Category House and Home

Ode to a toaster oven

Michael 10 Comments

Let’s say you’re the not yet born offspring of parents who already have a young boy and girl. I know, I know. That’s a very traditional and somewhat old fashioned and arbitrary gender assignment, but stay with me for a while. You hear these parents discussing your future.

“We already have one of each. What are we going to do with another of either?”

“Maybe if we try hard, we can make it something else.”

“What else could there be?”

“Well, it’s the twentieth century. Surely there is room for a third option. Perhaps a blend.”

“Yes, yes perhaps so, and don’t call me Shirley.”

I imagine that is how the toaster oven was invented. (Okay, so I have a pretty vivid imagination. How do you think it came about?)

I can almost hear this conversation in the appliance aisle of any big box or discount department store. “Stay away from that shelf. We already have a toaster and an oven. Why would anybody want to clutter their counter with something that’s not quite either and not quite different?”

Well, I’m here to tell you, there are lots of reasons why. Warming croissants, reheating home made pot pies, roasting chicken breasts, even toasting bagels. All sorts of things too large for a toaster (which might work well for drying out a slice of bread) or too small to warrant turning in the oven (which works best as a storage space for large pots and pans that modern kitchen designers fail to make space for), and aren’t cold coffee (which the reheating of is the real and only reason to own a microwave oven).

I personally think the toaster oven is the unsung hero of kitchenism, and since this is my blog, I get to decide who are legitimate heroes and that kitchenism is a legitimate word. Really, when you think of all the money that goes into kitchens, why isn’t more spent on toaster ovens. Money? When you think of all the thinking that goes into kitchens, why isn’t more spent on toaster ovens.

Almost nobody thinks about toaster ovens. If you do an internet search for the “history of toaster ovens,” you will turn up a lot of responses for “toasters” but none for “toaster ovens.” On the other hand, if you just search “toaster ovens” you will get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, and a couple more, models to buy. They will sell you it but not tell you about it. Seems rather mercenary to me.

Oh, the poor toaster oven gets less respect than Jack Roy. (Go ahead, look it up. I’ll wait.)

(Welcome back.)

The keys to successful and happy life are to concentrate on the little things, stay interested in what you love and sweat the small stuff! In the most recent Uplift! we explore way to do just that! (Approximate reading time – 2 minutes)

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A day in the life

Michael 14 Comments

Has anybody else been blogging long enough to remember when the “my day” posts were popular? A blogger, typically with pictures, would take his or her (or its) readers through a pictorial tour of a particular day. Typical or atypical, both were fair game. Typically, both were quite boring.

Oh look, here’s my chai tea to start the day. I haven’t had coffee since I found out about the fair trade laws and how few roasters comply.

Oh look, here are my clothes laid out for the day. They look so small laid out in the bed. It must be due to the 487 pound weight loss I recently experienced.

Oh look, here is my designer cockapoo. I would have preferred a schnoodle but the breeder said I have to wait at least 7 months and even then he couldn’t guarantee a champagne schnoodle, so little “Doodle,” the champagne cockapoo, came home with me. Doesn’t he look a dear when he has to go wee wee.

And so on and so on throughout the day.

I never considered doing a “my day” post. First of all, any one of my days, typical or atypical, would bore the most ardent reader. For example, let’s take a look at my last week.

Sunday, I went to breakfast with my daughter. Typically we do a Sunday lunch, one of us hosting and cooking. Because I was scheduled to move Wednesday, most of my kitchen was packed, but because I was going to be unavailable for much of Monday and Tuesday, I needed her help packing the last of the “all but the most last of the last minute” items, so it made more sense to eat early and eat close to me, then we’d work together until everything was packed as planned. So for Sunday, my photos would be of my eating a local diner special, cheesesteak omelet (which was very good!), and then putting stuff in cardboard boxes. Yawn.

Monday, I worked. Snapshot of me at the computer reviewing charts for 10 hours. Double yawn.

Tuesday, I waited through 1&3/4 of the 2 hour arrival window to meet the internet service provider technician at the new location who did the install of the lines and modem, then wait through the two hours for him actually to do the install. After that, I rushed to the old apartment to disassemble and pack the computer pieces. Yawn and a half.

