Snide Reply

Tag: humor

  • Boiling Water and Other Premium Adult Skills

    Boiling Water and Other Premium Adult Skills

    My daughter recently declared that I am a “premium adult.” I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I like the sound of it. Apparently, I have skills and knowledge above the beginner level, though I don’t check all the boxes.

    For instance, I don’t have matching towel sets or feel smug about my multiple drawer and cabinet organizers. But I do use cloth napkins, have retirement accounts, keep folders for current and past taxes, and hold strong opinions on the proper way to fold a fitted sheet. Bonus points: I’ve figured out you can make a bed using only flat sheets—it’s easier, and they fit every time. Folding problem solved.

    Premium adults know things newbie adults don’t. My kids were shocked to discover their dishwashers have filters. They were even more shocked (and maybe a little grossed out) to learn those filters need cleaning. They weren’t surprised that I knew this and do it. They haven’t.

    Their questions cover the full spectrum of “How do I adult?”—from choosing a doctor from a vast HMO list to eliminating the lingering cat pee smell left by a roommate. My solutions aren’t always popular. One child had to replace carpet. The other still hasn’t made the doctor’s appointment.

    Some issues are laughable to fellow premium adults. Take boiling water. It sounds foolproof, but it requires surprising amounts of skill, knowledge, and courage. Step one: overcome fear of open flame. Step two: know what size pot to use, how much water to add, how high the flame should be, and what “boiling” actually looks like.

    Sure, you could Google it, but apparently, a lot of people still don’t know. One YouTube tutorial on boiling water has 1.9 million views. Pasta-cooking videos abound, each with its own rules. Mine: add a tablespoon of salt, never oil, and stir to prevent sticking. But why would you when your mother is a premium adult.

    My son calls for cooking help, too—mainly to decipher the sloppy cursive and minimal directions in my family recipe book. My chili recipe lists ingredients but offers only: Brown the meat. Add everything else. Simmer until flavors blend. I’ve also coached him through replacing a water heater, repairing siding, and banishing the infamous cat pee smell.

    I’m not bullet proof, though. Recently, my son had to bow out of a family fun night. We seldom have all four of us in the same location now that the kids have flown the nest. Happily, everyone’s schedule came together so we could celebrate our daughter’s birthday. She requested hot dogs grilled by her brother. He was all on board, then he wasn’t. The night before the celebration, he texted to say he felt sick. By morning, he had fever, aches, congestion—the works.

    While in Meijer with my daughter, I took his call. He listed his symptoms and mentioned his temperature. A few seconds later, my brain caught up, and I texted back my “premium” alarm:

    “That’s a high fever. Take Tylenol or ibuprofen. Call me in 30 minutes. If it’s not down, I’m taking you to the hospital.”

    Thirty minutes later, he replied:

    “Mom, I think you misheard me. It’s 100.4°, not 104°.”

    Side note: My children insist I need hearing aids. I insist they mumble. The ear doctor sided with me—they mumble.

    To my credit, 104° is an emergency. 100.4° barely registers. It’s a “why are you even calling me?” temperature. But I know why he was calling.

    When you’re sick, you miss your mom—premium or not.

  • Old People Know Things, Too

    Old People Know Things, Too

    I retired from full-time work in 2024. At that time, I was one of the oldest people employed by the organization. I didn’t want to retire, but things transpired as things do, and I stopped working full-time.

    Of course, I used numerous technologies throughout my career—Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, Outlook, and more. I’m familiar enough with them to appreciate Masood Boomgaard’s “F*** PowerPoint” video. In my current part-time job, I take attendance and enter my timesheets using apps on my phone.

    I’ve also used technology extensively in my personal life. I bought my first computer—a Mac Plus with a whopping 1 megabyte of RAM—in 1989. Now, there are more Apple devices in my home than there are people. Most of the legacy Macs are laptops, but there’s also an iPod or two, as well as a few iPads past their prime. Everything still works.

    Devices currently in use include two MacBook Airs, two iPhones, and a new iPad—a replacement for the last one, which was itself a replacement for the first. The newest iPad is huge compared to the rest—my only concession to needing a bigger, easier-to-read screen.

    I do everything on my devices. All my banking is online; I don’t even remember the last time I wrote a check. If I need one, I borrow one from my husband. I use Excel to comparison-shop everything from kitchen remodeling to deciding which Medicare supplement plan to buy.

