to promote a business with these cards. The telling detail here, though—which shows up better in the scanned image than on the card itself—is the perforated edge. The cards are homebrew, printed on a desktop inkjet printer. There is no shame in that: I print my own business cards as well. One reason I prefer to print my own is that I can print a single sheet of ten and, when they are used up, change the content as needed. In this instance, I would say several changes are needed before another batch is printed.

A Million Little Pieces

Although I haven’t read James Frey’s book, I am aware that the “million little pieces” of his title have to do with the fragmentation or splintering of his life. In my case, what is fragmented is the record of my life.

As I was writing in my (paper) diary the other morning, it struck me how little is really recorded there. The day-to-day details of my life are more often found in my emails, newsgroup posts, blog entries, Web pages, and the like. To add to the fragmentation, I recently joined Twitter, mostly just to see what it’s all about. If this keeps up, before you know it I’ll have a Facebook page, too!

If I were to die today, my survivors would find a couple of file cabinets full of mostly outdated paper, a dozen or so file boxes of old letters, and many years’ worth of Day-Timers (in which I keep my diary), but unless they looked at my hard drive, they would have very few documents from my current life.

In a way this is a good thing: while there would be plenty of other stuff to dig through (I inherited my parents’ packrat tendencies, not to mention their accumulations of paper), my heirs would not be faced with the quantity of memorabilia I inherited from my parents. All the documents I have created since 1992 can still fit quite comfortably on a relatively small and portable removable drive. And they would already be reasonably well organized.

But would they provide the same sense of discovery, excitement, and satisfaction I have derived from reading letters and diaries written, some of them nearly a century ago, by my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, in their own (sometimes indecipherable) handwriting? Somehow I doubt it.

Worse still, would anyone care? Would anyone really wade through the overwhelming volume of material to find the few documents that really matter? One of my “customers” at my monthly Word Q&A sessions at our public library wanted to learn how to set up a folder of documents for her son to find easily in such an event. We created a Word folder for these documents and put a shortcut to it on her desktop labeled “ATTN: RICHARD,” in hopes that her son would spot it if, in his grief, he fired up her computer (presumably she will alert him to this while she’s still this side of the grass).

Still, this reflection reinforces my sense of the need to organize my own memoirs (by writing a coherent autobiography) before I kick the bucket. Certainly I have a wealth of source material!

Rain in the Desert

It’s been very dry here lately, and the vegetation was looking alarmingly brown. All last week the forecasters kept promising rain (at least a slight chance) and cooler temperatures toward the end of the week, but it continued dry, with heat indexes ranging up to 110. On Saturday and Sunday my husband’s amateur radio club held its annual Field Day—when it “always rains”—without a drop.

Yesterday afternoon, however, we finally got the promised rain—a total of about an inch, heavy at times—with the result that it was a trifle cooler this morning than it had been in weeks. My husband and I have been going to “the gym” to exercise because it’s just too hot and humid outside to run/walk, but today I decided to hit the street instead. One factor was that my husband’s car was parked behind mine, blocking me in, and he wasn’t ready to leave yet. In addition, however, the last couple of times I’ve exercised at the fitness center I’ve been distracted by a woman talking loudly on her cell phone, so a solitary walk around the neighborhood seemed more appealing than the elliptical machine and wonky treadmill, especially since it was overcast and still fairly pleasant out.

And in fact it was not bad. The sun didn’t even try to come back out until just as I was returning to the house, and the air was not too oppressive, even though there was no appreciable breeze. In addition, for the last half of the distance I had some unexpected evaporation cooling from a rather wet T-shirt.

Despite the overcast, I hadn’t really expected rain, but of course the fun aspect of “scattered showers” is that they can be quite unexpected. As I climbed Fels Avenue approaching Summit, I felt a few drops, and as I turned the corner onto Summit, they began to pick up speed. Within the next block, I was into a pretty heavy downpour.

My hat kept the rain off my glasses, and it really felt pretty refreshing, so I plodded on (what other choice did I have, anyway?), planning to take shelter, if necessary, under the overhang in front of a row of shops in the next block. But as I crossed St. James Avenue, the rain suddenly stopped. Well, of course, it didn’t stop, as I could look back and see heavy rain still coming down behind me, but I had walked out from under that particular cloud.