Wednesday, moving day! The only part of the whole day that I remember is the movers hoisting the living room sofa up onto the patio, one fight up from ground, to take it through the patio door because it wouldn’t fit through any other door.  That would have made a good video had I known where my phone was while it was happening.

Thursday, because I was scheduled to work Friday and Saturday, priority was given to unpacking, re-assembling, and connecting the computer, and second priority to making the kitchen cookable and the bedroom sleepable.  My sister came to help and we could have gotten some action shots of her emptying boxes or me unthreading 135 feet of various cables. I did take time that evening to go to my Toastmasters club meeting. With all that was going on, why would I take off for two hours of prime unpacking time. Because they’re fun meetings with good people and because I deserved it!

Friday and Saturday were work days. See Monday.

Sunday, we were back to our normal Daddy Daughter Lunch dates with lunch prepared in my new kitchen and more unpacking by the two of use, assisted(?) by her dog, after. Maybe we could have gotten a decent picture of me making chicken enchiladas but mostly another yawn day.

So now you see why I never did a “my day” type of post. And if you’re still here after hearing about “my week,” hehe, my plan worked!

Have a good week!

Life lessons from hockey? Yes, hockey holds many lessons on how we can be better people. From courtesy and respect to people and time management, the most recent Uplift! explores how hockey could be the best life coach ever!

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I’ve been had

Michael 5 Comments

They’re out to get us!

In the course of 12 hours on Saturday I got 45 legitimate, expected emails. I thought that was a lot. That’s why I counted them. But there they were and there they were all with a reason for being there. They were headlines form the two local papers and headlines from the Associated Press and from Apple News and updates from two magazines I subscribe to. Three were from clubs or associations I belong to. There were five from Word Press, three new blogs from those I subscribed and two were stray “likes” to older posts of mine. A few were from stores I routinely order from, one was a delivery update on an order I am expecting. Oh yes, and there were even a handful from real people checking in. I had accounted for 45 emails that didn’t surprise me by being there.

Unfortunately during that 12 hour period, I had received a total of 141 emails. Sixty of those were shuttled to the Junk email box. That left 36. Those 36 were hanging out in my regular Inbox but weren’t expected to be there, nor were they from legitimate correspondents. Yes, they were spam. And not the tasty kind Hormel packs into those neat little tins. These were not only spam, they were phishing schemes designed to wheedle personal information to leverage my embarrassingly low financial accounts. Well, 28 of the 36 were phishing schemes. The other 8 were just annoying.

And just to make things a little more interesting, of the sixty emails that were sent to the junk folder, two were from my electric company following up on the power outages created by the storms during the previous week. Yes, the people who created the rules for our spam filters thought that I would be interested in “Real Russian women looking for love” but not in service updates from a legitimate public utility. [sigh]

Why do I bring this up now. Well, a couple of things happened that make this all a little more interesting. I don’t recall if I mentioned in a recent post but I am in the midst of a move, a personal relocation, a “pack everything you own into 80-100  itty bitty boxes and some strangers in a big truck will get them to your new abode” activity. One of the related activities is notify everybody who routinely sends you real mail – banks, insurance companies, magazine publishers, and such – of my new physical address. The last time I moved, all that sort of stuff had to be done in person or by phone. Now, many of them can be done on line. In the process of updating all the personal information profiles in all these sites are requests from them to add, confirm, or change any emails I’d want from them. From most I prefer no email correspondence. In fact, in most instances, I prefer no correspondence from them. Of course there were some companies I had not had a previous “internet connection” (tee her) and had to complete their profile including an email address along with a local street address, and all of them with the obligatory, “check here to confirm you have read and understand our 574 page statement of privacy practices.” Now I’m wondering if one of those that I so blithely clicked my way through was informing me they would be selling their mailing lists to the highest bidder. And maybe even the second and third highest bidders as consolation prizes.

Yeah, they’re out to get us, and I’ve been gotten.