    News? I get it online.

    Email? Available on my iPhone, Mac, and iPad.

    YouTube? iPhone, iPad, and Fire TV.

    Front door lock? Biometric.

    Doorbell? Has a camera.

    Furnace? I can change the temperature without getting out of bed.

    Driving? GPS, of course.

    But I don’t stop at the typical uses.

    Knitting? Knit Companion on the iPad.

    Home cleaning? Home Routines.

    Motivation? Finch.

    House training the dog? Puddle and Pile.

    If there’s an app for it, I’m on it.

    Many folks younger than me—especially Millennials and Zoomers—refuse to believe anyone born before them can use contemporary technology.

    It’s really starting to piss me off.

    Recently, I needed to enter a verification code that was texted to my iPhone. As I was about to automatically enter the code (a very nice feature, IMHO), a younger person leaned over my shoulder to show me how to do what I was just about to do. I, perhaps a little too snippily, said, “I know,” and let the phone do its thing.

    Because said person routinely shows her mother how to use technology, she assumed I would need a personal IT manager as well.

    It’s almost comically common for those younger than Boomers to believe we’re technological dinosaurs without the desire or mental capacity to learn anything—anything—new. There’s a witty Boomer response: I taught you how to use a spoon.

    The idea that Boomers are stupid, lazy, and proud of our lack of tech savvy simply isn’t true. We use smartphones, stream entertainment, shop and bank online, brag about our kids on Facebook, and catch up on the news. Some of us even know how to get our stupid routers to stop acting stupid. Most of us rely on technology to the point that we panic when the internet goes down.

    I was born before personal computers were a thing. I learned to write with a crayon. I graduated to pencils and pens by middle school and learned to type on a manual typewriter in high school. My secret crush is the IBM Selectric. IYKYK.

    In college, I wrote papers on a word-processing typewriter; the screen previewed about half a sentence at a time before the letters were typed onto the paper.

    I encountered business computing in a form my kids would recognize early in my career. Email, word processing, databases, and financial software were accessed through a terminal.

    The equipment and applications became more advanced as the years went on. Currently, I’m writing this post at my dining room table on a MacBook Air with a modest 8 GB of RAM. My iPhone and iPad are across the room. Everything is connected to 5G Wi-Fi. Clearly, this old person can use technology—despite being born when engineers used slide rules.

    Whippersnappers boast that they’re good at technology because they were born using it. Consider, though, that many haven’t upgraded their skills as each app iteration is released—they haven’t had to. At this point, nothing is new to them; it’s just improved.

    Boomers have been learning and adapting to technological change since childhood. Sure, by the time we reach our 50s, we may be a little tired of having to adapt—but we do it. We do it to stay current, to avoid becoming the dinosaurs we’re accused of being. Put that in your latte and drink it, Millennial.

    I taught my children much more than how to use a spoon. They cook (well, one of them does), clean, say please and thank you, know how to fold a fitted sheet (though they don’t do it), and only say “Can I go with?” to annoy me. They still call me when they don’t know how to do something, including deciphering the secret Boomer code (aka cursive) I use to write down recipes.

    If I know any actual Technological Boomer Dinosaurs, it’s my husband. He thinks technology hates him and only him. In his defense, he was born at the beginning of our cohort; I was born twelve years later—enough to make us seem like we’re from different generations. His rock stars were The Beatles; mine were Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.

    Recently, though, he started reviewing every movie ever made (or something like that—it’s a lot of movies) and publishing them on Substack. Without assistance. This morning, we had a conversation about open rates and views.

    Thanks to Mike Kalecki for this post’s title.

    Copyright Janice M. Lindegard

  • A Wild Ride Through a Bipolar Mind

    A Wild Ride Through a Bipolar Mind

    I’m lying in bed, having just woken from a nap. It’s afternoon, and I have a modestly expansive view of the outdoors through the sliding glass door to the balcony. That sounds grand but trust me—it owes more to the trailer park than Gosford Park.

    The sky is early-spring blue, and a typical Midwestern breeze blows—stronger than you’d like, but warm enough that you’ll take it. Fluffy white clouds drift by, placid and classic.

