My mom drives an old PT Cruiser, just like Nora does. We don’t take ours on long trips anymore because it is too unreliable. The left blinker is on the fritz, the radio shuts off randomly, and the rear hatch opens when it feels like it, not when you tell it to.
Mom and Dad drive back and forth to Long Island regularly, and they were in Manhattan when their PT Cruiser started to overheat. I get irritable bowel just thinking about it. But they don’t think that way – they raced for the Lincoln Tunnel, as related by my mom:
Amazingly, it worked:
She Eats Kiwi Skins Too
When I enter the room and see this on the table, I know Pippa has been there.
She’s a conservationist like me. 🙂
Is this apple-eating technique good stewardship of limited resources, or over the top? You decide, but when I saw this banana peel article and recipe in the NYT, I knew she would appreciate it.
Legend of the Ten Dollars
I told you last month about how Grey is very pleasantly surprised about the much lower cost of auto insurance in Ohio. After he went to the movies last month, I’m afraid he might never return to Maryland.
He went with a friend to see Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. The cash register said $10. Grey didn’t have cash, so his friend paid. When they got back to campus, Grey venmoed his friend 10 bucks. His friend’s response:
Please Wait While I Role Play This
A friend from church was mugged recently while he parked outside his Baltimore County home. He put his window down and lunged to grab the young man’s arm – the one that was holding a gun. A shot rang out, and the passenger’s side window shattered. Miraculously, God spared his life.
Pray for good fortune, but take precautions also. I mentally role play uncommon, yet dangerous, scenarios in order to avoid unwise instinctive reactions like my friend had. Occasionally while driving I’ll imagine a raccoon jumping in front of my car, and how I’ll react (apply the brakes and plow straight through him).
Time to add a mugging to my cerebral simulations toolbox.
Resist When Convenient
If you’re like me, you have some friends who are Covid vaccine-phobic. In the old days (5 years ago), these folks would whisper amongst themselves. Now, they shout “My body, my choice” from the rooftops, and share memes comparing vaccination to the Holocaust:
Nevermind that the last time they had a medical crisis and visited the emergency room, the first thing the medical team did was run an IV and pump them full of all sorts of mystery fluids.
Devout-ish
Last month, a friend broke a bone and he was eager to have it operated on. His surgeon pushed him off to the weekend, so that he could spend time with his family on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. The delayed surgery was scheduled for Saturday. “But isn’t that the Jewish Sabbath?” I say to my friend.
“Yeah, I think he’s Jew-ish,” he replies.
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