Into everyone’s life rain falls. We can’t control what happens in life but we can control how we respond. That’s why in the most recent Uplift! We suggested that when life gives you lemons, make banana bread! Read about it here!

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Something I said?

Michael 9 Comments

I was speaking with a friend who was stuck for something he couldn’t remember. “Oh, you know. It was something you said, you must remember.” “Something I said?” “Yeah, something you said. Oh, we were at, umm, give me a minute, hmm hmm hmm,” and that point he started humming. Humming.  A tune, a little ditty, a song. It could have been my imagination stemming from his comment “something you said” added to the fact that I and just gotten out of the car and the David Benoit song, Something You Said, was playing on the radio, but I was certain that was the tune he was humming. Whatever it was, he had hummed his way to remembering. “Yeah, I got it. You said…” and off we went into our conversation, that to be honest, right now I don’t remember at all. Maybe I should start singing to myself and it will come to me.

All sorts of people, from the giants in cognitive sciences to everyday bloggers, have written about memory. There are tips and tricks to tackle, vitamin pills to pop, herbs to brew into faux teas, and almost none of them work…except for the one that works for you. I’ve heard that if you want to tell somebody something and you don’t remember what, go back into the room where you first thought of it and it will come to you. I’ve heard if you recreate the original environment in which something happened, it will comeback to you. Cook something from your past, look at pictures from your past, all great ideas except…how do you know what room to go back to if you don’t know what you want to remember? How will cooking Grandma’s almost famous pear butter help you remember where you put your insurance card and car registration the nice police officer just asked for? If you remember that you forgot something but you don’t remember what it is, how will you know what environment to recreate? You could be reliving your third date with the second person you dated in your first year of grad school when you should be soaking in a hot tub on the back patio with fireworks booming over the city just on the other side of those trees.

It is said scents are a powerful memory aid as is music, but I think those are more for abstract memories. You smell something and it reminds you of something you did or somewhere you went. A particular song jogs free a recollection of a specific event or a special, or even not so special person in your life’s past. But if you want to remember where you put the combination to the suitcase locks that you use maybe once a year, sniffing all the pineapples in the produce section isn’t going to loosen that bit of information, not even if you want the suitcase to pack for a week in Hawaii.

No, for that kind of memory jogger, I believe we’re stuck with the classic folk remedies and you might as well get to retracing those steps and rebuilding that scene. Actually, there is something to those methods, and to my friend’s humming interlude, that is far superior to the “fling everything in the air and see if you can spot what you’re looking for coming down” method of remembering – they all force you to calm your mind.

I’m no cognitive scientist so I’m likely wrong about this, but I don’t think it has anything to do with where you are, what you’re smelling, or what size kettle Grandma use for that pear butter. Think about it, when you retrace your steps. What are you doing? You are saying to you self, “Self, look around and see what seems special about here,” or, “okay, Grandma had 3 really big pots, now what color were they?” or, “why did I tie this string on my finger?” All of them are other ways of saying, “calm down and think. You can figure this out.” It doesn’t matter whether those old wives tales are true because they aren’t actually jogging your memory. But it matters that for you, there is a truism among them because it is the one that gets you to calm yourself and allow you mind to pull that memory into your consciousness.

So the next time you need to remember something, just tell yourself, “I can do this. Let me think calmly and rationally. After all, it was probably something I said.”

In the most recent  Uplift! we explore not just wanting to help but actually doing something to help, being passionate about being compassionate!

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https://youtu.be/BQE0pZbhG10

Springing up all over

Michael 6 Comments

This is it, today is the day, the day we’ve all been waiting … okay I’m not going to do that again. I have no idea what you’re waiting for but indeed, today is the day I have been waiting for, for today, at 5:24 this afternoon (per the Old Farmer’s Almanac), winter turns to spring!

As far as winters go, this has been the mildest winter I can recall, and I recall a lot of winters.  But it started output terribly cold, super cold, super terribly cold even, and I never got over the coldness of those first few days of Winter 2022-2023 even when some of the days in February approached and in at least one case exceeded 70°F. I think it might be because in between those 70° days there was always a 30° day. Do you know what that’s like? Well if you lived within 10 or 12 miles of me you do. Anything outside that radius and you were having you own weird winter weather that may or may not have had daily 40° temperature swings.

