Sharing the World with the Undead

Book recommendations for today: In the mood for light, zombie fluff? Start with Zombie, Ohio and then read Zombie, Illinois. These titles are available on Hoopla. Zombie, Illinois will be a special treat for those who know Chicago politics. Both books offer unusual twists on the undead story.

Make a note that a Sharknado marathon is coming Sunday on Syfy! These movies make a perfect family event. Cheesy beyond belief, with special effects that only sometimes take advantage of recent advances in CGI, and acting that few sharks or other aquatic creatures could manage, the Sharknado films are far better (or worse) than their Rotten Tomatos rating. For fans of Ed Wood, this series is a must see. Of course, I also liked 2 Lava 2 Lantula.

Zombie phrase for the day;

Arnold Schwarzenegger deserved an Oscar for The Terminator.

Arrrrdooohhh dooordedehdhhhr duhhzerrrb ad othgahhhdor duhhhh dehrrbihhdayydohhhr.

You could do it right now? Or you could go looking for a crochet hook. If you don’t want to teach yourself (more) Russian this month, you might make a scarf instead. Scarves use up a lot of time. Can’t crochet? I’m pretty sure you can find videos to teach you brain surgery out there somewhere — Don’t try this at home! — while tips for doing weird things to yarn are everywhere.

A stranger in Omaha is just waiting to show you how to make your own doilies, the doilies you never even knew you needed. I’ll recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdLjTVruXvI to get started. I don’t know if this woman lives in Omaha, but she does provide useful tips for placing your online hook and yarn order. My only area of disagreement: skip that recommendation for a light, solid color yarn. I prefer variegated yarns. For one thing, they hide minor flaws in that first scarf extremely well. Solids tend to show where the stitch slipped.

Perhaps you want to try the search “free French books online.” Italian anyone? Free children’s content is especially easy to find.

I’d recommend paying for the right book, though. Do you have a special book you have read and reread in English? Getting its counterpart in a language you want to review gives you a head start at retrieving all those long lost words you buried deep in your gray matter. You probably remember that special book well enough so that the text will give you clues to help you translate as you go along. If you are lucky, your book’s in a popular series. Harry Potter has been translated into more than 70 languages. Stephen King books have strong international popularity as well and can be found in Azerbaijan, Norwegian, Turkish and a long list of other tongues.

Stuck at home? I suggest a nice hot cup of tea and Le Hobbit, Der Kleine Hobbit, or 호빗 (Hobit), possibly with your English copy of The Hobbit alongside you. Maybe slice up some apples and cheese to go with your tea? Or raid the chocolate drawer? Treat yourself anyway.

My friends easily recognize Ginger the Wheaten Terrier, and my kids will still know her decades from now when they enter assisted living facilities or join the urban planning staff on the Mars Colony. Ginger has carved her place in Turnerdom.

The classroom in that remodeled McHenry middle school supply room is trickier. About fifty people might recognize that one, and only a couple of them are part of my social media network. The Parkland School connections are tenuous now.

My brother has been sending me old pictures from our family’s past and various souls in those pics will likely forever remain mysterious.

I recognize my dad on the left, my grandma next to dad, my grandpa next to her, and that might be my Aunt DeLois in front of grandpa. But who are the strangers on the right? They are suspected of being “Galbreaths.”

I have boxes and boxes of pictures. Already, some elementary school names have slipped away from me. I was never good with names.

Readers! Do you have similar picture boxes? This is a great time to open up the boxes and start writing names on the backs of those pictures. It may also be time to cull the boxes. All those pictures of grassy hills and pretty nice mountains? Do you need twenty pictures of a pretty nice mountain that you’re almost sure were taken on that driving trip through Colorado. Unless it was Uncle Lester’s birthday in in West Virginia…

My brother-in-law recently remarked that he had disposed of his scenery pictures. “All that stuff is online if I want to look at it,” he said.

I am not sure I entirely agree. Memory is triggered by pictures and absent those pictures, I might never think of that classroom in McHenry, which I loved despite the fact that it was an interior room with no heating, or cooling, and a shortage of outlets. I remember that white, cinderblock room and those kids with love. But some of my mountain pics can definitely go.

I don’t know about you, reader, but having paid to have those pictures developed, I tended to keep them. They had cost me maybe fifteen cents apiece! Or more! O.K., my picture hoarding may have been irrational, but the fact remains that I have taken a lot of lousy pictures in my life and no one will be the worse for me transferring them to the Underdog waste paper basket beside me. I have demonstrated that I can take dark, fuzzy pictures of strangers beside random, tall buildings in unknown cities. Now maybe it’s time I demonstrate that I can throw those pics away. I mean, honestly, with all the resources of the FBI, I doubt we could identify a number of these shapeless forms.

