Good Things In Small Packages

The "little things" that have come upon us, the virus critters of the pandemic, have changed us wholly and I doubt we'll ever revert back entirely to what we were. Like you, I unconsciously stand back from others when around them and wash my hands like someone obsessed all during the day. I gasp when I find myself touching my face and diligently wash my hands after opening packages that are delivered or when returning from being out. Few routines engendered during the first weeks of the pandemic, will return to the way they were done previously. Special pandemic measures don't feel awkward any more. Wearing masks is no longer embarrassing and standing on the taped line is done absently, keeping a distance from everyone, even relatives isn't creepy now. Some of what we've learned is good. Learning how finally to get along with family in close quarters has found its level as it must, and the forced habit of amusing oneself may have opened doors into hobbies or games or activities that are keepers. Many people have become cooks in the home and are much more involved in creating or changing recipes, finding old ones and re-doing them. Bread making is now common, especially trying out Sourdough bread. I haven't achieved that accomplishment and doubt that ever I shall, but I greatly admire those who do. It seems kind of cumbersome to me but it's a novelty for the newbies to it. Parents who took on the role of teacher, at first found the job onerous but as the lessons went on, they discovered that they are more part of their children's lives in ways they hadn't thought of before. Maybe there is more understanding between parent and child on a different level. Kids have learned too that they have responsibilities that are new and while sometimes difficult, are indeed possible. They have learned a new kind of respect that is mutual. In the fall, we're told that schools will open in their entirety but there are hoards of parents who don't want to chance it and are considering home schooling. Others are not, but are finding ways of coping with how to protect their kids going back to the classroom. People who wouldn't touch computers and their kin, are now, having been forced to learn them, becoming rather adept at using them and actually loving the technology they have sworn to continue. The fashion industry has become more aware of sustainability and a return to more practical styles. Beauty experts, for example, are recommending ways of skin care under masks. With a mask, there is no need to slather on coloured bases and gobs of highlighters or enhancers with colour. There is a large move of forgetting about body hair removal. The women I saw during my pedicures that I miss terribly, who came and went with all sorts of additions and subtractions concerning their bodies are now finding natural means and effects while still feeling fresh and attractive. Workers doing their jobs at home, who originally found it hard to accomplish but with time, now prefer working and being at home. A few people I have spoken to, who do work at home, miss the companionship of their buddies on the job, but are rather enjoying the  pacing of their day their way. The swinging door that most homes once suffered while  everyone in the family flew in different directions, off to games or courses or work or social events, are now spending more time together involved in actually living with their kin and finding a new tolerance.  Without time frames that are rigid, minor daily tasks seem to be done with ease since there is no pressure to fit them to the clock. We've all made more contact with people not seen in a long time. We  read more, watch more with better discrimination, write more, cook and bake more, clean more and tie up all those pesky loose ends that needed doing for a long time.

Little Dab'll Do It

Long time ago, there was a hair gel in the days when men did ducktails with their longer locks. A certain product that had a catchy "little dab'll do yah" radio ad theme, was popular amongst the chaps.Very cool thing ducktails. To keep man hair where they wanted it, the guys had tail combs sticking out of the back pockets of their strides in those days, very dangerous looking they thought, and would whip them out to display their talents at ducktail artistry. It was accompanied by Elvis hip gyrating and come-on smoky eye looks and then like a cool cowboy, the Elvis wannabe slung his comb back into the hip pocket and swaggered off.  Ooh, so cool. But that little dab of hair product, isn't the one I speak of, even though nostalgia is hard to put down. The dab I think of today, is from one of the tiny bottles of paint you see in the local drug store nail cosmetic section. These days of salon nails that could scare even the tiger and its claws, the old nerve nibbled digits of my highschool days are no longer to be seen. A good thing. They disappeared with circle skirts, petticoat crinolines and bobby socks. The bottles of colour that festoon the drug store aisles in all colours you can think of, and more, are what I speak of.  A household hint I stumbled on happened when my bevy of watch straps, mostly purchased on cruise ships in the ten dollar shop, began losing their colour in the "genuine leather" that I think was actually tanned chicken skin, began to lose its gloss. My collection of cheap watches put rainbows to shame and instead of throwing them out when their edge shades wore down, I hied off to the local pharmacy and matched up their tones with what I could garner from the nail polish shelves. Suddenly, the old tatty watches took on new life. Chicken skin or not, they looked dandy with a new coat of nail polish paint. This conjured up other ways of using my find: nail polish as paint. While you can't do an entire wall with it due to cost, the paint is strong and stores well and if you are clever, can be mixed to match any shade you please. When I scuffed my favorite handbag, I took it shopping with me and matched up the colour with what I found you-know-where. Yes. On the nail polish shelf. So, you're tired of those old sneakers or maybe new ones need a cool look, try nail colour. You can do dots or flowers or name its. When my keyboard letters in white, the popular letters wore off first, out came the white nail polish. What I re-did doesn't look perfect, but it works. No new keyboard necessary. You might scoff and say, pretty expensive paint, my dear. But if all you need is a little dab, it'll do yah. Black and white, readily available at your corner drug mart is the handiest. My baseboards that the robot vac loves to take its revenge out upon, no more has its paint scraped from the whiteness of its corners. My black pasta bowls that somehow have chips around their bottoms, don't any longer, thanks to my nail polish discovery. When I wanted earrings to match something, and couldn't find the colour I needed, off I went to the nail polish shelf at the supermarket and chose the right shade. After, a short session of painting over a pair of earrings I no longer liked, I had a new pair in the perfect colour. And when the door in the house got chipped, guess what? Right! The chips are no longer to be seen.  A little dab'll do yah!