The irony of it was that the cloud was parked over the stretch my husband and I call The Desert, the broad street/parking lot behind the K–1 Center where there is usually no shade at all. So of the entire 2.1-mile extent of my route, it was raining only in The Desert.

Listening for Brown Thrashers

About a month ago, as I was driving to Troy, Alabama, for a Rotary meeting, I happened to catch the tail end of the program Living on Earth on Troy public radio station WTSU. The segment I heard was called “The Hidden Sounds of Bird Song,” and in it renowned bird scientist Donald Kroodsma was being interviewed by program producer Laurie Sanders about his experiments with slowing down recorded bird songs to hear otherwise undetectable subtleties.

This was pretty interesting stuff, but the most arresting comment was this: “Depending on the species, a songbird may have just a few songs in its repertoire or it might have hundreds. A brown thrasher has more than 2,000.” One online source claims that the thrasher has “up to 3,000 catalogued sounds.” Whatever the number, the thrasher is generally acknowledged to have the largest song repertoire of all North American birds.

The Outdoor Alabama site says:

The brown thrasher belongs to the order Passeriformes, birds that have feet well adapted for perching, with three toes in front and one long toe behind. It is in the family Mimidae, which includes thrashers and mockingbirds. Members of this bird family sing loudly from conspicuous perches, imitating other bird songs. While mockingbirds repeat phrases many times, the brown thrasher usually emits the song twice.

Another site says, “The brown thrasher is known to be one of the best and most spectacular singers, with the largest repertoire of songs of all North American birds. It is also a very shy bird so that the chance of people actually spotting the bird is smaller than that of hearing the bird sing.”

I would tend to disagree with both statements.

I first became aware of brown thrashers when I heard them outside an open window, living up to their names by thrashing about in the dry leaves and underbrush. And I certainly have no difficulty spotting them; they are quite frequent visitors to our yards and gardens. But unlike their high-wire-artist cousins, the mockingbirds, which seem to love to perch on power lines and pine branches for their impressive concerts, I rarely see thrashers very far above the ground.

And I have never knowingly heard them sing.

Presumably there are two reasons for this: One is that I wouldn’t know it was a thrasher singing unless I could see it doing so. And since, unlike the mockingbird, it isn’t taking pains to be conspicuous doing it, I’m less likely to see it. The other is that, with such a large repertoire of songs, there is not any one specific call that I could easily identify. Mourning doves, for example, are dead easy. And other bird calls are equally distinctive even if I don’t know which birds to associate them with. But I would have to have a much better ear than I have for the sound of a thrasher’s voice to be able to identify it when it might well be singing a different song every time I hear it.

So I remain tantalized by the idea of these seemingly mute and retiring birds being such “spectacular singers,” and this causes me to give them a second look every time I see them, just to see if their lips are moving.

One Mystery Solved

In an earlier post, I wrote about the mysterious two-story “watchtower” in front of a house under construction nearby. (Actually “in front of” may be misleading. The property is on a bluff overlooking Mobile Bay, so the bay side is probably regarded as the front, with an expanse of lawn between the house and the edge of the bluff, and the street side as the back, with the driveway, garage, and other outbuildings.)

Today I finally had a chance to investigate it again, suspecting that further development had occurred. Indeed it had, and it is now clear that the building is a very tall workshop. A workbench extends around two sides and pegboard around all sides of the single room, and shelves above the workbench range up the walls toward the high ceiling. An extension ladder is currently propped against them, but presumably some more permanent means of access will eventually be provided.

The mystery that now remains is: Why so tall? What is going to be constructed in this workshop that requires the two-story height? That I may never find out unless I make it a point to meet the new neighbors and ask.

Walking and Listening

This post has been gestating for an entire month, since Mother’s Day (May 10), when I made an impulse purchase that has had repercussions related to my walking experience. The fact that the purchase was made specifically for walking only makes the situation more complicated, and it’s taken me a while to process the results.

Many of the walkers I encounter are clearly listening to something. That is, they have headphones on or (more commonly) earbuds in their ears. They speak or wave distractedly, obviously lost in their own self-contained world. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to join that insular population.

