A few months ago, I closed all my social media accounts. My phone informed me that I spent an average of four hours a day browsing the internet. Four hours. This was embarrassing and shameful–what a total time waster. When I thought about a person of my advanced age wasting that much time, I tried to analyze what we Boomers want from social media.

Many of us apparently believe that all of the people who look at our posts on, for example, Instagram, want to see what we are eating. In restaurants, we take pics of our dinner and post those, thinking that perhaps Aunt Ida in Nebraska would love looking at that fried chicken and slaw. Seriously, how many shots of entrees have you seen on Facebook?

The photo above is one I actually posted on Instagram. Egg salad. What was I thinking? Who would care about my egg salad? Would it generate “likes?” (Nobody “liked” it.) My husband liked it for lunch. That was it.

Others of us old timers are convinced that the world needs to see our vacation photos. Fred standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, or Jeannine getting ready to eat clams in Cape Cod. Really–as a person who had to sit through endless slide shows of my in-law’s trips abroad, I have never understood this. Absolutely nobody who has watched Rick Steves really cares about your vacation shots.

Oh my gosh. Grandchildren. Here is the thing: the only grandchildren I want to watch grow up are mine. And nobody else on the planet cares how tall my grandson is getting. So all those cheerleader posts on Facebook are wasted on anybody that isn’t a close blood relative. But grandchild photos abound on SM (which I learned just last month means “social media,” and not sado-you know what).

I understand that teens spend nearly as much time as I used to on Social Media. But they like to make TikToks about makeup, gymnastics, and doing the choreography to Taylor Swift’s latest songs. This was shocking for me to realize that my scrolling for posts of other folk’s dinners and shots taken from the balconies of cruise ships consumed the same amount of time that teens spend looking at makeup demos and skateboarding tricks.

So, in one fell swoop, I deleted all of my accounts. It was hard at first; I reached for my iPhone for no reason. I felt a little frustrated that I no longer had any reason to take photos of my cat or my latest pedicure. I had all that free time suddenly. I began to fill my empty hours with television crime shows: it’s always the spouse. So then I started doing more exercising. This has caused an increase in in my visits to the chiropractor. But one benefit of doing all these Bird Dogs and Planks is that I no longer have to worry about falling and not being able to get up.

Are you still on Facebook? Well, get OFF.

I just read the most sappy, saccharine, and derivative book I think I have ever picked up. No author or title mentioned, but here are my pet peeves about this one and many others I have read:

Plot is important, but let’s not get carried away. A twist here and there is necessary, but changing identities, having relatives show up out of nowhere, and having every last character have a deep secret is exhausting.

I have to say this, also: there is only one Anne of Green Gables. So featuring a child character whose eyes shine with joy, who has a large vocabulary, and whose imagination is generated at the drop of a pine cone is just too much. It has been done already, and nobody else writing a book has ever come close to L. M. Montgomery’s Anne. So when I read about a child who names the trees in her yard, I want to get out a Sharpie and start redacting.

Oh, my gosh. Teeth. They are either gnashing, chattering, clenched, or gritted.

And what about eyes? Do they have to be kind, troubled, anguished, or filled with tears? And by the way, I have never noticed whether or not somebody’s eyes seem troubled. And as far as I can tell, there are blue eyes, brown eyes, hazel eyes, and gray ones. Eyes the color of sea water are blue. Caramel eyes are brown, for heaven’s sake. Light brown, then. But who on earth would answer “Caramel,” when asked what color their son/daughter/wife/husband/mother’s eyes are?

In this particular book, the heroine got an inkling that she was falling in love when warmth “crept into her limbs.” This could describe getting the measles (we will talk about vaccination rates some other time), needing to open some windows, or simply wearing a wool cardigan. She also, when the object of her desires left town, felt as if her heart had “stopped beating.” Really. And when he came back, she knew he was coming toward her in the yard because there was “a whisper of grass.”

Food. Too much of it is buttery, creamy, glistening, steaming, tart, herby, or rich. And this is a real peeve: characters never seem to be able to eat the food. Instead, they nibble, munch, crunch, crumble, or taste. And they never seem to finish, because somebody rings the doorbell, has a fainting spell, is poisoned, sees a lover coming down the lane, or has a shocking thought. My God, if the book describes a buttery anything, I really want them to eat it and tell us how it was.

The biggest advice they give authors is to “show, don’t tell.” This means that if a character opens a door, he can’t just “open” it. He has to put his hand upon the tarnished brass doorknob and feel the indentations made by generations who opened that same door before he did. It is important to “show”, but I think some authors take this way too far, and show you to death. 