Biojar suggestion: If you are wondering what to do., maybe it’s a good day to pull down the picture boxes?

Cleaning closets becomes an adventure as we get older. Reading this book, I know it goes back decades. The name on the above page belonged to the mother of my stepmother-in-law, an Irishwoman who shared a love of Manhattans with my late father-in-law. She passed on many years ago now.

I am aggressively recycling, but I kept this book out of the discard pile. How long will I be mostly stuck in this house? I don’t know, but it might be long enough to make a few searches and phone calls. What became of these people, the ones who fell out of my life as I shifted over to electronic devices?

The biojar suggestion for the day: Do you have one of these old books? Or another source of names? Why not cross a few bridges across time ? I suggest we punch in a few numbers and try to track down those good parts of the past that slipped away in the too-busy times that followed writing in our little books.

I loved my new gray flowerpots from Costco.

For a mere $29.99 apiece, two gray pots filled with mysterious flowers and leafy things flanked the entryway in front for one spring and summer. 

This post is for the bored who are thinking of taking up gardening as they sit home for maybe the first extended period in years. Don’t do it yet.  The first year I was here I did not understand. March was lovely, warm and soft with all the signs of spring buds and gardens to come. I planted. Then the April snows arrived. The season in Illinois does not start until late April for good reason.

If you are itching to get started, you could put out pots (or old pans or whatever will hold water) in the garage or attic. YouTube will help you with technique. But I thought I’d issue a warning based in my memory of watching the snowflakes settling onto the greenery on a white day only a stone’s throw from May.

 

I have plenty of books, a few weeks worth of jigsaw puzzles, a good dog, a feisty cat, electronics and art. I have yarn, crochet hooks, and closets that need cleaning. My husband and I have a long list of TV we keep intending to watch. I can do this. We can all do this.

Advantages to sequestering: today’s culture bombards itself with shiny shiny screenshots all the time. Maybe some of us can use a few weeks to go to ground. Here are a few questions to occupy the time:

What do I enjoy about my usual, daily life?

What do I not enjoy?

When will I acknowledge that it may be time to give away the size six clothing?

Do I need to simplify my life? What do I have to do to make that happen?

How am I going to manage my retirement? Retirement has a way of smacking people up the side of the head. It’s far away and purely hypothetical until suddenly — bamm! You’re done. No need to go to the dry cleaners or pay for XM radio in the car. What can you do to get ready?

What bad habits should I stop? Should I simply delete those games? What apps should I remove from my phone? This time of isolation is a perfect time to investigate your devices. Exactly what is lurking inside your phone?

Other possible uses for time that will make you or others happy later: Scan or label those pictures in the picture boxes. Consider scrapbooking. Delete your ancient email. Start writing your memoir. Dispose of useless paper clutter. Sort your books to find future donations. Take an online course or create one. Start a blog. Experiment with the aging spices in your cupboard as you make new soups.

Seizing the silver lining out here. Hugs to my readers. We can do this.

Ummm… yes, they are. If they are genuine droids, I’m in. If D2PO only knows 250 forms of communication, that’s fine with me. If he speaks them all with a pronounced Italian or Finnish accent, that’s fine too. I’m flexible. I just want a tall, gold guy to make my tea and plump my pillows. It would be nice if he were a tad less chatty than C3PO but my husband can tell readers I’m an expert at making interjections while hearing almost nothing at all.

Yes, I want a droid. Forget teaching Siri to order my Starbucks and having to drive all the way to the drive-up window. I will send the droid. I will get the droid to clean the cat-box and plant walls of giant sunflowers around my castle. D2PO can brush out poor Whiner Kitty and then groom Ginger the Wheaten Terrier before dusting the dragon collection. He can help me find my keys.

Imagine. You just say, “I want to buy apples. Find my keys,” and off trots your droid. If you truly have lost the damn things, he can call the Uber for you. Or carry you to the store on your hoverboard. (By the time I get my droid, I expect to own a sleek hoverboard as well.)

By now, I bet readers are just shaking their heads. Does this sound like a waste of powerful technology? Ah. That’s where vision comes into play. In the early 1940s, then-IBM President Thomas Watson supposedly estimated the world market for computers at five. Yet the market rolled on and in 1960, Seymour Cray supplanted the ENIAC of the 1940s and their vacuum-tube technology, creating the CDC 1604, one of the world’s first supercomputers. The tech changed, the tech improved.

Now my phone is close to being a supercomputer. Across America, tiny supercomputers wearing cute, shiny plastic suits are invading homes. And if we can use this mighty technology to keep track of Meghan and Harry, I don’t see why I can’t send D2PO to Starbucks for my latte. It’s the Terran Way. If we ever get to Mars (hint, hint, slow technology people) then it will be the Martian Way.