On the other hand, it often happens that, when the time is right for me to hit the street, I’m engrossed in something on the radio. This is especially likely on Saturdays, when I may be listening to Bob Edwards Weekend. It had therefore often occurred to me that it would be nice if I had some kind of small portable radio that I could take with me when I went out walking.

My husband succumbed to an iPod last June and has recently finally gotten around to getting it set up, ripping his entire CD collection and storing most of it on the device. Although somewhat late to the party, he is a rabid iPod fan and can’t get over how cool it is. He got an adapter so he can play it through the tape deck in his car and a cable so he can play it through our Bose Wave Radio/CD (thus eliminating the stacks of CDs on the floor, which can now theoretically be stored elsewhere).

Although I can readily see the coolness factor of all this, if I want music, I’m pretty much willing to take whatever happens to be on the radio. A friend of mine who is a member of the 100 Mile Club at the Christian Life Center where I’ve been using the “fitness center” showed me her tiny clip-on MP3 player (I believe it was an iPod Shuffle—I’m no expert on these things). She said her daughter had put a lot of bouncy Broadway show tunes on it that really punched up her walking speed. I could see that, too. Still, I wasn’t sold. What I really wanted was a radio.

Enter the Sansa Clip. On Mother’s Day, my husband offered to take me out to lunch, and we chose a restaurant near Office Depot, since he also had business there. As we walked into Office Depot, I was arrested by a display, on a clearance table, of small MP3 players. I guess what must have caught my eye was the information that the player incorporated an FM tuner. Aha! A radio!

The device was marked down to a price that seemed like a reasonable amount to venture ($29.99), so I took the plunge. I won’t go into all the ins and outs of installation. Suffice it to say that nothing computer-related is ever simple. The mini-CD that contained the (as far as I can tell largely irrelevant) software had a folder that was supposed to contain the documentation, but it was completely empty. I did find the manual online, along with a discussion forum from which I learned that the reason I couldn’t charge the device and Windows couldn’t see it was that I needed to upgrade to Windows Media Player 11. After that, things went pretty smoothly.

Then came the realization that the earbuds that came with it were just not going to work for me (they won’t stay in my ears). It took a couple of tries to find some headphones that were satisfactory (by which time I’d doubled my initial expenditure). Finally everything came together and I was able to really test it out, both on the street and at the CLC. Although there have been some setbacks (low battery, etc.), I have reached several conclusions:

• Any distraction makes the elliptical machine easier to bear. I can’t really read while using it, so listening to the radio helps.
• No matter what I’m listening to, I can still hear the TV in the fitness center if someone has it on.
• I prefer reading over music when on the treadmill.
• Unless there’s a program I especially want to listen to, when I’m walking outside, I prefer the company of my own thoughts and the sounds of nature to radio or recorded music.

I also decided, since I listen to a classical radio station, that it might be helpful to put some of my own music on the device, since I can’t count on WHIL’s offerings to be the right tempo. It took me a while to get around to that, but I found that WMP 11 makes it dead simple, and I now have four CDs’ worth of music (Paul Simon and the soundtrack from The Big Chill) on the player. Presumably I’ll eventually add more, though I don’t feel any particular urgency about it. (The capacity of the device is just 2 GB, so I won’t be adding much, anyway.)

Saturday morning when I went out to get the paper, it was surprisingly cool and pleasant, and I was tempted to just walk outside, but I’d made up my mind I was going to go to the fitness center and try out my recorded music. When I discovered that the Clip’s battery was a little low, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to take the time to recharge it: after all, the fitness center would be the same temperature all day. So instead of leaving at 8:30 a.m., I was out the door at 10:30—and home again ten minutes later. I had found a sign on the door of the CLC saying it was closed till June 13 for Vacation Bible School! Although the door was open and the place seemed deserted (no sign of VBS), there was no one at the reception desk, which was dark, so I came home and walked (sans music) in air that was almost ten degrees warmer!

So I’m still figuring all this out, but I’m hoping that in fact the device will (eventually) enrich my experience and offer added incentive to exercise.

Walking and Wishing

Gardenias are in bloom here in Fairhope. I love the smell of gardenias, and every one I pass makes me nostalgic about the house we briefly owned in Atlanta. We lived in that house only eight months, so were there for only one summer, but I took full advantage of the gardenia bush by the back door, bringing in fresh blossoms each day to scent the house. I keep saying that someday, when we get around to having our yard landscaped, I want a gardenia bush (possibly over the objections of my husband, who doesn’t share my love of the fragrance).

