Archives February 2026

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.