I mean, hang on, lads and lassies, I’ve got a great idea here. It’s not original, but I think it should be out front and center. What I don’t understand is why those tech gurus are moving so slowly. Where are the droids? Little round vacuums aimlessly bump their way around rooms. Tiles beep at us like R2D2 fragments intent on helping us find our keys. Alexa will turn on the TV, go to Netflix, change the thermostat and distract the kids. But where are the bipedal — or quadrupedal, like I said I’m flexible — devices that will bake me a delicious batch of Tollhouse cookies?

I don’t understand the delay.

Mommy sits in Dr. Camelia Pop’s waiting room while Daddy gets his annual physical. She is wearing a long-sleeved, navy t-shirt, and a long, blue infinity scarf covered with stars and pink nebulae, over blue jeans and gray, Adidas sneakers. The scarf engulfs her neck and chest. Shasta is still in the furry purple robe she put on last month. A large, brown invisible slug about the size of a German Shepherd, she sports a black top hat with bejeweled lunettes attached under the brim and two black ostrich feathers on one side. The waiting room is hospital industrial, a dull, gray-green with unremarkable pictures of trees and rivers adorning the walls. Large, gray and orange carp are scuttling around in an aquarium infested with tall, orange and green fronds. The orange fronds look particularly plastic and silly.

Mommy: Those fish could use a castle to hide in. For that matter, so could we. There are too many sick people here and I suspect alien infiltrators as well.

Shasta: (Doubtfully) Umm… that aquarium is full. We could try hiding in the closet maybe.

Mommy: Yeah, aliens hide in closets though. After long journeys in cramped metal enclosures, they naturally crave small, cozy spaces. Closets are dark and quiet, with doors that mute sound. As long as a person doesn’t get down among the shoes, they smell good too, the delicious whiffs of detergent and fabric softener spread over fabrics.

Shasta: What about the scary mothball people?

Mommy: Mothballs are scary, dear, but they are not sentient. I’m sure most aliens avoid them, too. And doctor’s offices have weird smells, but nothing that antithetical to human life. Yeah, maybe we should go find ourselves a closet.

Shasta: You are not worried about the aliens?

Mommy: Low on my list. I am not too concerned about falling into Narnia, either. If it happens, it happens.

Shasta: Don’t you need a wardrobe to find Narnia?

Mommy: That wardrobe’s just a door. Doors can be anything. Doors can be anywhere.

Shasta: No, mommy. Lots of things can’t be doors. Like, doors can’t be spoons, kitchen chairs or TV remotes.

Mommy: It would be hard to fall through a spoon, but kitchen chairs seem doable. You sit and slip through. And Shasta, the television remote may be the most powerful door on this planet. I push a few buttons and, Shazaam!! There I sit, in Judge Judy’s courtroom, learning weird and useful life lessons.  

Shasta: Like we should rent an apartment from a ne’er-do-well landlord? Then we sue to get our deposit back after he throws us out for no reason?

Mommy: I’m not sure that was the lesson from the landlord episode. We don’t want that landlord, Shasta. He’s a scumbag. We don’t want to lend money to any boyfriends either.

Shasta: Yeah, I bet daddy would be mad.

Mommy: True. Well, maybe we should work on a book.

Shasta: I guess. I’d rather be helping NCIS. I love Ducky and I have been reading up on autopsies. I think I’m ready.

Mommy: (Hugs the invisible slug.) You have to watch out for remotes. And YouTube. They may convince you that you are ready to do that autopsy, but there’s a reason you need a degree for that stuff.

Shasta: (Doubtfully) I guess.

Mommy: Remotes are curious things, really. Once you go through the door, you can’t always back out. That sleazy ex-boyfriend who refuses to return the TV sucks you in and your finger freezes. Suddenly, you can’t find the exit.

Shasta: The remote has super powers?

Mommy: There’s no other explanation for the amount of time Americans waste to find out if the landlord refunded the deposit. Or if the girlfriend’s home perm really did cause her hair to fall out. Or for the number of people who somehow think medical examiner sounds like a good job.

Mew mew meow meow meow
ROWHRR Meow MEow MEOw MEOWW MMEEOOWW!
My clamorous cat

More subbing from January of a past year, scribbled on a random paper scrap

Crises I do well
Lunch lady gives me free fruit
I putt putt along

Phone is almost dead
No food but one free orange
Time ate my sub prep.
______________________________________________________________________________________

Phones short-circuit brains.
Brains unused are brains you lose.
Put the phone down kid!

Put the computer down too.
Blue light eyes go blank.
Put the phone down kid!