Convenience

Convenience – how we love it! We pursue it and snatch it up at the earliest opportunity. Many of us make our lives so convenient (and sedentary) that in order to get any exercise we have to join fitness centers where we can use machines that produce nothing.

“Working out,” is what it’s called. It seems like “acting out,” in the old sense of pretending to be or do something on a stage. If that comparison is valid, “working out” must mean that one is pretending to work. Is an underlying implication that physical effort is beneath the person who “works out?” No, this has nothing to do with snobbery. It’s just that modern life places most of us in positions that are totally convenient and require no physical effort from us. Yet we know that our bodies were designed to be used, and that exercise is essential to keeping our them in good order. That’s probably why apartment complexes and businesses offer free gyms and why there are many for-profit health clubs.

This scheme of “working out” seems to produce a great deal of wasted energy. What if all the exercise machines were built or retrofitted to harness this wasted energy as electricity? Just imagine that every exercise bike and treadmill was hooked to a generator. The wattage harvested would not be insignificant.

If every machine were designed to harvest energy, “working out” would become just plain old “working.” Perhaps even the vocabulary would change. Instead of bragging that one ran twenty miles on the elliptical machine or squatted three hundred pounds, one could say, “I generated 60 watts of electricity this morning.”

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

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The Customer Is Always Right, Right?

“The customer is always right,” is a traditional motto for businesses in the United States. What the customer wants is what he gets, at least that’s how it used to be.

But today things have changed. It’s the stockholder who is always right, not the customer. Businesses don’t care about the customer now; they care only about the bottom lines on their financial statements. 

Here is a recent example: Baker’s Chocolate used to offer an eight-ounce package of baking chocolate containing eight individually wrapped one ounce squares. Each square had a groove down the middle, making it easier for the cook to use half an ounce, if needed.

In 2013, everything changed. The package contents went from eight ounces to four ounces. Moreover, the individually wrapped one-ounce packages disappeared and were replaced by a single four- ounce bar of baking chocolate. The product has shrunk and was now less convenient, but its price did not change.

I’ve noticed the shrinkage trend for several years. Who else remembers that coffee once was sold in one-pound tin cans that opened with a key so the lid could be replaced? Who else remembers the lovely aroma that came when one turned the key, releasing the pressurized seal? Somewhere along the line coffee was sold in plastic bags, which happened to weigh just 12 ounces, a 25-percent reduction.

Any grocery shopper who is paying attention has seen these sneaky weight reductions occurring in almost every kind of food products. Usually we accept these changes without much protest, but the changes to Baker’s Chocolate produced a firestorm of home baker complaints. We were so incensed that the venerable New York Times ran an article* reporting that a Kraft spokesperson claimed that “Our consumers have told us that they prefer this size over the larger size because the majority of our Baker’s recipes call for four ounces or less. The easy-break bar makes it faster to melt and easier to break apart.”

Kraft‘s spokesperson must think we are fools. If so many of “our customers” are pleased, where are their voices. The only ones speaking up are the unhappy ones. The customer, sad to say, is no longer always right. The Baker’s Chocolate package is still four ounces.

*Halving the Portion, but Not the Price, June 22, 2013, The New York Times.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

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Waiting to Die

When I turned eighty almost four years ago, it seemed to me that I had reached the appropriate time to die.  My life has not been one of restraint and caution. I have drunk bourbon daily for more than twenty years. I drink several cups of coffee every day. What’s more, I have smoked tobacco for most of my life, and still enjoy five or six cigarettes every day. 

I do not deserve a long life, nor did I expect one. I braced myself, thought about what happens in death, and sat back, waiting for it to come to pass. I waited, and waited, and waited some more.

On the car drive returning to Kansas from Tucson I experienced a moment of truth. I suddenly realized that waiting to die is pretty damn boring. I’m done with that, I thought. I decided to give up the role of distant observer and become a participant again.

When we got back to Kansas, I looked at our home with new eyes – eyes that saw how I’ve let things slide, how stuff has accumulated. I don’t even know what this house contains. So this is where my return to life begins. I have resolved to clean out every drawer, cabinet, and closet, one each day. This alone could take the rest of my life, but it’s interesting, which is more than I can say for waiting to die.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Hello, Old Friend

Moving to Tucson for the winter, we didn’t expect to know anyone except our grandson and his wife, but Tucson has surprised us with some old acquaintances and a surprising number of other Kansans.

I didn’t expect to encounter any familiar flora, either, and that proved to be the case. The landscape here seemed totally alien to me. Different trees, different shrubs, different smaller plants. Ocatillos fascinated me, as did the many kinds of cacti, especially the saguaro, whose dead bones are made into useful fences and shades.

Until last week, I hadn’t seen a single native that I recognized, but that changed when the plants were sitting in pots in the yard.

An ecologist planned the landscape for our front yard around native plants whose blooms would attract bees and butterflies, but some of the plants were downright ugly, such as this one.

A few days later I discovered a pod hanging from one of its branches, a pod I recognized.

That has to be a milkweed pod, I thought. I know milkweed pods well because eleven varieties of milkweed grow in our Kansas posture. Their pods are variations on a consistent theme: their pods burst open and release hundreds of tiny seeds with gossamer wings, seeds that float away like a troop of sky divers.

Butterfly Milkweed, Blooming

The green sticks I had hated were my old friend, asclepias, commonly called milkweed, adapted to a desert climate. It has only insignificant leaves that soon die. Photosynthesis occurs in the plant’s stems, which explains their green color. I’m not sure of the genus but it is either albicansor subulata. Both are native to this part of Arizona.