    I look equally placid. My brain, however, is not. I am bipolar; my brain knows only two speeds—light and sleep. Now, it’s spinning almost out of control, leaping from one thought to the next.

    Instead of pondering the shapes of the clouds—though one looked distinctly like a fat, ugly swan—I was thinking about adoption. Specifically, about how it’s often presented as a simple solution for building a family when all else fails.

    I’ve often heard, “Don’t worry. You can adopt,” as if adopting is like applying to college. “Don’t worry. If you don’t get into Harvard, you can always go to the College of DuPage.” I’ve adopted. It’s more like, “Don’t worry. If you don’t get into Harvard, you can just go to Yale.”

    My mind hopped from adoption to the increase in infants born in the United States due to abortion bans. That led directly to Donald Trump’s treatment of Volodymyr Zelensky. This makes sense if you make the mental leaps typical of a bipolar mind. Less so if you’re neurotypical.

    Back to Trump, Vance, and Zelensky. It was disgusting to watch the Dracula of U.S. presidents and his sidekick, J.D. Renfield, belittle the leader of another country—an ally. I wanted to be a fly on the wall when Putin reveals what he really thinks of Trump.

    From Trump, I jumped to free speech. Probably not too surprising a leap. Paranoia then entered the picture, and I feared that writing bad things about the Vindictive Commander-in-Chief would get me arrested and tossed in jail with the liberal elite.

    Telling myself that wasn’t very likely—as I’m not very elite—I dove deeper into free speech. “Fuck the Draft” zipped to an anti-gun shirt my son once wore to school. Though his teachers appreciated the sentiment, he was “dress-coded” nonetheless. The shirt showed a child surrounded by crayons and a gun. “Nine out of ten children prefer crayons to guns,” it said. Those children are probably the spawn of the liberal elite.

    I pulled myself out of my head and back to the present as a woman passed by, pushing a stroller. I checked the time and wondered what state I had left the kitchen in. I told myself I should have gotten up a while ago.

    Then I did. I had to pee.

  • My Breakup With Makeup

    My Breakup With Makeup

    I have no idea when I started wearing makeup; it was probably early in my childhood. Our mother took my sister and me to the mall regularly—we held the bags, and she held the wallet. We joked that she had children just to carry the shopping bags. No matter the reason for our mall adventures, we always visited the Estée Lauder counter at Marshall Field’s, where Mom would purchase the cleansers, toners, and creams that made up her skincare routine. It was serious business to her long before eleven-step routines reached the Western world.

    By high school, I was traveling down the cosmetic road on my own. It started with my fingernails. I cared for them with as much diligence as Mom applied to her skincare. I had an electric manicure machine that efficiently spun away excess cuticle and power-filed my nails into perfect ovals.

    Fancy nail polish was far more affordable than Advanced Night Repair. Particularly memorable colors were the same candy pearl brown you can find on a 2012 Lexus LFA and Cherries In The Snow, a luscious blue-red introduced in 1932 by the nascent Revlon. You can still buy it today. You should. No, really, it’s still luscious. And consider buying me that Lexus.

    I had a skincare routine, but it wasn’t long before I discovered that skincare is boring. While skincare is the long game, makeup is instant gratification in a bottle, tube, pencil, or little metal pan. Venturing a few steps from Estée’s lotions and potions, I found Lancôme. But just a few steps farther, I found my ride-or-die—Prescriptives.

    A sister brand of Estée’s, Prescriptives pulled me in with custom color matching. I was typed as Blue-Red, and damned if every color in that range didn’t look great on me.

    It was makeup heaven, until it wasn’t. My mother got her revenge; Estée Lauder discontinued Prescriptives. I bounced from brand to brand; I even tried Estée Lauder. NARS sufficed, but I pined for the good old days of Prescriptives perfection until I found it online. My happiness was short-lived when the remaining stock ran out. Back to NARS for base, Huda Beauty for eyeshadow, and a myriad of L’Oréal products for the rest.

    Not terribly long ago—which means anywhere from 10 to 15 years in my time-blind world—my eyes began burning and tearing whenever I wore makeup. I stopped lining my eyes; it didn’t help. I changed mascara; it didn’t help. I switched concealer. My eyes still stung.