Of course that was only in February. In March, it has been just plain cold. It snowed the past two days. It snowed 4 days out of the past 7. The temperature hasn’t been above freezing since Friday afternoon. I’m done with this. Today I fully expect at 5:24 this afternoon to hear birds singing, see flowers blooming, and watch trees leaf out before my very eyes. If that doesn’t happen, I want to know right now, who to go to for a refund. The old Old Farmer’s Almanac never let me done before. I expect it to not let me down now.

I do hope I haven’t led you to believe that I’m being unreasonable about this. I think as I get older, and Heaven knows, I’ve gotten older(!), I’ve grown less tolerant of cold, but more less tolerant of these crazy temperature swings. I’m sure I would have been not as disconcerted with this winter if it had just stayed being winter for it’s duration, or maybe a gradual and slight warming as we approached this year’s vernal equinox. (Good word, no?) Rumor has it, La Niña, the lesser famous but more troublesome Pacific wind current, is, after three years, winding down. Those who know say this has been a major contributor to the weird weather patterns we’ve been experiencing. (Please note, I said weird weather patterns, not concerning climate conditions – there is a difference.) If we get a year of neutral weather influences we might see seasons that actual look like Currier and Ives envisioned and that would be okey dokey with me. But for now, I’ll settle for birds singing, flowers blooming, and leaves once again covering those bare branches, sometime later today.

So then, what is the day we’ve all been waiting for. Altogether now – TODAY! Thank you very much. I knew I could count on you.

Anything worth having takes effort. With trust in the process what is worth having can be yours. In the latest Uplift!we explore why making a good life is like making good pizza!

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Tuning in to the nature channel

Michael 5 Comments

Tomorrow is the day everyone is waiting for. No. Wait. I’ve done that not much too often already. Maybe tomorrow is. It’s Pi Day, but I already wrote that one to death. Maybe it’s Wednesday, the Ides of March. (Nobody ever talks about other Ides although every month has one.) (Hmm, is that right? Oh yes, every month has an Ides, but grammatically, it’s that right making Ides a singular?) (I think it is.) (where was I?) (oh,yes…) In truth, any day can be the day that somebody is waiting for. And that’s a good thing. It shows we are still alive and looking forward, rather than being withdrawn and looking back.

Spring is naturally a time to look forward. Vernal, the fancy adjective for all things spring-like (think vernal equinox) can itself be replaced by the not so fancy adjective, youthful. Spring truly blooms with new growth, youthful buds beginning their journey to full fledged flower-hood, or leaf land, or whatever they may grow to be.

In most American living rooms you find a similar furniture placement. A nice comfy sofa, loveseat, or couch, an easy chair with or without matching ottoman, and/or a recliner (or two or three) aimed facing or providing an obstructed view to — the centerpiece of American culture, the television. The bigger the better! Everything happens on that screen: sports, dramas, movies, upcoming coronations, bits of news, and Saturday Night Live.

My living room isn’t much different than that prototypical gathering spot. There is one addition though. I am fortunate to have one wall in my living room that is all window. (Maybe not so fortunate during the heating months but poetically speaking, fortuitously fortunate.) And I have facing that window a small couch and in that couch I sat the other day and looked out the window at the real life movie called spring. (This was before the snow squalls of this past weekend [sigh].) Out there the trees were budding and birds were looking for a good spot where they might anchor their nest. Other birds could be heard singing, and the grass in the field behind the trees was taking on that lush green we’ll only see the first few weeks of spring. And it’s not even spring yet! It was like watching the coming attractions on my own movie screen that looks out to nature.

So yes, tomorrow is the day someone is looking forward to. And tomorrow’s tomorrow will be the day someone is looking forward to tomorrow. And so on, and so on. Any day can be the day somebody is looking forward to. Even the birds. They told me that the day I sat in my spot, when I was tuned in to the nature channel.