I have written a few novels, and I am certain that I have never overdone the “showing,” because I find “showing” so difficult. For instance, I would so rather write that “the man walked out the door,” rather than struggling to describe the man’s hair, whether or not he was limping, what sort of material the door was made of, was it a heavy door or a regular door, did it open easily or did it need to be oiled, and did the man hesitate before leaving.

Ok, I’ll give it a go:

Gerald, his hands trembling from emotion, approached the heavy steel door. Without hesitation, Gerald reached  for the knob. It felt cold to the touch. Gerald struggled, for the knob was greasy from the pizza his brother Ronny ate before he left the warehouse. Ronny was stupid; he never used napkins.  Gerald lurched into the parking lot, his thick, ginger hair falling into his emerald eyes. Gerald laughed to himself. Ronny was such a waste. Just last week, Ronny kicked his brother in the nuts, and Gerald fell down, spraining his ankle. Gerald still had a noticeable limp. But today he got his revenge; he punched Ronny so hard his nose began to bleed, dripping on to the filthy red and brown checked flannel shirt that Ronny always wore. Today was a good day. Gerald gimped over to his 2021 Ford Fiesta, silver with black leather interior. Gerald wrenched open the door, stepped in to the hot car, banged his forehead on the top of the open door, and slumped behind the steering wheel. He honked the horn at his disgusting brother as he wheeled out of the lot to head home.

I hate both Gerald and Ronny. Instead:

Gerald punched Ronny in the nose and left.

The end.

48 Hours. 20/20. Dateline. Every crime podcast. The victims are always extremely innocent. Everybody they interview on those programs and podcasts says so. These people never deserve what happens to them.

I, on the other hand, am SO not innocent.

I have hurt so many flies it isn’t even funny. As a matter of fact, if a fly comes into my vicinity, I will try to kill it. Kill it and throw in in the trash, then bleach the place where the fly died. I have no conscience about this. I am a fly killer.

I don’t light up a room when I enter. It is very possible that the room actually dims when I come in, because I am an anti social woman. I don’t like small talk, because I am not good at it at all. I don’t want to know what you do for a living, and I cerainly don’t care what hometown you came from. I am not interested in your hobbies, your favorite color, or how many children you have and what their names are, for heaven’s sake.

I am not the life of any party, I don’t have a whole lot of friends, I am often grumpy, I don’t want to show you pictures of my grandchildren. I don’t drink, so there is no loosening up, ever. I stay exactly the same at midnight as I was at six o’clock.

Oh, and I am SO judgmental. I think people shouldn’t wear Bermuda shorts to a funeral. What in the hell is that thing on your head? Do you honestly feel comfortable in those tight pants? Why does everyone need a water bottle at all times? My God,  every single person on earth chews gum constantly!

If I met an untimely end, some podcaster would come across my name in the obits and do some research, then immediately throw my information in the trash, because it would be impossible to make me out as a sympathetic figure. No matter how they tried, it would end up in frustration and the search for a more engaging victim.

This may be what saves me. Just look at the photo above. Would you try to tangle with this woman? Would you dare to even ask her for directions? Or inquire if she has any spare change? Of course not. She would look at you with those “dark eyes” and send you slinking off.

Ted Bundy, Bonnie and Clyde, The Son of Sam, The Zodiac killer–they probably only killed nice people.

Every time I go grocery shopping, my husband wants to know if the store was crowded, and every time I give him the same answer: “I didn’t notice.” I never notice, because I have absolutely no curiosity about–well, basically everything.

When we go to a National Park, (which is almost never), reading the historical plaques is not for me. I just want to look at the scenery quickly and move on. My husband reads every single plaque and then asks questions about what he learned from those plaques to the person behind the counter in the gift shop, who has no idea what the plaques say because she is in high school, this is a summer job, and she also has no curiosity.

When he got home from the doctor recently, he told me all about the physician’s assistant’s life: she has blah blah children, lived in some other country whose name I missed because I wasn’t paying attention, and oh yes, she got her degree at blah blah college. When I go to the doctor, I don’t even know the physician’s assistant’s name, because it doesn’t matter what her name is: all that matters is what is this thing on my arm?

This is why I hate all the Ken Burns documentary series, which give WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION. All I want to know about the Civil War is who won. Ok, and maybe if Mary Todd Lincoln was chubby.

I also do not have any interest in where our waiter went to high school, if he or she is majoring in accounting or psychology, how long this waiter has worked here, and why the restaurant isn’t crowded tonight. And sidebar: if he asks one more waiter “Are you the chef?” I will throw my mineral water in my husband’s face. Maybe.

I never Google “How does a person get bunions?” Because nobody in this household has bunions. 