    Assuming that if something is bothering me, it must be bothering someone else, I researched “makeup makes my eyes burn” at the University of Google. Professor Google revealed sunscreen was the likely culprit. At the time, I didn’t use sunscreen, but there is sunscreen in virtually every foundation available, added to protect skin from wrinkles caused by sun exposure. I kept foundation far from my ocular membranes and marched bravely on in my cosmetic battle armor.

    Until 2020.

    I had gone years without a skin check, then I got the itch to get myself to a dermatologist. He discovered skin cancer—a melanoma in situ and two basal cell spots on my face. As skin cancer goes, basal cell is no big deal. Melanoma isn’t.

    As small as my melanoma was, it got me into surgery despite Covid shutdowns. The tumor was removed within two weeks of its discovery; four days later, more was removed. Naturally, I wore no makeup while the incision healed.

    The scar is barely visible, even at two inches long, but I haven’t gone back to makeup. Working remotely, it seemed ridiculous to put on makeup for meetings only to take it off as soon as I was off-screen. Hell, none of the men were camouflaging their facial flaws. Each one practically flaunted his dark circles, eye bags, forehead creases, and turkey neck.

    I never wear makeup anymore. But I do have a skincare routine complete with appropriate cleansers, serums, retinoids, and a final slathering of Korean sunscreen*—SPF 50++++. My mother would be proud.

    *Asian countries use a wider variety of chemical sunscreens than the United States. None have irritated my eyes.

  • Officially Old

    My husband has been listening to the Beatles lately. He’s also declared that he is very old; he’s 78. That sounds very old if you are not near that age but doesn’t sound old if you are. I’m 66. That sounds old to some, especially my students who think 25 is old but most of them just turned seven.

    I don’t feel old. Even when my body says otherwise, I don’t think of its pains as signs of old age. The stinging pain in my left wrist when I knit is from years of wear and tear which led to arthritis. I’ve already had my right thumb joint reconstructed. Sounds gruesome but it wasn’t that big a deal, for me at least. I’m right-handed, so repair on the other side seemed inevitable. I’ll probably have it reconstructed following a few cortisone shots.

    If you’re astute, you’ve figured out that “years of wear and tear” absolutely happened because I’ve been on the planet for ages, ergo, I am aged. Things that are aged are, by definition, old. Some might say age brings improvement. But I am not a bottle of wine. And I don’t think of 66 as being particularly old.

    What drives home my age is realizing that I don’t have much more time to age. The inevitable result of continuing to live and age is that I will die. No, we never know when we will die, there being busses still on the roads and all, but I can say with certainty that I will probably die in the next two or two and a half decades.

    So, when my husband pointed out that Paul McCarney’s “Martha My Dear” was named for his dog, I realized time was running out on my dream of finally owning a small dog. I found it quite reasonable to say, “That reminds me, you have to get me a small dog before I die!”

    I officially retired in May 2024; it’s time to bring out the bucket list. Except, the older one gets, the less the bucket can accommodate. There are only so many trips to Scotland/Denmark/China that I can afford. There are only so many books I can write and only so many cute little dogs I can love.

    My bucket is leaking time and the items on its list. I’ve started a book, but I probably won’t go to China; I’ve been twice already. Denmark might have to move to third on the list; great-great grandpa’s cousins will have to settle for meeting my father and older sister. Great-great-granddad sold away the family castle anyway.

    Scotland remains a dream, cost being the biggest factor. My ancestors are all from the same place, but not one easily reached. In fact, it’s only on maps because of nearby Pictish ruins left by people who lived in Scotland eons ago. Though the Pictish derivation of the word “pixie” has been discarded by many, I like the idea of being descended from a mysterious fairy folk.

    Whether I visit living relatives in Denmark or dead ones in Scotland will depend on many variables. I may or may not get to either. But I know one thing for sure: I am getting that damn little dog!

  • We interrupt this vacation for a laugh

    I’m technically on vacation this week, so I’ll keep this quick then get back to doing nothing.

    There are four members of my family. Frequently, we each go about entertaining ourselves because if three of us agree to an activity there is an unwritten rule that the fourth will not. Sometimes, however, the family-quality-time elves visit, like they did last night.

    We were playing Trivial Pursuit and my son got this question: what are the two plural forms of the word “platypus”?