I’d love to have a gardenia bush closer by, but as I walk I am even more wistful about another beauty beginning with the letter g, my new granddaughter, who is an ocean away. We will be visiting in July, and I look forward to meeting her then. Until then, I’m dependent on photos, which make me painfully aware of the opportunities I’m missing. My daughter recently sent fresh pictures, and I must share some here. I couldn’t choose between these two taken at one month, so you get both.

With her handsome daddy

In a moment of astonishment.

As a bonus, here’s one with her beautiful mother, at age two months:

Presto, Change-o, Part 2

I believe I have previously mentioned that a neighbor of mine, a nationally known watercolorist, had torn down his house and was building a new one on the site. He and his wife have been living in a rental house nearby during construction. Today as I walked past the house, he was out in the street talking to a contractor.

I commented that the house was really shaping up nicely (my last walkthrough was a week or two ago), and he said, yes, they had just a week left to go.

As I looked again, surprised that it was so near completion, I was even more surprised to see that the front yard was covered with grass and a gravel driveway. I said, “Whoa! I just walked past here yesterday, and my head must really have been in the clouds because I didn’t even notice that the landscaping had been done.” (In fact, I later realized that what I had noticed yesterday was someone carrying a large triple sink into the house.)

He said, “Oh, it’s all been done in just the past two hours. It really makes a difference, doesn’t it?” Indeed.

The current trend in landscaping is certainly one of the most dramatic changes in home construction I’ve observed in my lifetime. I well recall a new house in our old neighborhood in Mobile. When construction was complete, a few shrubs were planted around the foundation, and grass plugs were dotted across the prospective “lawn.” The site was hilly, and the first good rain washed all the plugs down into the gutter. By this method it can take years to establish a lawn (and weeds get a firm foothold in the process).

Nowadays, landscapers arrive and roll out sod like carpet. By the time they are finished, the house looks as if it had been there forever, although sometimes even the sod isn’t permanent. A few years ago I was surprised to see landscapers removing the practically brand-new sod in front of the new house across the street from us and laying fresh sod. When I inquired, I learned that the owners had discovered that the original sod contained traces of some unwanted strain of grass that they considered a contaminant, and so they wanted it eradicated and replaced (presumably at no additional cost).

“Manufactured homes” are commonly denigrated, and even prefabricated house components haven’t entirely caught on yet, but readymade lawns are very much in fashion.

Open Windows

The past couple of weeks have been one of those brief idyllic periods in Fairhope when it is neither too cool nor too warm to leave the windows and doors open. It’s been so pleasant to have the fresh breezes and to hear the birds singing (as well as roofers hammering on a neighbor’s roof, lawn service workers using their gasoline-powered blowers, etc.), but now it seems to be over.

Today it’s hard to realize that it was only a couple of weekends ago that I felt it was finally safe to remove the winter blanket (heavy electric) and put on the summer one (lightweight cotton thermal), but Friday was quite warm, and yesterday it was so muggy that I finally threw in the towel and turned on the air conditioning. Even though I set the thermostat at 80°, the compressor immediately came on and cranked its little heart out all day.

Last night, when it was 86° in our bedroom and (nominally) in the low 70s outside, I tried opening a window, but there was no discernible difference in temperature, so I ended up closing it again and reluctantly nudging the thermostat down to 78°. Twelve hours later, the temperature in the bedroom is down to 84° (thank goodness for ceiling fans!).

We’ll probably have a cool snap sometime before summer really sets in (traditionally, the first weekend in May is chilly, but that didn’t happen this year), but I doubt that it will last long enough to make it practical to open the windows again; for that we’ll have to wait for those magical few weeks in the fall when conditions are “just right.”

One reason I hate closing the windows is that we lose the benefit of any breezes that may be going (though this becomes less and less of an issue as the season progresses). The conditioned air, though drier and thereby “cooler,” is stagnant; even with ceiling fans circulating in almost every room, it’s not the same as having cross-ventilation between windows.

We’ll adjust, though, and I have to say that when I came home from my walk today, dripping with sweat (79° out, with humidity to match), it was really pleasant to step inside and feel a noticeable chill!