Requiem To Innocence

What happened to innocence? I should leave it at that because the guilty one, the thing that murders innocence is Time. And who can fault time? It just happens. Innocence is a man-made ideal because its definition is too obvious. The things of true innocence are natural. Only Man corrupts innocence and over the centuries Man has done a pretty good job of it. How? Man took what is pure and natural and twisted it to meet its uses. Most of the time it tried to replenish what it used and perhaps there are souls who continue that method but greed got in the way. What Man began to depend upon, it had the mind to improve it and to ensure in any way possible, that it would flourish to meet its need and more. If there were more, Man could trade it for what it wanted beyond what it needed and reap great benefits to add to its wealth. Too philosophical? Almost. We as Man are continuing this very practice thousands of years after we first appeared on earth. Every society began by making innocent principals and all, even the greatest of them, turned into what its greed fostered. Ideals and principals and scruples, tenets and laws carved in stone and written in clay and on paper were duplicated to ensure that all Man would follow them thus building a perfect society. Also formed, were those who saw that these laws were kept. But between the lines, in the little spaces between the letters that laid out the principles of innocence, crept Greed snaking its way, growing like an evil ivy  and finally hiding all of the goodness until it became blocked by its own rampant growth. I revel when I read or see or hear about the masses of innocents who give their time and ideas and efforts to be good people. They are the angels. No one hears the details of their quiet non-famous lives while we hear all kinds of verbiage about the famous angels, those who had the fortune of  conditions of wealth, protective loved lives and were fed the best and learned the best and went on to invent and create and manage and rule and all that goodness became well known and admired and emulated. Of them, statues and great monuments and books and paintings of them exist. But there are the innocents who will never be known. Their contributions and unselfish acts weren't recorded or remembered by the masses. Their time may have been short, very short and remembered only by those who benefitted from their generosity. They may be the old grandmothers who took in the children who were loved and fed and comforted. They could be the young men who gave their lives to defend an ideal. They could be children who during their brief time on earth allowed someone to love them so dearly. Or the strong who fought for the weak. Or perhaps they are the poor who share the little they have with others. The ones who do the work that no one else wants to do or abhors, but who give to others who benefit from it. These are the innocents, the ones we can trust but know nothing of. What happened to innocence?

