Noise On The Menu

 Dinner out is something special these days. It is far more expensive with burgeoning tips I feel are out of balance, but the fare  is better as is the service. This  might level the balance somewhat. I can't complain about those features, but I want to remark regarding noise levels in popular restaurants.  Recently, visiting one of our special eating venues that offer a view of a sandy beach on a popular swimming bay,  we three, were seated near the open windows that brought us the waftiing sea breeze on a late summer afternoon. Our server was delightful, and the company I sat with, perfect. What was not wanted, was the noise level. Most of the tables were for four in this historic building above the beach. One round table had six or more ladies, possibly a book club group, and they were horrendously loud, almost yelling  hee haws and high pitched screams that caused the entire floor to be forced to raise their voices to be heard amongst their own companions. I'm not deaf but I was deafened.  As the tables filled, others found it necessary to up their voice volumes so they could converse. Gradually, the decibels were sky high to the point where I couldn't hear my table companions. I wanted to stand up and shout, "Quiet!" as had occasionally, my teachers in school. The book clubbers who were paying no attention to their hooting and guffawing, should have been reminded by a staff member that others would like to enjoy their meals in a reasonably quiet environment.  But, of course that didn't happen. It should have, because this noisy gang had no respect at all for others in the room. One of the tables had a lovely little family with mother, father, and children: a young boy and girl. The children were very well mannered and I couldn't help but comment about it, to the mother. She told me that she and her young husband took their children out so that they would learn how to behave properly in restaurants. As we left after our beautiful seafood dinner, I wondered if the family used the loud diners as an example of what-not-to-do. Perhaps the parents pointed out to their youngsters, that while in a restaurant, one must, in courtesy toward others, keep the voice level down so that everyone may enjoy a peaceful meal.  

All Set Up

Some single elders go nowhere, do nothing. I am that sort and love it. When I do go out, it's a big treat that most others who are out and about every day, miss. I notice new buildings and gardens, store fronts and fresh paint. If it's a long ride through varying stretches, it is especially wonderful. This is something that commuters or mall mavens don't have. Most of my days at home are never boring because I love alone-time where I can read without uninterruption or game as long as I please without someone breathing down my neck. In fact those who rant on about seniors having to "use it or lose it" aren't allowed in my hearing range. I move around, bend, stretch and do my own cooking, house chores and daily tasks to find that's quite enough exercise. I also have a secret. I am going to reveal the place I am most happy. I have a sun deck that looks out on nothing special, but it's large and wide. This is my garden. None of the greenery in my copse grows and it doesn't need watering or weeding. And while it looks and feels just as real as real, it isn't. Leaning behind metalbenches that run along the glass front and side of the deck, my black metal trellises bear green ivy that offers shade and an atmosphere of dappled sunlight. On each or the three corners of my pleasant covered deck are six or seven foot fake ficus trees that defy their copied identities. I use also sea grasses also imitations that are tall and clumps tuck in here and there as though I am at the beach. And they stay out there all winter and survive. My furniture is second hand black painted metal and its cousins, more black metal tables, are for real plants and the barbecue and airfryer that I love for outdoor cooking. On the deck floor is cooling grass, a green sod football  carpet that is perforated to accommodate air and rain water. A big rattan wingback chair and a basket swing that is covered with ivy woven in and out of its meshes adds to the ocean-like get-away on my deck. In the middle of it all is the old circle black  metal table with it's incense burner safe inside a glass tube with a Laughing Buddah hoho and holding his generous front.  Sitting out there on my fantasy set, I  read for hours, keeping out of the direct sun thanks to big red, the  umbrella that dominates it all in a loving glow. Who needs far away places; it's all here in my own paradise. Do you have one?

Labels

 Labels have always been important. Long ago in the primitive days of Man, your label might be how you wear your hair or paint you body or carry your weapons. Today the same applies, but in a different way. They, labels, the little bits of annoying plastic or paper or cloth that go on the napes of garments or are placed not subtly, so that no one misses who  made it. The more money your paid for that little bit of material, is likely worth far more than what actually went into it. The truth is that everything, or almost everything, is made in rather exotic locations usually where there is more sun than where I live next to the ocean, well above the equator and where very little is actually made. The exotic locations employ people who shock us that they would take so little pay and work so hard, but we buy what their hands have labored over, anyway. We can cluck about that, but we must not  forget our own history when small children were shoved down chimneys, dangerous small places in a much sang song. Remember?  Getting back to labels, today I found one that didn't make we want to cut it off. My all cotton sheets that are never ironed but look truly real because their origins are and that I love their natural slightly wrinkled honesty have a label. I dry these daily pleasures, illegally outside on my deck. Horrors, some would say, you can't hang laundry on your deck, tsk tsk. I must admit I have to be sneaky about it so I hope my Council won't see this. I could be fined for breaking the condo law. I may get time for it, and not the good kind.  To me it makes environmental sense not to waste  sunshine but to use it instead of an electric dryer. The smell of fresh air when you slip into those sheets makes your guilt disappear rapidly. Getting back to labels, in the middle of the flat sheet, a woman must have been involved because the label reads "top/bottom". Now don't laugh. You wouldn't if you were the laundry maven in your place. It saves a lot of wrestling with sheets to know which end is up - or bottom. This is the one label that will never be, by me, guillotined. 