I am SO not interested in what the enrollment is at Wright State University today versus a decade ago. I am not curious about how many nuns still wear habits, or if Zohran Mamdani has a nickname.

I like to concern myself with what matters: how long to bake a potato, if women still wear pantyhose (we have a wedding coming up; it’s necessary), or when daylight savings starts (as opposed to who invented it, how long ago, if it has ever been suspended, and if any states don’t have it).

I also, when asking my husband a question, just want the answer to my question, not the history of three days before the answer to my question, including a timeline of events. I’ll give you an example: My question: “What time do we have to leave for the airport?” I want a number. However, here is his usual answer: “Well, let’s see.  Today is Monday. You have pottery class on Tuesday morning. I have a meeting Tuesday night, which means I won’t be home for dinner. We leave on Thursday. So Wednesday night, we will pack our suitcases. I will want to go to bed early. How long will it take you to get ready to leave for the airport? Forty five minutes? So you are supposed to get to the airport two hours before the flight. Taking into consideration parking the car and walking from the garage into the airport, I would say

At this point, I am shouting “MY GOD, JUST GIVE ME A NUMBER!”

I don’t need background. I don’t need details. I just want the facts–necessary facts. What my dentist’s husband does for a living-NO. How many people were in the grocery store at two this afternoon-NO. Where Johnny Appleseed was born-NOPE.

It killed the cat, folks.

Today is Valentine’s Day. Another holiday that florists and greeting card companies invented to increase revenue.

We don’t observe Valentine’s Day. We aren’t mushy people. I might have liked being mushy before I married my husband, but I soon learned that it isn’t worth my time. For example, he did bring me flowers one time. It was a thrill until he announced that the church was trying to get rid of some flowers left there after a funeral.

There will be no boxes of candy, because those candy assortments have too many maple creams and cherry cordials. Ugh.

Buying a card is a nice sentiment, but not when folded pieces of paper with sappy verses inside cost what, $3.00? Ridiculous.

Poems are ok, but not the ones either of us might write. All I could come up with was:

Roses are red, violets are blue.

This is a fact

And why poems start like this 

I haven’t a clue.

So another holiday passes with neither of us doing anything about it. This makes it hard to come up with an answer when people ask, “Are you doing something fun for Valentine’s Day?” Saying “no” and leaving it at that seems rude, and so I feel obligated to come up with some kind of plausible reason for this. “We are pagans” has not worked in the past. “No, because we don’t really like each other that much” doesn’t work either, because it shocks people, and it isn’t true. “One time I got sick on Valentine’s Day and vomited chocolate on the bedspread, so it’s a pass for us” makes people flinch.

I never really thought about this; it was fine; I didn’t care about any of it. Then I had to run to the grocery, and there were five or six men in there with desperate looks in their eyes buying Esther Price candy. It gave me a small pang, until I thought about it and concluded that the candy was most likely for their moms.

The world is a scary place right now. We are warned constantly that our “information” is being mined like crazy by absolutely everybody: advertisers, the government,  law enforcement, and God knows who else. They know everything about us. I started thinking about this yesterday after watching a YouTube video on privacy and what you have to do to protect yours. After the first minute, I realized that I would have to be a technical wizard or a nine-year-old to plumb the depths of my iPhone to find all the toggles that I would have to untoggle in order to be safe. It made me anxious, and confused, so I stopped doing that.

I then remembered all the crime shows I have watched and the murder podcasts I have listened to. Yipes! The detectives always look at the suspects’ laptops where they uncover the search history. This inevitably leads them to the motive, or the murder weapon, or the fact that the suspect orders strange underwear online. This leads them to solve the murder.

I guess all sorts of people besides murder investigators are now checking our online histories, for all sorts of nefarious reasons. We don’t have privacy any more.

Oh, no.

If my information were to be examined, I would be SO embarrassed , because here are some of the things I have Googled:

• If you are in New York City, is it true that you are always at least ten feet away from a rat?
• What is an incubus?
• What happens if you accidentally swallow dental floss?
• Is it true that if you can’t get up off the floor without using your hands, you are going to die soon?
• Does your breath have DNA?
• Is leftover rice really poison?
• Are most women’s boobs uneven?
• Why are chickpeas suddenly so popular?
• Do they still do lobotomies?
• Does walking in winter burn off more calories than walking in summer?
• Why are so many doctors fat?
• If I order something unusual on Amazon, will someone in the government find out?
• Can it be a cult if only three people are in it?
• Why does eating a hard boiled egg give me hiccups?
• Can you die from hiccups?
• Do they still make Carter’s Little Liver Pills?