Stay Out of My Genes

It's bad enough with cameras everywhere dictating everything we do via the cell phone, of late, our very centre of being is being spied upon. About the most personal thing we as human beings own, is our genes. Today's penchant, nay, obsession, is to examine much more than our innocent navels, it's to sneak into our genetic make-up to see if we, genetically, could hold statistically  some kind of unacceptable disease somewhere in our past history. What kind of nonsense is this? Oh it's not nonsense, the ominous creature called They, says, it's something important that we should know just in case we might have a certain cancer or remote chance of a deformity in our body or have a weakness lurking in there somewhere. The operative word is MIGHT. For some odd reason, we appear to put more faith into correlations than actual facts and reality as it stands. Why? I suspect it is our superhero bent that is encouraged by the film industry. The latter dictates just about everything we do and say and even think. It starts in us as infants when we are exposed to movies that model our morals and later, our fashions and manners and attitudes, our very language expressions. Movie and music stars are richer and more famous than royalty, and certainly far more influential. I recall my hairdresser who had a tennis pro wannabee daughter sending her down south to a posh tennis player high school. She might become one of the world's tennis stars. The kid begged to return home where she wasn't laughed at if she didn't have a Coach handbag or wear the top fad sneakers, not to mention how her hair was done and who did it. All this, she suffered, over and above playing tennis for hours every day. Now, babies are honed before they are born. They are peeped at with rays and needles poked into their little homes, tested for any kinds of risk and sometimes, sadly, ended before they take a first breath. For the satisfied modern parents, there are Sex Revealing Parties for the tiny human being seen in early pregnancy. And when they grow up sans a lot of things they are thought to have as allergies, they get nose jobs as pre-teens and boob jobs as high schools kids or diets that would scare a goat. Their parent need to brag of their perfect children. If they can't get same into the "best" schools, they are a failure. Every bit of food that goes into these super kids is closely controlled and their play time minutely planned to elicit the most educative venues and brand name environments.  And if all that isn't inhuman enough, now the parental genetic background is being exhumed and autopsied. Your ancestors matter. Apparently. I know of one perfectly seemingly "normal" family where the daughters learning that their grandmother died of breast cancer, seriously contemplate mastectomies. What have we become in this technological age? I suggest that rather than have babies, this sort of person might consider having a perfect robot built. It could have a brilliant computer  brain, a body that had quick and easy replacements plugged in if necessary and an emotional framework that withstood any kind of disease or attack or pressure of outside forces physically or mentally. It would be programmed for success in everything. Just dial in the profession you want it to follow. There would be no genetic harm because there would be no genetics. Furthermore, it could babysit itself which would be welcomed by all the poor exhausted parents like those who are "having a very bad time" with their kids around all day during the pandemic. With this kind of "child", they could lock it in the closet when they got tired of it. And forget schooling. Just buy the Oxford or Cambridge chip. Or look for it online.

Bloggerelle

Ah, I'm back to blogging here again and what a relief. Yesterday, for some reason, I found myself off Google. That may sound petty to many but not to me. I need to write. It isn't just a way to pass the time of day, I actually am addicted to it. I am one who makes comments on news items, does reviews of what I purchase, make emails that are both welcomed and abhorred, but all in all, c'est moi. Everyone has a habit and mine is word-smithing. Love of the English language is what gave me the high marks in Literature classes and earned scorn, that I hoped was envy, from fellow students who didn't get Shakespeare as the bard when I did. But that's another Subject subject. To be cut off from writing would be, for me, a major crisis. The little eye blind spots I have off and on these days, make me terrified that if I go completely blind, will I be able to use the keyboard adequately when writing. The rest of all that isn't so bad. Writing came upon me when I hit Grade Two. I read before starting school thanks to a father who sat me on his knee when he read the newpaper from end to end each day he came home from work. He taught me to read the headlines to begin with, and later, the wee words he pointed out on the pages he read to me. I began to see a lot of similarities in those little symbols and soon when he pointed out each word, and said it, day in and day out, I could read. I knew more about Mahatama Ghandi and WW2 than any other five year old on the block. But when I got to Grade Two, my teacher dear Mrs. Coatham, showed us how to make sentences. I was hooked. I could actually communicate even to adults, just about anything I wanted to using words on paper.  I was never very apt at physical printing or handwriting, but I did all right with expression in word form. Later on, it got me onto school newspapers, top marks in English classes and even dabbling in journalism while polishing up that degree in Education. Essay writing was a snap and still is. I cannot see why it is such a chore that some hire other students to write theirs. Wow, that would have made me well off and maybe I could have given up my after school hour jobs a break penning illicit essays. But it would be unfair and in those days, most people had scruples unlike today when anything goes. When the schooling ended and the career took over, writing was a luxury. Along came marriage and family and only after the empty nest, so dreaded by many, happened, was I once more into and onto the keyboard. Now there were computers and passwords and spell checks and grammatical advice at hand and writing became so easy that my hand written letters to friends far away turned happily into emails. Along came the terse advice, however, that said emails were to be chopped down to few or little non-words to save everyone's time. Apparently, when time flys in, verbal elegance zooms out. The local paper tolerated me as an erstwhile columnist and travel article submitter. I was even paid a bit for it. Of course, the day job continued as well. On joining the local Writers Forge as it was then called, I met people who understood how vital it was to write and write we did. We exchanged our agonies in novel writing and read our efforts to each other. We were very a close group until we all went separate ways: poets off to Elysian Fields, novelists into the Romance genre, the adult only venue folk slinked off somewhere and those who just had to write anything anytime about almost nothing important or particularly significant turned into bloggers. We just had to write. When blogdom came along. even though it actually existed in its form during the Dickens era, we found our place. Bloggerelle is mine. I'm back wishing my Dad was around so we could discuss current events and I could blog them off.