One of the magazines I read regularly had an article this week that blew my mind – and not in a good way! Usually I find advice or “life hacks” that are interesting and helpful. This week was not the case!
In a one-page piece on how to use Sundays to “reset,” it basically had you doing a week’s worth of chores on Sunday. First of all, Sunday is a day – at least in our house – that, barring emergencies, is reserved for WFF. That’s not World Fighting Federation, that’s for worship, family, and fun. So using that day for chores was mind-blowing for me.
It got better (or worse, depending on how you look at it). The chores and suggestions were as follows:
1. Change your sheets on Sunday and don’t make the bed until the evening. This allows the mattress to air out. First of all, whenever you change your sheets, the mattress can air out while you wash and dry them. And secondly, waiting until you’re dog-tired to put sheets on the bed (especially if your bed is large), is dumb.
2. Grocery shop with an “electronic cart.” Add a grocery list app to your phone, then when you run out of things during the week, add it to your phone app. Then, go shopping on Sunday. The article says “it’s the most popular day to shop.” It is. It’s also the most crowded. This is dumb, too.
3. Get rid of “email clutter” by devoting an hour to reading and sorting email. On Sunday. Oh, they also suggested creating a SECOND email for special things. This is way dumb.
4. Prep all the ingredients for your meals for the rest of the week on Sunday. I can’t even imagine. I’m speechless. Just don’t do this.
5. Speed through laundry by doing it all on Sunday and then putting your “five outfits” for the week on hangers and leaving the rest in the tub. Clean. So during the week, you put your dirty clothes, where? This is the dumbest of all.
Instead of spending your Sunday changing your sheets, doing your laundry, shopping, preparing food for five days, and selecting outfits for the week that you won’t want to wear, I have a better list.
This Sunday, start by worshipping at the place of your choice. Then, come home and have a nice meal. Have a cookout. Invite friends and family over for games. Walk your dog. Sit in your garden or on your porch. Read a book. In the evening, go to bed feeling happy and ready for your week.
As for those other things, try this:
1. When you wash your sheets, wait until they are washed and dried to make your bed. But do it then, so it’s done. Do it any day you like.
2. Tape a paper to the fridge, or keep a notebook in the kitchen. Make a paper and pencil list of things you need and shop whenever you want.
3. Check your mail a few minutes every day. Also, NEVER create a second place you have to check things.
4. Plan your meals for the week and shop for everything you need for them once a week. But prep them the day you’re eating. If you don’t think you have time, use a crock pot.
5. I don’t know what I will want to wear, or need to wear, five days from now. Fold and hang your laundry – all of it – when you do it. Then it’s all ready when you need it.
These “life hacks” will save you a lot of stress and make your Sundays ever-so-restful.

The person in the red and white pick-up truck didn’t seem to care that I was driving in the lane and had the right of way. It was important that he, or she, got into traffic. So he, or she, pulled into my lane, causing me to swerve into the oncoming lane to avoid a collision. Thankfully, there was no oncoming traffic, so no one was hurt. And clearly, the truck’s driver had more important things to do than follow driving laws or be concerned with others on the road. But wait. Copernicus called and left him (or her) a message.
Last week, I went to an event with two friends. On our way home, a car was parked on the side of the two-lane highway, with flashers on. My friend was driving and she pulled a little to the left, as per protocol. The car behind us chose to pass us (and the disabled car) completely, revving up to about 75 miles per hour and nearly sideswiping her. Because, I assume, it didn’t matter if there was a person outside the disabled car, or that three people inside our car were traumatized. But wait. Copernicus called and left him (or her) a message.
I’ve recently noticed a lot of drivers pulling out in front of me. I typically try to give the benefit of the doubt in my mind, like “oh, maybe he got called to an emergency,” or “his wife’s having a baby,” or “he has IBS.” But this has been happening so often and with so many different people that it’s getting more difficult to find plausible excuses for the ill-mannered (not to mention dangerous) driving behavior. It’s a good thing I typically drive about 5 mph lower than the speed limit, otherwise, I would have clobbered some of these fools.
This happened three times today on a routine trip to town to get dish soap. One guy pulled out so close I had to brake or I would have hit him. Behind me were how many cars? Oh, NONE. So he just couldn’t wait three more seconds to pull into traffic. But wait. Copernicus called and left him a message, too.
The more unnerving behavior is folks who turn across your lane in front of you. I’m sure they think they have plenty of time, but it’s pretty scary when you’re traveling the speed limit of 50 or 55 mph and someone pulls into your lane. Very often, they sort of cruise through, too, instead of putting the pedal to the floor. So they are not only putting your life at risk, but their own, and trusting that – unlike them – you are not on your phone, but paying attention to the road, so you can safely avoid a crash. Copernicus called them, too and left a message.
Our little town has a wonderful town square with a round-a-bout. A few years ago, very intelligent people removed the traffic lights on each corner of the square. Instead, they mounted signs for drivers with blinking yellow lights that say “watch for pedestrians; they have the right-of-way.” They later added signs for pedestrians that say “look both ways for traffic!” Those latter signs are a good thing, because many times a day, people in cars zip around that traffic circle like it’s the Daytona 500. You can stand on the corner holding a stroller, an elder’s walker, and/or several bags of groceries and if you watch carefully you’ll see drivers zoom by, looking neither left or right. But by golly, they are reaching their destination with alacrity! But wait. Copernicus called, and left them messages, too.
The message? It was the same for each of them:
You’re not the center of the universe.