You know they say that your phone, Alexa, Siri, and your iPad are listening to you. So be careful what you say. For instance, don’t tell your spouse you’d like to kill them too often. Better yet, just write that down on a piece of paper and hand it to them. Then tear it up and eat it. These days, you just can’t be too careful.

Our granddaughter, Birdie, is selling Girl Scout cookies. And as this photo shows, we are in full support. This isn’t even the total haul, because we have already finished 3 boxes.

Our granddaughter doesn’t stand a chance of becoming The Cookie Queen, however, because that title belongs to Elizabeth Brinton, who sold 100,000 boxes in her career as a cookie seller. Elizabeth, before the internet even happened, figured out that she had to get to the masses, so she quit the door to door business and set up shop in a Virginia metro station at rush hour, and thus sold 11,200 boxes in that year alone. Note: Elizabeth’s mom must have had a big garage to store all those thousands of cookies. However, in 2021, Lilly Bumpus sold the incredible amount of 32,484 boxes. The exhaustive research that I did was not forthcoming as to how Lilly achieved this feat, or what shape Lilly’s mother was in afterwards.

But there’s more. Katie Francis broke the 100,000 record  in 1985, actually managing, even, to sell a box of every flavor to President Reagan. Go Katie.

Katie consulted Elizabeth Brinton for advice on how to break Elizabeth’s record, and Elizabeth told Katie to “think outside the box.” It seems from my research that Elizabeth coined this phrase. Go Elizabeth.

When I was a Girl Scout in the Dark Ages, I think my record was 10 boxes, 5 of which my mother bought and then threw away, because she was always dieting. My mother was absolutely no fun. All she did all day was drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, and make dinner.

My granddaughter’s goal is to sell 1,200 boxes. This is a reasonable goal, as she reached it last year and won a trip to an amusement park. She was so proud.

The person responsible for Birdie reaching her goal last year is my husband.

Go Charlie.

This face above is of a person, actually me, before my hair turned white.

This face is one of the faces that others turn to for some light reading. A chuckle during these very dark times.

But as you can see, this face isn’t bursting with any fun. It’s worried just like everyone else’s faces.

Nothing particularly amusing is happening at my house. So here is what is going on:

• You know how some people look for distraction, like frenzied house cleaning? I am apparently not coping that way
• My skin is now so dry that I have seven different lotions that don’t work
• Eczema. I have eczema, for Lord’s sake
• I do not have dreams of running for office
• But I know my Congressmen’s emails by heart
• I wonder who else to boycott
• I spend way too much time doomscrolling
• However, I have not lost my appetite
• And Girl Scout cookies just arrived
• My tooth whitening strips no longer bring me joy
• I hate the news, but I have to watch it
• My cat is now extremely important

I hope you all are coping, because I, like all of you, am flailing for a punch line…

I have temporarily lost my sense of humor. Here is an excerpt I think speaks better than I can:

This is the time of year for gift giving. It can be disastrous. Examples:

One of my friends got a car caddy from her husband for Christmas. This husband also gave her bed pillows the previous year. They are still married, but it was rough going for a while.

Let me state very clearly to all husbands out there: If it plugs in, for Lord’s sake, DO NOT get it for your wife for Christmas or her birthday, or your anniversary. Never. Also, do not get your wife a pot, a pan, or a wire whisk. Avoid clothes, because unless you are very confident  of her size; this could backfire in a major way. Don’t phone it in with socks, gloves, or a muffler. Get your sh*t together, guys!

Don’t even consider anything you can get in a hardware store or a drug store. I know, there are also some grocery stores that sell “gift items” during holiday season, but you would be very foolish to get one of those gift items. No matter how much she complains about not having enough spatulas, perish THAT thought.

Another piece of advice: if it costs less than $25, don’t buy it. I don’t care how utilitarian it is, how handy it is, or the fact that it is marked down-don’t get it. The reason things are marked down is that nobody wants them at regular price.

Your wife doesn’t want anything you can get at a gift shop. Those scented soaps in a pink soap dish, all wrapped up in pink cellophane? That’s a no. Anything that comes in an assortment? Nope. No silk pillowcases; she will get one herself if she needs it. Don’t fall for food, either. Food is an office gift, or for your mother-in-law.

Avoid lingerie, unless you got married less than a year ago. Otherwise your wife will think you are too lusty. Just trust me on this.

So many men haven’t a clue. So they wander around on Amazon, searching for “wife gifts.” Amazon has no clue. Believe me-or look yourself: Growing Older Gnomes will NOT cut it. Nor will a sweat shirt that has YOUR HUSBAND LOVES YOU emblazoned on the front.

If you want to win at gift giving for your wife or girlfriend, just go to the nearest jewelry store, get a woman salesperson to help you, give her a wad of money, and let her take it from there.