family

Do kids still do these things?

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Happy Throwback Thursday! This piece originally ran on April 29, 2014. Given that so many of these pastimes were summer-oriented, I decided to post this because summer is nearly over. Sorry to be such a buzzkill.

Today I noticed a Facebook posting about talking into the fan “to hear my robot voice,” complete with a picture of a windblown little girl facing a fan and either talking or singing. That is, if robots sing.

“Admit it…we all did this,” the caption concludes.

Duly admitted. However, DF says he never did any such thing. Perhaps that’s because he grew up mostly in Alaska, where fans aren’t a common household appliance.

Do kids still do that – talk into a fan to hear their voices oscillate? Or is that too lame for words, given that they can download apps to make their voices sound like Darth Vader or, yes, a robot.

How about this one: Do kids still let the fan blow bubbles for them? Show of hands if you’ve ever held a dripping bubble-blowing wand in front of a running fan to watch bubbles shoot out.

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Extreme heat, safe retirement and book-ish T-shirts.

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I’m in Phoenix, where my brain is slowly frying. Which helps explains the rando stuff I’m about to post.

First: I flew down here to Satan’s Fry Daddy to help my daughter celebrate her 40th birthday. Yes, I was surprised as well, and mildly curious as to where those four decades flew.

Part of my birthday gift to Abby was to help prepare* for the bash: cleaning, shopping and food prep. It was quite the spread, encompassing fruits, vegetables, hummus, meats, cheeses, tortilla chips and salsa, crackers, pita bread, chocolate chip cookies, miniature Reese’s peanut butter cups and a decent selection of adult beverages, bought by Abby and Tim and also brought by their pals.

If you’re gonna invite people, invite those who bring the weird stuff rather than expect you to anticipate their tastes. Hard iced tea – who knew?

 

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Back in South Jersey.

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I was having breakfast with family at a diner in Elmer, NJ, when my aunt asked the table at large, “Is that lipstick on my coffee cup?”

Everyone peered her way and agreed that yes, that was a faint pink smooch on the mug.

My aunt paled a little. “I had my mouth on that.”

When we asked for a clean cup, one of the waitresses explained the reason: “It’s these new waterproof lipsticks. It can be hard even for a dishwasher to get them off.”

You learn the darnedest things in South Jersey diners.

 

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College is optional. Education is not.

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(FinCon and the Center for Financial Services Innovation are sponsoring the #FinHealthMatters writing/podcasting contest. Here’s my entry.)

A recent Facebook post about college featured a couple of 20-somethings. One was a slacker dude lamenting, “I spent $60,000 on a worthless degree and no one will hire me.”

The other was a clean-cut young man happily announcing, “I spent $6,000 at a trade school and make $85,000 a year.”

Obviously things aren’t that simple. Some high-cost degrees immediately lead to high-paying jobs, and not every skilled tradesperson automatically rakes in the bucks.

But its core message is one I’ve been espousing for years:

There is more than one road to postsecondary education.

If you’re unsure what you want to do with your life, college might not be a good fit. And even if higher education is in your future, it might not look the way you imagined.

 

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15 things I like to do.

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My blogging buddy and former* Get Rich Slowly boss J.D. Roth recently posted an article called “How to find purpose in your life: 12 powerful exercises to help you discover purpose and passion.”

Among those exercises was one called “20 things you like to do,” which is just what it sounds like: Make a list of 20 things – and it must be 20 – that you like to do.

With those items you’re supposed to create a chart with columns like “when did you last do this thing,” “is it free or is there a monetary cost,” “solitary or social,” “planned or spontaneous” and several other descriptors.

J.D. admits he could list only 16 things he likes to do. Even better: “Playing computer games” was the first one he thought of, whereas “sex” was the second thing to come up (as it were).

Not only does he admit it (not sure I would have!), J.D. pokes fun at himself before the readers had a chance: “Kind of sad (and hilarious) to note that this list is in the order I thought of things.”

I decided to bounce off his post and give a list of 20 things I like to do. Trouble is, I couldn’t make it to 20 things either. Maybe that means my tastes are refined, or maybe it means that I’m a pretty boring person.

Note: These are in no particular order. In fact, one of the most important things I like to do is found at the end.

 

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Even the Tooth Fairy is cutting back.

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PF how much the Tooth Fairy paysWhen I was a kid the Tooth Fairy would bring a nickel or a dime for each lost tooth. I sorta-kinda remember getting 25 cents once, but that’s probably wishful thinking. My parents had four kids and not a whole lot of cash.

Possibly one of my classmates bragged about getting a quarter per cuspid and I dreamed it would happen to me as well.

The annual Original Tooth Fairy Poll from Delta Dental says today’s kids are getting an average of $5.70 per first tooth lost. Dang.

That’s actually a slight drop from last year’s average of $5.72 per tooth. Even so: Dang.

 

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Eat the cake.

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Last week I saw a Facebook meme that said, “Life is short. Take the trip. Buy the shoes. Eat the cake.”

I’ve set up a trip, to the American Society of Journalists and Authors conference in New York in mid-May. And I baked a dessert that my mother used to make for us: Sour Cream Chocolate Cake.

Two out of three ain’t bad.

 

The cake recipe was already on my mind, because of a batch of homemade yogurt gone awry. The starter was on the very edge of nope-buy-a-new-one. Because I wanted to believe it was okay, I used it. Magical thinking wasn’t enough, however, and the yogurt turned out smelling something like bread and something like beer. It shouldn’t smell like either of those things.

 

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Six good things.

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Jana from the Jana Says blog recently wrote about half a dozen good things happening in her life. The post was an antidote to a previous article in which she screamed rather primally about a whole lot of bad, frustrating stuff.

I hear her on both counts. Now I’m going to steal her format, and share half a dozen decent occurrences of my own.

(Got six good things – or even one – of your own? Do share, in the comments.)

We’ll start with something sweet:

 

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What’s your splurge?

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A woman I know spent part of the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend payout ($1,100 this year) on herself. She described it as a “splurge,” but we’re not talking mani-pedis, airline tickets or high-octane chocolate.

Instead, she plunked down some of those annual bucks for a pair of items that are simultaneously sensible and self-indulgent:

A new set of flannel sheets, and

One of those Instant Pot* cookers.

Both are useful and both were on sale (with in-store coupons to boot), making each splurge doubly sensible. Yet they’re also supremely self-indulgent because they’ll make the winter so much cozier.

 

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Labor Day musings.

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A press release received today had this clickbaity line in the message field: “If you are not doing what you love…You are wasting your time!”

Huh.

I understand the likely intent: Be all that you can be! Reach for the stars! Follow your bliss! Yet my own inference is a little darker: If you aren’t a super self-made success in the high-profile career of your choosing, you’re kind of a loser.

Dark, I know. But I do wish that the people who define success would realize that we can’t all be startup successes or crowdfunded darlings. I wish that “success” could be redefined.

Specifically, I wish that fame and fortune weren’t the things we all apparently should want. Not only is this untrue, it’s a notion that tells a whole bunch of working-class people that they aren’t measuring up.

 

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