    He turned to me with a puzzled look, hoping I’d help him out. “Well,” I said, “think of some other words that end with ‘-us’ and how their plurals are formed.”

    “So…maybe ‘platypi’?” he asked.

    Image“Sure,” said his dad, “and ‘platipussies’.”

     

  • Like this post if you’re like me

    Every morning, my ankle hurts. Just a little, in a spot that makes it obvious I’ve got arthritis. I’ve got the same thing going on with my wrist. I get up, though, and get moving. By the time I’ve had my second cup of tea, the pain is gone.

    My teeth are a mess, I have hot flashes, my kids are both in double digits and old enough to know when I’m full of shit. In other words, I’m getting old.

    With such abundant evidence in my real world, I don’t need it in my virtual world. But every time I get on Facebook, I see another of those dumb ass memes of some antiquated crap I’m supposed to “like” if I remember what the hell it’s for.

    I remember what they’re for. The ice cube tray made out of aluminum with the lever you pulled that broke the cubes loose, while also breaking half the cubes? I remember that. It was common before we knew that aluminum consumption contributes to Alzheimer’s. I like my ice maker ‘though I’m pretty sure we’ll discover the plastic parts it’s made of cause erectile dysfunction.

    I remember flash cubes, Captain Kangaroo, Mister Ed, and cassette tapes. I know what the relationship is between the cassette tape and a pencil.

    I am not going to “like” any of these things.

    See, I remember them and some of them even fondly. But my brain still works  the way it’s supposed to work. I can still learn new things. I can still challenge myself. I can still be part of the world evolving around me.

    My dad can’t. For brevity’s sake, let’s just say his brain is clogged with knots of protein. His cognitive function is so impaired he makes things up. He’s paranoid. He can’t remember my mother is dead, so he confuses other people with my mom and insists she’s ignoring him. I have had to tell him she’s dead three times in the last month.

    So, I won’t be “liking” anything from my childhood. It’s not that I don’t smile when I remember them, but when I’m 80, I’d like to have someone post a picture of Katy Perry that I can “like.” Maybe I’ll do it when I come in from a run.

  • Head of the Class

    Image: Designtechtonics.biz

    Not too long ago, in my newspaper column, I wrote about my son’s friends being given cars by their parents. I had heard that kids with cars—and I don’t mean Power Wheels—was pretty common here, but didn’t really believe it until one newly minted driver after another was given a car. And we’re not talking old cars in funky colors, like the mustard yellow Pinto that was my first car. Two of my son’s friends were given new Priuses. Or is it Prii?

    I wrote that no kid should be given a car, especially a kid who just learned how to drive. Let that kid buy a car and he’d appreciate it, care for it, drive it with caution, fill it with gas using his own money. Until he could do that, I wrote, my son would be asking to borrow the family car. I mentioned that we can’t afford to buy our son any car, but even if we could, there’s no way in hell that we would.

    I was accused of having class envy. You need to understand where I live to fully appreciate this accusation. Money magazine has named Naperville one of the 10 best places in America to raise children—more than once! There are a lot of reasons to like Naperville: good schools, nice houses, lovely downtown near the historic district. A river even runs through it.

    In Naperville, you could live here.

    With all that good publicity from Money magazine, lots of people moved here in the past 20 years or so. So, you’ve got the old timers who mostly live in the old neighborhoods. Back when I was a kid, houses in those neighborhoods were very affordable for a young family; my own family almost moved there. If you moved here in the good old days, your $25,000 house is probably worth more than $500,000 now. Wealthier people have moved here and built even more expensive houses. And less wealthy people started moving here when builders started turning farmland into subdivisions; I live in one of those. Today, we even have town houses, condos and (gasp) apartments.

    Or you could live here.

    Or here.

    What started as a pretty nice small (white) town has become a city of more than 140,000 people replete with every race, religion and socio-economic grouping. We even have a prostitution ring and a heroin problem.

    In that context, I understand the anxiety that pushed an obviously wealthy long-time resident to think that when I said “ there is no way I’m giving my son 24/7 access to something that is a proven killer, particularly of boys” what I actually meant is “rich people suck.”

    I don’t think rich people suck—well, not all of them. There are rich people that suck and poor people that suck. I’m equal opportunity when it comes to thinking someone sucks. So, me with class envy? Nah.