How well do you thank your cast and crew? We talked about our supporting casts in the most recent edition of Uplift! at ROAMcare.org.

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The most wonderful time of the year

Michael 8 Comments

It’s almost here. The day we’ve been waiting for. (Don’t you just love ads, articles, blogs even that start that way. Like all of the world is “we.” It’s like the YouTube videos that begin, “You’re doing [something incredibly common and impossible to do wrong] wrong.”) (But I digress.) The day we’ve (cough cough) been waiting for is almost here.  Yes…[dramatic overture type music]…it’s Oscar time. (You know I’m really not allowed to say that. It’s copyrighted and a couple years ago they were going after those using it without permission hard. Yeah, well, tough on them! I said it!) Now where was I. Oh yes, it’s Oscar time!

For movie buffs, it really is a big time. Those awards still hold a mystique among awards, and people who live and die for movies have no real life. 

I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to say that.

Take 2! People who live and die for movies look forward to this time of year like normal people look forward to Groundhog Day. And I can say that because I too look forward to Oscar season. Oh not for the awards. I mean I guess they’re okay even though they really have gotten away from awarding the best performances and replaced that with awarded the performances that have the most to say but then sometimes that happens to be the same picture like last year. That was a good movie and I can’t wait to se it again when it’s like 40 years old. Umm…

Oh darn,I lost my place again. Don’t go anywhere. Hmm, people live and die. Look forward to too. I’m one of them. Oh yeah, I found it.

And I can say that because I too am one of them. One of the them who look forward to Oscar season but not for the awards. I look forward to this time of year because my favorite television station, TCM, plays an entire month of Oscar nominated and winning films from when they really were really good. I’ve said many times, my passion is old movies, preferably pre-1950s, certainly pre-1960s, and a rare one after that.

There was a difference in the movies from 70 and 80 years ago. There will never be a movie couple so well matched as William Powell and Myrna Loy. There will never be an actress so perfect in every role she played as Audrey Hepburn. Nor a musical as free spirited as Singing in the Rain, or a drama as soul searching as The Red Shoes. And there will never be another Casablanca. What made so many of the great movies of the golden age of movies such great movies is something we will never see again in movie land. The studio system. So completely controlling of all that went in the it should be The Studio System.

Take Casablanca as an example. Every part was perfectly cast. Not just the leading roles which none of the leads were who the producer Hal Wallis wanted but who the studio gave him. Even the director Michael Curtiz was not the first choice. All off the minor characters filled their roles like they had been doing those jobs for ever. And they had. Actors then were on contract to the studios and they all filled a niche. You want a bartender? They got an actor who played a bar tender so often he’d be a better bartender than a bartender. Do you need a street vendor? Central casting has a dozen to pick from, what do you want to sell? The system worked. Casablanca was nominated for 8 academy Awards and came away with 3, best picture, best director, and best adapted screenplay.

So next Sunday while most movie maniacs will be glued to their sets to see who gets slapped this year, I’ll be halfway through a smorgasbord of the best movies, some that even won for being the best movie when being the best mean being the best and the only message was “let us entertain you.”

Every moment of every day has the potential to be one that will be never forgotten. Those memorable moments can be anything and happen anytime. Last week in Uplift! we asked, will some moment today be your most memorable?

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Intelligently speaking

Michael 13 Comments

Somebody out there please note in the comments section if you have NOT heard ANYTHING about Artificial Intelligence written ANYWHERE ANYTIME since the beginning of this year. Oh My Gigabytes you can’t open a web page, a journal, a newspaper, an e-zine, and OG magazine, an ANYTHING without some reference to AI. AI wrote this, AI didn’t write this, AI picked this song list, AI can go screw itself. Arrggh!

First of all, those old enough to remember “The Jetsons,” isn’t this what we dreamed of? We wake up and a robot picks out our clothes, another makes our breakfast, there’s one offering us the morning AI written newspaper, and then off to our self-flying cars, whisking us to work where we push a button and a robot punches us in, and another prints out the day’s workflow completed by a series of techno bots. All before our morning coffee break.

