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Practicing Gratitude, T-Day+1
I’m feeling my age. It’s in my thumbs, among other parts. I’ve been developing arthritis in my thumbs for the last five or six years. When my mother was losing her memory, she’d say, “I’m losing my mind. It’s a good thing I had such a good one to start with.” I’m beginning to think the same about my thumbs. Surely opposable thumbs are one way we’re made in the image and likeness of God. Opposable thumbs are power and we miss them when they’re gone.
So, what am I grateful for, other than having had thumbs that work up to this point? Velcro closures. And I’m not talking about clothing. I’m mean those newfangled Velcro closures on plastic bags of dog treats and bird food, etc. One of these days, manufacturers of human consumables will wise up and start using Velcro closures on frozen berries and impossible to open potato chip bags and then I’ll really be in trouble!
I so despise the “zip-lock” closure bags, I’ve been known to pay more for the same product in a bag with Velcro closure (Bark Butter Bits for the birds). Whoever invented Velcro closures for plastic bags has my undying gratitude. Or, at least, my gratitude until I’m dead. After that, I don’t expect my thumbs hurting when I make that pinching motion will matter anymore.
How about you? What modern devices are you grateful for?
Published in General
I totally agree, Mrs. Chauvinist. I’m not good either at closing zip-lock plastic bags. I love Velcro.
I’m grateful for the television remote. Without the remote, I would have to get up, get down, get up, get down, get up, get down (well, you get the idea) when I surf the channels.
What a wonderful device!
Who says you can’t teach an old doG new tricks?!
I’m grateful that I’ve finally reached an age when, if I need a prescription, the pharmacy puts those non-childproof caps on the jar of pills so I can get them open before they expire. Or I do. My thumbs are fine. My fingers, not so much anymore, and I’ve long held to the truism that, if you can get one of those caps off the jar of pills, you probably don’t need what’s inside it.
Books with pages and page numbers. And we still have them despite the attempts of the Luddite Internet to take us back to continuous scrolls.
Air conditioning. True, it’s not exactly modern anymore, but I still like it.
Yes! I simply cannot do those e-readers. Unless maybe it’s a work of fiction, which I rarely read anyway. I’ve discovered I’m very spatially oriented, and when I want to look back in a book for something I’d like to remember, I tend to place it in some quadrant of the book, on the left or right-hand page, and in the upper or lower half of the page. That’s impossible with continuous scrolling. I know, I know, there are highlighting functions on e-readers. Whatev. I want to exercise my spatial abilities as long as I have them.
I’ve never known anyone cool enough to say “whatev,” though I once knew a woman who said, “True, dat.” I think she called herself She, a shortened version of She-boom, a variation of the name of what many people think was the world’s first rock and roll song.
The wheel. I’m old.
Yes, but how are your thumbs?
I thought I was the only one! I do have random aches and pains, but my thumbs have been bothering me, too! My thumb-aches come and go, but I was beginning to wonder if I was getting arthritis–just in my thumbs! Maybe we can consider ourselves comrades in thumbs. . . or something.
An appropriately cheesy comment.
Let’s see, so far we have the wheel, the printing press, non-safety lock pill bottle caps, the TV remote, and air conditioning. You people must be much older than I realized and you’re not very observant of modern innovations that make your life as antiques easier. Buncha ingrates.
I couldn’t get along without high boy toilets. I just can’t getup if my knees are up to my chin. Need another steroid shot in my right knee.
One of the things for which I am most thankful is my lavender wrap that I can heat up in the microwave. I use it on my neck and shoulders, mainly, but they also have one for wrists.
It probably won’t help, but just in case it might: I have off-and-on thumb issues. It’s a wonderful combination of carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis, and in one wrist, the result of a bone that broke that was behind another bone in my wrist that kept the bone from healing correctly. (A very unpleasant teenager pushed me down at a local skating rink when I took my kids one evening. I have a lot to remember him by. :-) ) The doctor told me it would never heal properly because of the poor blood supply to that bone. I exercised it continuously when I was recuperating, and actually it has done better than it would have without the terrific physical therapist I had. She taught me to keep it moving by pretending to conduct an orchestra. I always listen to classical music when I’m driving, so that’s when I conducted. I am quite sure people in the cars near me thought I was totally crazy. :-)
At any rate, one night I sent my husband to the drugstore to get me a new wrist wrap thingy, and instead of bringing back the same wrist wrap I had been using, he came back with a thumb and wrist lightweight but immobilizing brace.
