My daughter was over for lunch yesterday. After our meal we sat out on the patio enjoying the air’s in-between storms sweetness. While we discussing the differences between curly and straight leafed parsley she brought up traits children inherit that they don’t notice until they’ve put a few years on their adulthood and that reminded me that UPS avoids left turns in their delivery routes.
Well it made perfect sense to us! That’s because of the trait she got from me. Babbling (her word). Or rambling (my word). Or perhaps story telling (the polite words I should have led off with). (Maybe)
Apparently it came up last week when she was out with a couple of her girlfriends and their conversation move to the things they do they don’t realize they do that nobody but their families understand. Mostly only their families understand. Most of their families only understand. Some of their families understand. Their families might recognize but even most of them don’t necessarily understand.
It you think about it, there is probably at least one thing you do that nobody else in the world (or at least is not common behavior in your part of the world) that you can trace to you parents or an older sibling or that great aunt who came over every Sunday for chicken and spaghetti and then stayed to watch Gomer Pyle then the Ed Sullivan Show. It might be the way you tilt your head at a weird angle when contemplating answers to a particularly difficult question. It might be how you fold a napkin under the plate at dinner’s end. Or it could be in how you ramble.
Actually, it’s not rambling as much as always providing the back story. And its back story if necessary. After all, every story has a story and a good story teller knows the story’s story as clearly as the story. It’s what makes for storied stories. In my daughter’s case, as a copywriter and content editor, being able to tell a story is essential although she often has to temper her desire to be as thorough as she’d like. But when it comes to her personal writing, no story takes a back seat to its own story. Or back story. Even.
For me, I was often reminded to get to the point more quickly at meetings or in email exchanges but just as often I was glad I kept the thoroughness in my correspondence knowing that while others were getting calls and memos asking for more detail, my projects were being presented for approval and reports stamped “OK.” Still, I have a hard time with text messages and even Twitter’s new expanded character limit is far less than appropriate for any meaningful communication.
So, you know UPS designs its routes with as few left turns as possible. Apparently it means a tremendous savings in fuel costs. That came up the last time my daughter was over and we has just finished a killer frittata for brunch.
It made perfect sense to us.
Later that same day I was at the nursery (the plant kind, not the baby kind), picking out some herbs for my patio garden. Fortunately I only needed 4, or at most 6 plants. Why is that fortunate? Because they were on sale! What were regular price pots of 3.28 each were on sale for “$2.87 each, $24/tray of 8.” Of course someone had three trays in his cart. I hope he was planning on asking them being rung up separately.
Actually, this is from my fortieth. Seems I can’t find those from ten years later. I think we were using digital by then!
IDs without photos are hardly identifying yet that was the standard in the dark ages of paper licenses. Of course that eliminated an entire cottage industry since it meant there was no need for a fake ID business. All you had to do was find an older somebody who wasn’t going out the same night as you who reasonably matched your basic info … height, eye and hair color, and sex. Sex is important. Having an older sister is of no benefit when you’re a younger brother.
But as is so often the case, the biggest seem to have the least. And Easter is the biggest for the Christian community for if not for Easter there would be no Christian community. But still the fewest and the least. There just aren’t those big events we associate with the holiday outside of the church.
My own little family is no exception. Although there are our every year church activities and things we do most of the time, we have but one family tradition we’ve done every year since my daughter was old enough to sit at the table and spill colored water about the kitchen. Dying Easter eggs on Holy Saturday. This year since my dialysis schedule has me sitting in a chair not at the kitchen table most of this Saturday, we rescheduled our egg dying for today, Holy Thursday.
Traditions are good for that. Connecting seasons with the people. Take the opportunity this season to start or continue your own tradition. Whatever season you want to celebrate, Easter, Spring or Baseball, can be a chance to make new or stronger connections with the people most important to you.
Have you seen the new Internet food fad, donut chips? The last time I was at the store I purposely sought out day old donuts to try them. What you’re supposed to do is split your leftover donut in half so you have two skinny disks. Then you coat these in sugar and cinnamon and press them in a panini press. Don’t waste your time. Or your donuts. Unless you like flat, scorched, stale donuts.
It’s been eleven days since we changed our clocks to Daylight Saving Time and I still have one clock that hasn’t’ been advanced yet. If people want an extra hour of daylight in the summer why don’t they just get up an hour earlier?
If the server and the cooker are related you absolutely take the establishment off your future consideration list. Otherwise the decision is difficult. As much as you want the tasty morsels you can’t subject yourself to bad behavior to get them. Maybe you give them one more chance and see if the owner saw the errors in his or her earlier hiring practices and has upgraded the front of the house staff. On the other hand, if a subsequent visit reveals the same poor presentation, well that’s a combination that just has to go.
A great standing job would be TV weather person. They only stand in front of the big screen for 2 or 3 minutes then it’s back to checking the weather app on the phone to prepare for the next segment. I can do that. I even already have the app on my phone. Two actually. The one that I wanted and downloaded myself and the one that magically showed up the last time my phone automatically updated itself from wherever it automatically updates itself. If I would be willing to move I can probably do it without either of those apps. I’m certain that in San Diego I can go on air and say “tomorrow will be warm and sunny,” and be right 362 days of the year, 363 on leap years.
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