If you’re concerned the robots are planning an uprising and are after your job, house, spouse, or pet mouse, listen up. They aren’t. But just in case, I say we get in front of the issue and work out a task list they can start with. For instance:

AI mediated email spam filters. Clearly deciphering “***L-A-S-T-C-H-A-N-C-E before we !SUSPEND! your account***” as a suspicious missive is too difficult for the unintelligent spam filters that come with our email providers. I bet if an AI bot can write tomorrow’s weather forecast, it can predict bad things will happen if a human opens that email.

AI mediated traffic signals. The next time you are stopped at a traffic light, look up. Up there where the lights are hanging. Yes, there. You will see a plethora, or a lot even, of doo-dads that read license plates, count cars going by, adjust the light brightness based on the ambient light, and hold pigeons up (crows in rural areas). But they can’t tell that I’m the only car there and within 3 blocks in any direction, idling away, waiting out the full 2 minute cycle before I can proceed. Clearly, we need a more intelligent traffic signal handler. While we’re out there on the road, it also would be nice if those signs on the highways that tell you it’s 2 miles to the next exit with food can tell you if the line at the drive thru is also 2 miles.

AI mediated laundry centers (also know as expensive washers and dryers sold in sets). I have said this before, the only instruction Americans can be counted to follow is “Dry Clean Only” and that’s only if they can decode the hieroglyphs that are taking over printed instructions. It was hard enough finding the tabs and making out handling instructions printed in light gray on white tags when they were written with words. You know: “cold water like colors lay flat to dry do not iron do not bleach do not wear to grandmas house are you sure these don’t make your butt look fat.” Now we have a picture of a highball glass with wavy lines in it and a slash through it. There might very well be a translation guide in the washer instruction book but that’s one of the instructions we don’t read so just give us an AI washer that can figure it out for us.

Okay. Now I think I’ll go fill a highball glass highway with bourbon, top it with more bourbon, and have enough of those until everything looks wavy while my robot vacuum cleaner picks up after me. Have a good day!

We make important choices every day and anyone of them, even the ones that may seem insignificant at the time, can be life changing. In Uplift! at ROAMcare.org we suggest treating them all as if they are. Go on and click it. It’s only a 3 minute read.

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Ad Wars – Holiday edition

Michael 7 Comments

I am so looking forward to tomorrow, it is palpable! Feel it in the air! Capture its essence on the wind! Yes, I’m talking about Holiday Advertisement Armistice! We can all breathe a sigh of relief!! For a day or two.

I know I’m not the only one who can tell the season by the ads on TV and now on line too. Fragrances? If it’s snowing outside we must be coming up on Christmas. If there are birds singing it’s getting close to Mothers Day. Otherwise, you better have a good deodorant if you want to smell good. Televisions, really big televisions and power tools? Fathers Day will soon be here with the tools needed to build a world class man cave and the electronics to fill it. Caribbean resorts flooding the airways? We must getting close to Thanksgiving so we can plan for some warm sunny days on white sand and leave the white snow behind. And jewelry? Clearly Valentine’s Day approaches. Oh there might be some token pieces in May for Moms Day, and Christmas is always good for a nice necklace, but they pale to the brilliance of the gems you find on air during the first two weeks of February.

Personally, I’m getting sick of finding pictures on diamonds the size of baby heads mounted on rings of the shiniest metals retouching can allow in my Instagram feed. Maybe I’m in the minority but I wouldn’t even consider proposing, or want to be proposed to, on February 14, January 1, December 25, or my intended’s birthday. Show a little originality! Make it a moment that will always be remembered for the special occasion that it is. It should be a special day only those two share. In 40 years when she turns to he and says, “Do you remember when you asked me to marry you?” the answer shouldn’t be, “Duh, yeah…Valentine’s Day. I remember cuz it was right after the Super Bowl. That reminds me. We’re out of beer. [Burp!].”

But then what do I know. I’ll be the one spending Valentine’s Day with my therapist and then going to the neighborhood pub for the Tuesday hamburger lunch special before heading home to check and make sure the ring I bought back then is still in its case, in the back of the sock drawer, just in case someday (but not Valentine’s Day) she changes her mind.