The trick is to keep it perfectly straight while I sleep to enable the blood to do its thing in my hand and wrist. I do that by sleeping on my side and putting a pillow under that elbow-wrist-hand limb. It keeps it elevated and straight all night. I do this for a couple of nights, plus take Ibuprofen for the inflammation that has resulted from my abuse of that wrist, and I feel better completely. That routine has really changed my life. I don’t know why my husband knew to get that kind of brace rather than the one I had been using, but he did. I think guys who played in sports know things that I never learned. :-) I asked him how he knew that the problem in my wrist and thumb was a wrist-thumb issue, not just wrist or thumb. He just laughed at me. :-)
It’s this one.
LED lightbulbs that are do not require bulb changes very often.
Pre-washed, cut, and mixed salad greens that make salad making so easy I eat more salads for lunch than I otherwise would (which is beneficial for my health).
Pre-cooked, cubed, and frozen chicken to put on those salads.
Berries and other fruits that have been developed to withstand long-distance shipping yet still taste pretty good, so I can have berries all year ’round (the shipper berries of 20 – 30 years ago hardly tasted like berries at all). (The many plant patents that Driscoll Berries gets on strawberries provides a clue about how much work they and others put into this issue.)
Hot running water is the blessing of our age. It is still relatively modern—there are still plenty of places in the world that don’t have it.
I’m also quite partial to my new bluetooth ear piece for my phone. Extrovert that I am, I like to talk a lot. This made it easy in the kitchen yesterday and the interminable times I am on the road.
The leaves are just dropping in SC. We have a new battery powered leaf blower. Woo Hoo!
I am with all the other folks, who recognized early on that words on an actual printed page with book heft to match, is still the only way to go. The newest part about that is Amazon delivers with regularity to my house.
Lithium-ion batteries. I have various drills, drivers, and saws that use them, as well as two chain saws (a pole saw and a “regular” one), a leaf blower, weed whackers, brush cutter, and a push lawn mower, and miscellaneous other tools. I continue to be amazed at how they make it easier to do things. They’re also quiet and easy to maintain. I haven’t yet got a battery-powered snow blower, but may get one to do some of the bits that my neighbor can’t get to with his snowplow. When I get older, maybe I’ll add an e-bike.
I’m all thumbs.
I’m all thumbs.
Just wait ’til you have an accident that pierces one of those batteries….
Not a good risk/reward tradeoff, in my not-so-humble opinion.
Contact lenses. 1TB hard drives. Memory sticks. Those multi-level toothbrushes. Craft beers that are not IPAS.
I see what you did there!
Cross-post comments are the best.
Hey fuddy duddies! Yes you. C’mon, Mr. and Mrs. last century, rid yourself of your sentimental attachment to paper and get into the digital age with a Kindle.
Kindles are the best thing ever. I haven’t touched paper in years, and that includes the newspaper.
What about the tradeoff of internal combustion engines vs animal power? The former have some pretty devastating accidents.
Those animals weren’t so safe either–getting kicked by a horse is no joke.
But anyways, it’s risk versus reward. I buy corded tools, because in 99.999% of situations, a power outlet is within range, thanks to a 100′ extension. Battery powered tools save a little time on the spot, but waste a lot of power (you don’t get back but 80% of the power used in the charger), and have rather terrible environmental consequences (to make the batteries). On top of the minor-damage==combustion relationship.
Internal combustion engines make whole categories of endeavors possible–things animal power simply could not do for the masses.
I forgot about vacuum cleaners. We have a couple of those that are powered by Lithium-Ion batteries.
You’re on a roll today, She.
You are right. I always thought the prediction that we would “lose our grip” as we aged referred to something totally different.
I’m now very fond of my fairly new iPhone. I got some pretty good video at Snoqualmie Falls this afternoon. This is my first smartphone, and I am still learning all the new things it can do.