Happy Helpless

 There is too much "help" these days. Most of it comes from a "help" that sits blinking down in the corner  of my computer screen. Oh good, I'll just explain my problem to Help, and we'll be on our way. I type in my situation. Apparently, we don't speak the same language even though it asks what's wrong, in my language. I try again with a few more adjectives, but again, it tells me to "try it another way". What way? I have run out of ways. I call  Customer Service who has human beings, and after going through a number of steps which has me running around to find a card or an invoice or a bank record or a view of the product in question. By that time, if the voice is still there, I tell it my problem, it tells me it will send me a code number. I don't use my cell phone unless I go out the door. I tell it "try another way". It will send me an email with the code. I have to leave this email page and find another email page to get the code. When I get to it, I write the code down and rush to get back. Oops, I "timed out". This can go on for quite a few codes and me desperately trying to  warp speed. I finally get it right. Now, I have the code, everything should be fine. But circularly I am referred to exactly what I had before, the little chap in the Help corner. What I want is a human being on the other end of the line because again, Samuel or whatever name this little help in the corner calls itself can't help. I say "agent, agent, agent" and miraculously I get a human being. It's one that is halfway around the world and who is apparently from the celebration noises, at a party. I do not understand a word he or she is saying not due to the accent, but to the party. I say so. It doesn't help because now the dog is barking or the baby is crying and the new accent is undecipherable.  I give up and hang up. The missing parcel that I was told was delivered, and was not, I have to assume was stolen when they left it outside on the street, or it's at a depot somewhere for me to go pick up myself. I hope the parcel will eventually be returned to the company who sold it to me and that maybe I will be reimbursed "in ten business days", for what I paid as seen on my bank record, for nothing. Online shopping is a joy. Sometimes.

The Bra- WWW

The who, what, where and when questions about a garment that women almost without exception, wear daily their whole adult lives, begs a word or two.  The bra is a kind of rite-of-passage, and from the time the simple band type in ancient Greece,  was donned to offer support, it became  the first thorn-in-the-side for women. Why? The first bras were invented for practical reasons and were simple. Women's bodies are designed by nature and her genetics determine the amount of flesh and fat and where it will be distributed on the body. Breasts are meant for feeding infants and in the primitive world, were part of the selection process of males, they thought, to ensure lineage. The more generous the girth, it was thought, the better the choice.  Just as then, today, bodies come in all sizes and conditions. Our brains give us ideas and choices on what we do with our bodies and our thinking now, has become very liberal. Women are no longer using  corsets or cinching in waistlines, or hopefully shouldn't be. There's always Photo Shop that the slick mag uses. We want comfort over glamour. Being able to find a bra for most women, is a trying time. Literally. Not all of us want to go into the back room with a bra expert who does do the perfect job of measuring. But, we all want to know our "size" and then shop. But size of a bra is very complex situation. No apple is precisely the same as any other, to put it bluntly. No one finds  exactly their perfect size. While the size is the one you always buy, from brand to style it differs. Pinch, poke, slip, slide, show and stab are some of the adjectives applicable. I like to feel free of having to chase a strap, contort doing a back closing or suffer wire torture or The Showing Of that no one wants wearing a tee shirt. Well, almost no one. And then there are some ladies who through no fault of their own, have to replace, enhance or remove this body part, in part, because it is because. Like you, I still have not found the holy grail bra. Have you dear lady?

Hindsight

Hindsight is perfect. When you are very old, not just older but someone with a short time left, and with a perfect thinking brain, you have hindsight. Very old means you have hours of time at your disposal. You don't have to run around trying to live a long life because as you munch your chocolate, you are already there. You did it kiddo. And now you are free of that mass of "must dos". How you got to the hindsight part of your waning life, makes you the master now of your fate. If you're smart, you don't let your kids or other loved ones rule your life. You rule your life because, hey, this is your last chance. You try to tolerate the bullies, cooers and doers who tell you they know better with their "trust me" injected into the convincer chats. At this stage you have developed your own secret strategies so that you don't always have to use the energy to play old and stupid. You go along with the flow. It's easier you have learned. Hindsight, is as lovely as a documentary tuned to you, but it can be rather cruel. It's where you see the realities you thought you didn't own. You see your  mistakes but you also see that you have blamed yourself for those that really weren't your fault,  but were the faults of the ones, the ones who made you feel guilty. Younger readers of this, those in their sixties and seventies will cluck, but it all happens if you live long enough. I love being ninety because now in solitude, I may face all the truths including the tougher ones that I tried to forget. Here they are: my mistakes, my accomplishments, but in the light of truth: the pile of prides and guilts and hurts and loves and bad and good times and all the things I should have done and didn't or wouldn't or shouldn't. It is like a sort of heaven and hell all rolled into one. I find it glorious to see, in hindsight, that whole open road, and it's clearly visible and very, very beautiful. A life is a miracle, and I am so grateful that mine was long and without sickness, grief or pain that couldn't be conquored with a medicine called Time. I still have some left over, and it's an endless dessert to savour.