Welcome to the Club: I asked my husband what we were going to do with the satellite dish he’d taken down. It had been sitting on the deck for some time, and I hoped to hear something about hauling it to the dump.  “We’ll keep it,” he said. “And set it down there. And just shoot at it. It’ll be something to shoot at.”

“Ah,” I said. “We’re officially rednecks now.”

A New Site to Play On: I’d heard about Social Security’s top ten names of every decade. What I didn’t know is that I’d find a list of the top 200 names per decade, and reciting 2000-2010 aloud to my younger daughter was much more interesting than working on my job right then. “So are these all your classmates?”  Yep, those were the names of kids she knew. New parents had the best study the whole list of 200 names because a popular name might appear in one spelling at say, number 11, with 50,000 proud owners of that moniker–not too bad. But don’t relax yet, as the name might show up three more times under various spellings, all representing tens of thousands of little girls. So unless you want your child to be one of four McKenzies in her Kindergarten, you’d better do your homework.

Grocery Store Games: I think whoever is behind packaging our groceries is playing mind games with us, tweaking sizes and prices just to see if we’ll notice:

“What if we charge $4.99 for three flat pizza crusts?”

“Oh, yeah, they’ll buy that. ‘Specially if they’re good.”

“They’re real good. But hey, how about after a year or so, we start shrinking the crusts just a little bit? So they’re a little smaller each time they’re purchased?  Heh, heh, heh. Customers will think they’re going crazy.”

“As long as they’re good and $4.99, they’ll keep buying ’em.”

“Okay, so how about these bean and cheese burritos? What if we price ’em reliably at four bucks per dozen for a couple years? And sometimes they go on sale at two dozen for seven bucks? Then what if all of a sudden we put, like, only ten burritos in there and charge more? Would they notice? And one day, the customer’s going to do a double take and see there’s only eight per package. Are we still in business?”

“Yeah . . . but at that point, I think we’d need to be prepared for a drop in sales. And we’d probably deserve it. But if they can’t make their own with a package of tortillas and a can of refries, then they probably deserve it.”

Trick for Marking My Pill-Swallowing Moment: At my younger daughter’s suggestion, I now associate taking my morning medication with a key word of the day. At first, I was having lots of fun with it–iridescent, etc. Sometimes, I’d text my word to her and she’d humor me with “Oh, good one!” But it’s too early to keep trying to remember my high school vocabulary list, so now I’ve lowered the bar and just come up with Disney names. This morning it was Donald Duck, and I went around singing the old Mickey Mouse Club song. This ritual, although potentially annoying to others, is a lot better than racking my brain trying to remember whether I took my pill.

Things I Avoid as an English Teacher: Some of these video shorts narrated by grave medical professionals border on funny: “Things I avoid as an ER surgeon . . . number one, high-speed motorcycle riding without a helmet. Number two, Truth or Dare. Number three, jumping on a trampoline while holding a kitchen knife.”  If you’re badly in need of this advice, you might have other problems. One ostensible pharmacist’s dubious counsel would scare viewers away from basic over-the-counter stuff. I’d consult my doctor before doing anything she said.

Another New Word Out There: I first saw practicable in the Covid guidelines that would allow our small school to open its campus in the fall after the spring of 2020. The word was used repeatedly, and I wondered why the deviation from practical. I understood what it was saying—if it’s practical and you are able to do it—and figured that state government manuals must be using this language. Then the word started popping up here and there in other places. Most recently, someone used it here on Ricochet. It may have begun its life as official language and then leaked out into the population. However popular, practicable may remain for many of us as the forced marriage of two independent words who were perfectly happy on their own.

The Apex of Entertainment: A few years ago, Facebook displayed a feature called “Reels” on my feed. I had no idea what it was, and ignored it. Gradually, I got sucked into these video shorts, kind of a competitor with TikTok. These are the most addictive forms of entertainment known to man. If you haven’t started on them, it’s probably better that you go about your productive life and leave them alone. Who knew there’d come a time in history that, just by clicking the right-hand arrow, we’d summon a story clip about a rescue dog, or watch a turtle speed along on a tiny skateboard following his beloved cat, or witness a newborn say “I love you?”  No other entertainment experience compares. I have to remind myself that I could view these into infinity, and it will soon be time to do other things, such as go to bed or earn a living.

A Little Video for Dessert: Speaking of video shorts, here’s a TikTok my daughter made of our cat Dash, who makes up for what he lacks in kitty intellect with a fondness for playing fetch:

(I’m having trouble getting a link up–it won’t upload here. Try this.)