    I have had several other types of envy. Like kid envy. There are children who make their beds every morning, get their own breakfast and go happily to school. There are children who join in school activities, practice their music lessons, do their homework and help around the house. There are children who respect their parents, walk the dog, get good grades and brush their teeth. These are not my children.

    Frequently, I find myself wishing that my son were more involved in activities at school, such as anything. And I would love for my daughter’s room to not look like Lord Voldemort could hide in it. But, then I wouldn’t have a son who calls me on his cell phone and says, “Hey, Mom. I’m sitting on a couch on the corner of Sanctuary and Lowell.” When I drive to said corner, I do indeed find my son sitting on a discarded sofa, kicking back like a football fan on a Sunday afternoon.

    I have had penis envy, too. When I worked in public relations, I made a fairly decent salary. We bought our first house on it. But, if I had a penis, I would have made $25,000 more. That would have also made us a gay couple, but we’re ok with that. Hell, we adopted our second child and lived in Oak Park for a while.

    Do I even need to mention shoe envy? Massive quantities of shoe envy here. My sister and her daughter have truly gorgeous shoes and they wear the same size, doubling the number of shoes available to each of them. Not fair, right? When my husband finally got his PR business off the ground, I could buy truly gorgeous shoes, too. I paid lots of money for some pairs. I still swoon over the Italian ones made completely of leather. Does that mean I envy myself my shoes? I think it might.

    I certainly envy my daughter’s shoes. She has narrow feet. With a lot of obese children in the US, they make cheap shoes really wide these days. So, the Empress—I mean, my daughter—can only shop at the pricey children’s shoe store in town, or Nordstrom.

    But the envy I’m most likely to suffer is Writer’s Envy. Like most writers, I read a lot. I read all kinds of things, from crappy fantasy to classic literature. And when I find truly good writing, I want to crawl in a hole and never touch my computer keyboard again. I feel like Mike Myers and Dana Carvey meeting Aerosmith in Wayne’s World. “I am not worthy,” I think, “I am not worthy.”

    Being bipolar actually has its benefits in dealing with Writer’s Envy. Reading something truly fabulous will send me into a tailspin. But all I have to do is wait for the next mania train to pull into the station and I’ve got myself convinced I can write a bestseller . . .in a month . . .while still working . . .and raising my kids. You jealous yet?

  • C? Si! 100 posts and beyond

    I’m not ordinarily interested in anniversaries, commemorative dates and other forced significancies. I barely remember how long I’ve been married and don’t really think it matters much. Frankly, staying married is really just a matter of not getting divorced when things get bad. Things have always gotten better for us, so being married for 20 years is more luck than hard work.

    I don’t understand why we have to celebrate birthdays, either. I get older every year; so do you. Why do I have to go out to eat somewhere really fancy on April 22? Maybe I’d like to go out to eat somewhere really fancy on June 26 or October 13. I’m considering putting tokens in a jar for all of the events we’re supposed to commemorate. Then, if we feel like doing it up one day, we can just take out a token and celebrate whatever we happen to pull out. So, if I want to, I can celebrate my October wedding anniversary in March.

    Publishing 100 posts on Snide Reply, though, is apparently something to crow about. I’ve actually published 101, but I didn’t write one of them. I recently re-blogged a post from sweetmotherlover, a blogger I follow. Because I’m busier than a suburban mom driving her kids all over town to various summer activites, I decided to break my no-commemorations rule. I am celebrating writing 100 posts by re-blogging the first post I wrote, two years ago. Back then, I had about 35 followers. Last time I checked, I had about 144145147. Not the biggest following, but more than I ever thought I’d reach. I happen to think my first is also one of my funniest posts and hope you think so, too. Enjoy.

    Thanks friends, family and followers! I’ll keep writing if you’ll keep following.

  • How Old is Old Enough For Home Alone?

    How old were you when you first stayed home alone? My kids think it’s great. I think it’s a terrible idea, imaging every kind of disaster possible. So, of course, I wrote about it. Here’s the link:

    http://naperville.patch.com/articles/how-old-is-old-enough-to-stay-home-alone

    Do you remember staying home alone? How old were you? I had an old sister and younger brother so was seldom home alone. Maybe that’s why I love being alone now. Hm….yes! Let’s blame it on the siblings!