And I’m looking forward to a few days of respite before images of green milkshakes clog up Instagram.

We all owe something to someone for our existence. We explore how we repay them in Uplift! On ROAMcare.org.

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All you need…

Michael 10 Comments

You certainly have noticed that at the end of each post I include a teaser to the current ROAMcare blog. From the ROAMcare website we explained how I and my co-founding partner are attempting to help people “bridge the gap from existing to living and refresh your enthusiasm for life!” We aren’t special any way.  We are ordinary people who have a desire to live what years we have in positivity and to invite others to join us in that endeavor. Our blog posts are drawn from our experiences.

Last week’s message resounded with me more deeply than any we had yet published. It is the essence of bridging the gap from existing to living. Like so many of the most profound concepts, it’s strength lies in its simplicity. If I was to write a teaser for this blog it would be,“As we begin February and almost everybody’s first thought is of love, let us consider those we love with all types of love, and tell them we love them.”

Today I’m going to do something I’ve never done.Instead of a teaser to the current post I am reprinting it in its entirety. I feel the message is so needed to be heard by as many people as possible. If you would like to share the message please do. If you should, I only ask that you attribute it to ROAMcare.org. The original post can be found at https://www.roamcare.org/post/three-little-words

Thank you!

Three Little Words

The Oxford English Dictionary lists over 750,000 words in the English language. There are about 171,000 words in common usage. According to a 2007 article in the journal Science, Mathias Mehl and others reported the average American adult speaks about 16,000 words a day. Of all those words, we don’t use many of them to convey our most important messages. Perhaps that is because we only have one word for the most important message of them all – love.

As we begin February, almost everybody’s first thought is of love. For as much that goes on during this, the shortest month of the year, Valentine’s Day holds a lot of attention. Valentine’s Day indeed is for lovers. But love is for so many more!

Humans are social beings. We relish, in fact we need to be with and interact with other humans. Our connections with each other are often born of need but grow because we want to explore and deepen those connections with other individuals, certain individuals. All of those connections are some form of love. The Greeks did it well. They coined seven different words for love, one for each type of love – Romantic, Affectionate, Familial, Selfless, Playful, Committed, and Self love, Eros, Philia, Storge. Agape, Ludus, Pragma, and Philautia respectively. Each type of love exhibits its own characteristics, but no one is more important, more special, more “loving” than any other. And yet, we seldom hear people verbally express their love for others except in the case of Romantic or sometimes Familial love. We are more likely to tell others we love our jobs, we love pizza, we love to travel, or we love swimming, than we are to tell our best friend, “I love you.”

Love is a source of motivation and strength for us as individuals. All types of love can induce the release of dopamine, adrenaline and norepinephrine, the so-called “feel-good chemicals.” But to affect that release, a relationship with a specific other person must be realized. Simplistically speaking, each form of love demonstrates a specific relationship. Eros involves a physical connection with others. Pragma is characterized by an emotional connection with another. Agape is known by its selfless, almost one-way flow of compassion and concern. But there is no pure form of each love. Some characteristics of each of the seven types of love can be found in all of the seven types of love. And thus, any love can improve a person’s self-worth, build trust, or strengthen family and social ties.

Another trait of humans is the need for physical contact. Reported by the National Institutes of Health is a 1995 study on the significance of physical contact that proposes four hugs per day as an antidote for depression, eight hugs per day to achieve mental stability and twelve hugs per day to possibly affect real psychological growth. We see people engaging more universally in hugging throughout the seven love spectrum. Family members hug each other, care givers hug their charges, friends hug their friends!

We suggest that hugging is an outward sign of love. People respond positively to hugs just as they would to any other indication they are loved, whether a kiss, a physical touch, a clasped hand-shake, a warm smile, or a verbal acknowledgement that they are loved – being told, “I love you!!”

As we begin February and almost everybody’s first thought is of love, let us consider those we love with all types of love, and tell them we love them. If we’re willing to say so to a large pizza it should be easy to admit it to our loving, living connections, no matter what type of love we feel for them. It’s just three little words out of so many you will say today.

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