As I get older, I notice that things bother me that didn’t use to faze me at all. Maybe I just didn’t have time when I was a working wife and mother. Now that I’m retired, I find myself flummoxed by things like paying for parking on an app on your phone.
How does the app know you’re there? And why does it take 437 clicks to tell it you’re leaving (assuming you can figure them all out before the police arrive to tow your car). What happened to meters? They were convenient and easy and all you had to do was scrounge under your car seat for change.
But more than flummoxed, I get downright cranky about kitchen trash bags. These products state – right on the box – that they “grip the can.” Grip the can, they do not. You put them on the can and they stay there at first. But if you toss anything with any significant weight – like, say, a tissue – into the bag, then it collapses in on itself.
This is annoying. Why can’t it grip the bag? Oh, wait, I’m supposed to buy those giant rubber band things to put around it. Which work very well. In fact, they work so well, you can’t pry the darned things off. You have to cut them off, risking a snap on your hand or arm.
And it starts to get expensive.
Here’s another thing that bothers me as I’m older. Bathroom doors in restaurants that weigh about the same as a young killer whale. And that open inward. Unless you work out with weights, you have to pray someone wants to come in so you can get out.
As I’m aging, I am less appreciative of my annual medical checkups. Now they are called “Medicare wellness checks.” Let me digress to say that for most of us elder, our teeth, ears, and eyes give us the most trouble. These are the three areas of “wellness” that Medicare doesn’t cover. So I’m kind of grouchy going into my annual checkup.
This year in addition to remembering the three irrelevant words (which I easily did, even though I often have trouble remembering what I did yesterday), we had to draw a clock. I’m thinking that in another decade, they will have to come up with a different test. A “traditional” clock isn’t what anyone under the age of 60 has ever really learned to read.
My health professional asked me to draw 9:15 and was not amused when I asked, “A.M. or P.M.?”
Then she made me stand up and sit down repetitively for 30 seconds. Thirty seconds is a long time for arthritic knees, but I did it. I have no idea what that told them, other than my knees make very funny sounds after about the third or fourth stretch.
But at last she said, “So you had your blood work two days ago?” I blinked at her owlishly. Was this some of kind of memory trick? “No,” I said. “I didn’t have blood work.” “Well, this says you did,” she said, as though I was already in full-blown dementia. Then she did a double-take and said, “Oh, that was 2023. I guess we forgot to order it.”
So who really needed the Medicare wellness check? Maybe the people who make garbage bags need one, too!

Last week we had an “incident” that involved misread tickets to a baseball game. It wasn’t the first time, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. We have a history of ticket situations and let me start by saying, my husband is consistently correct in reading tickets and finding the correct seats.
Would the same could be said for ushers at events.
I first noticed it at a football game – one at which I was not in attendance. My husband and his brother went and, as is his custom, my husband insured that they arrived in time to find their correct seats, sit down, and watch the pre-game activities.
All was fine until about 5 minutes before the game, when two guys came in and “challenged” their seats. They were wrong, and finally determined they were several rows off from their ticketed places. Meanwhile, two incredibly large men came in and sat beside my husband, who was already pretty wedged into his seat from his brother. There was no place for his arm, so he had to either extend it straight out in front of him (an uncomfortable position to maintain for several hours), or place it around the large gentleman to his right. Fortunately, that was fine with “Bubba” and they became friends.
The game started and action was unfolding when four latecomers came in. They didn’t wait for a break in the game, but started into the row in front of my family members, effectively blocking the view of the downs. Then one of the women began to say that my husband was in “their seats.” He shut down that conversation rather quickly and of course, looking at the four impressive male figures, they wisely sat down and were quiet. Quiet enough to hear my husband say, “People, get here on time!”
You don’t want to mess with him during a football game.
He’s much more easy going about attending the theater. We have season tickets in first row, loge. This is the first elevated level above the floor. They are great seats and we’ve had them for over a decade. So we pretty much know where we sit.
It never fails that at least once a season, folks who have first row balcony (the level above us) come in – or are ushered in – and challenge us for our seats. This disrupts everyone in the row as they traipse in, lose the argument with us, and then clamor back out.
The good news is that this is always before the play begins – because that’s the rule. No seat arguments after the show starts! The bad news is the ushers don’t seem to consistently know loge from balcony.
So last week, we went to our first minor league baseball game. Again, to the seats we’ve had for about 9 years now. We share season tickets with four or five other families, so we get 5 or 6 games a year. They are great seats and we’ve not had a problem. Until last week.
During the fifth inning – and not between innings, or during a time out – a couple came in and very loudly and belligerently informed us we were in their seats, because they had season tickets. The usher made my husband leave his seat – disrupting the view for all beside us – and show his tickets. Turns out the couple were in the wrong section (go figure). Again, why didn’t the usher know where sections 110 and 111 were located? Why interrupt our game-watching and inconvenience us? We’d been there an hour already!
So ticket woes are our theme this month, I guess. But we have another game and two plays to attend in May so we’ll see if it gets better. Maybe I should apply for an usher job…