The Sonoran milkweeds are part of a chain of 156 varieties of asclepias that stretches across the United States. This chain is vital to survival of the monarch butterfly. Monarchs can feed only on the flowers’ nectar and can lay their eggs only on asclepiasbecause newly-hatched larvae can eat only milkweed leaves and live only on the plants until they become fat caterpillars and move away to form chrysalises. 

It’s very nice to see my old friend living in the Sonoran desert. He has changed, of course, as old friends tend to do, but I’d recognize him anywhere.Crop Circles

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Cut-Cut-Cut-Kadacket

When I was a little girl, hearing one of Grandpa’s hens cackle after laying an egg, I heard it as, “Cut-Cut-Cut-Kadacket.” Eighty years later, I still hear a hen’s bragging that way.

When I’m in Kansas, the hen’s ruckus is part of my life’s soundtrack. Here in Tucson the soundtrack switches to the hum of distant traffic and the roar of Air Force planes passing overhead. Not a single Cut-Cut-Cut-Kadacket can be heard. I miss that as well as the contented clucks the hens utter while picking at the grain Dennis scatters in their yard.

That’s why I’m thrilled about Grant’s latest big project – building a chicken house. A Tucson architect had designed a chicken house for the Tucson climate and built one for his son’s school. Grant bought the plans and materials, and he and Dennis laid a concrete footing to anchor the house.

Then Grant spent part of his days away from lawyering building the outer structure. 

Photo by Dennis

Since then, he and Dennis have worked together to put on the finishing touches. They’ve built nest boxes that we can access from outside. And Dennis has stained the building’s outside. 

With an improvised a brooder that will keep baby chicks warm and provide them with food and water, we were ready to get some birds. That was easy. An Ace Hardware about ten minutes away gets shipments of baby chicks several times a week. We bought five of assorted breeds, but only four of them chose to pose for this photo. As you can see, two appliance cardboard boxes make a sturdy, protection for the babies.

Photo by Dennis

The only sounds these little fluff balls make now is  “Cheep, Cheep, Cheep,” but when we come back to the desert next fall, I expect to be welcomed by the old, familiar, “Cut-Cut-Cut-Kadacket.”

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Peggy, I Get It

Years ago Dennis went around Douglas County looking at old buildings and interviewing their owners. The most interesting person he met was an invalid old woman, who was widely known in Kansas as Peggy of the Flint Hills. That was her pen name for the column she wrote for the Topeka Capitol Journal for 55 years.

In spite of being locally famous, she somehow ended up living alone in a stone cottage in rural Douglas County with numerous cats. Peggy was mostly bedfast but the cats weren’t. There was no litter box so the floors were a mess. 

Peggy didn’t seem to care that her life circumstances were less than ideal because she had her books, probably collected throughout her career as a journalist. She was reading them over again, one by one, and when she finished one she gave it away to a visitor. Handing Dennis a book, Peggy remarked, “When they are all gone, I will die.”

At the time I didn’t greatly understand Peggy. I was rather disapproving of her situation, but now I have become an old woman, I identify closely with her. I can’t travel anymore, and if truth be known, I wouldn’t care to even if I could. 

Why put myself through the hassles of travel when I can sit in my comfortable chair with a cup of coffee and open a book. Through a book I visit any place in the world, meet people of every culture, and even travel through time backward or forward.

I never met Peggy and don’t even know her real name. I can only guess that she died, happy with her books. I hope that only a few of them remained in her library. I do sort of wonder what became of her cats.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Past the Cusp

Past the cusp of transition into being elderly, I’m now acutely aware of things one needs in order to be active when one reaches this stage. 

Bill gave me a cane years ago, when I was traveling by air and needed some support walking long corridors, Except for that use, I left it propped against a corner in the dining room. Now that has changed. The cane, awkward as it is to handle, has become my frequent companion when I go out. I drop it, it’s hard to fit into the car beside me, and finding a way to keep it accessible when I sit is not easy. It's made to collapse in length, which would be handy, but my hands aren't strong enough to fold it. Those inconveniences, though, aren’t enough to discourage me from using it. 

Holding the handle of a grocery cart is also good at giving me stability while cruising the aisles. Thanks to grocery carts, grocery shopping ha my main form of exercise.

Grab bars in the shower now are indispensible, whereas they used to be a convenience.

I bought a button hook (useless) and nail clippers for designed for handicapped people (also useless ). 

These things are just the tip of an ever-growing iceberg. Recently I bought a rolling walker that has a seat where I can rest when the back pain becomes overwhelming. I’ve had my eye on those for over a year, after seeing an elderly man resting on one during an evening walk. and recently meeting a woman at the grocery store who graciously let me try hers for a moment. Walking with it is as easy as walking a grocery cart. The down side is that I can’t lift it in and out of the car, but when Dennis and I go together, he will do that for me. I’m very lucky to be married to that good man.

Yesterday, UPS delivered another enabler. This time it’s a lumbar brace. I’ve hesitated to open and try it on because the packaging pictures a man with body-builder muscles modeling one. If the model were a frail old woman, I wouldn’t hesitate to try it on. But I know when back pain interferes with my meal preparation, on it will go, if my crippled  hands can use the Velcro fasteners.

That’s the trouble with the design of many “enablers;” often they don’t work. The designers didn’t consider all the forms of disability. Sometimes I wonder if they were even tested. 

If only I had a 3-D printer, I could custom design my own enablers as well as some for my friends.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer