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When You Don’t Have Your Phone

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© captainvector, 123RF Free Images

We now live in an age in which we are so reliant on our cell phones that when they are misplaced, lost or stolen, it can be paralyzing. I know this feeling all too well now because my phone was stolen earlier this year, and I was without a phone for three days. I found myself reaching for my cell phone completely out of habit for the first few hours, then I began to resign myself to the fact that I didn’t have a mini-computer. I was forced to figure out other ways to navigate through my day, and it made me realize how much our phones provide for us. There was a 50th birthday celebration I had to attend the day after my phone was stolen, and luckily I had added the location which had been texted to me onto my Google calendar, so I was able to enter the address on my car navigation and get to the party without any issue. Otherwise, I would have had a devil of a time trying to reach my friend to get the address of the birthday venue.

Social media and other apps were a bit trickier for me to adapt to without a phone, since some apps only function through the mobile version and not the desktop version. I was also unable to post on Instagram Stories during the period in which I had no phone. As a result of being sans mobile phone, I spent an oddly peaceful and quiet weekend, uninterrupted by text messages, notifications from apps, or phone calls.

When I received my replacement phone, I was able to recover about 70% of the images and videos which were on my previous phone, mainly because I had a habit of uploading content onto my Dropbox account for backup. It was a completely different situation with my contacts, of which there were over 3,000. I discovered that Google drive had NOT backed up any of my contacts, so I was forced to look through email servers to recover some of the information and enter all of it manually onto my new device. Sadly, I was only able to recover just under 300 contacts.

It still surprises me how someone like me who grew up in an era before answering machines could be so dependent on a cell phone, as if it was a lifeline. I’m so old school that we had only one phone, a beige rotary dial phone, and I accepted the fact that if I called someone and there was no answer, the only thing I could do was call back at a later time. With a single phone line, and no call waiting back then, a friend calling in while my mom was blabbing with one of her work buddies would hear an annoying BEEP BEEP BEEP to indicate that the line was busy. Life was far less complicated back then.

Now that I am back up and running with a new cell phone, I have already settled into the feeling of security which having my phone around confers. Everything from ordering food to be delivered, to checking emails, to making mobile banking deposits, has become reestablished as my day-to-day pattern. People can call and leave a voicemail message if I am on the other line. These little computers have certainly become a necessity in this era!

Strength Training For The Blood Pressure Win

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Copyright: nomadsoul1

A recent study involving close to 16,000 subjects which was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine determined that strength training exercises like planks and squats were more effective than other forms of exercise in reducing blood pressure. This flies in the face of previous recommendations by cardiologists, which focused on cardiovascular aerobic exercise. To be fair to the study, the reductions in blood pressure from strength training exercises, were minor, averaging 8.24 mm Hg for systolic blood pressure readings, and 4 mm Hg for diastolic readings, but the reductions were indeed greater than aerobic exercise such as running, which reduced pressures by 4.49 mm Hg and 2.53 mm Hg on average. However, the study did point out that various forms of exercise were proven to be beneficial with respect to lowing blood pressure.

There’s No Such Thing As Blue Eyes

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Portrait of a beautiful little girl with blue eyes. Close-up.

© pixander, 123RF Free Images

Please check out this interesting article which was posted on the American Academy of Ophthalmology website, explaining the science behind eye color. I have copied and pasted it here so that you can easily read it.

By Dan T. Gudgel

Reviewed By Ivan R Schwab, MD, FACS

Jun. 16, 2023

Brown and hazel eyes get their color from melanin, the same pigment that colors your skin. The more melanin in the eye, the darker your eye color will appear. But blue eyes don’t have any blue pigment in them. Blue eyes get their color the same way water and the sky get their blue color. They scatter light so that more blue light reflects back out.

How do eyes get their color?

Eye color depends on the iris, the colored part of the eye. It’s a structure that contains muscle and other kinds of cells. You can see the iris in action when it squeezes or relaxes to let in more or less light through the pupil. The iris is made up of two layers. For almost everyone — even people with blue eyes — the back layer (called the pigment epithelium) has brown pigment in it.The front layer of the iris (called the stroma) can make eyes appear brown, hazel, blue or green. 

  • People with blue eyes have no pigment at all in this front layer, causing the fibers to scatter and absorb some of the longer wavelengths of light that come in. More blue light gets back out and the eyes appear to be blue.
  • For people with green or hazel eyes, one or both of the layers of the iris contains light brown pigment. The light brown pigment interacts with the blue light and the eye can look green or speckled.
  • Many people have variations in the color of their irises, often with one color near the pupil and another at the edge. This variation happens when different parts of the iris have different amounts of pigment in them.

Is there a way to predict a baby’s eye color?

The genetics of eye color are very complicated. You can’t predict a child’s eye color just from looking at the parents’ eyes. Even parents who have the same color eyes as each other could have a child with different colored irises.

Babies often do not have much pigment in their irises when they are born. This is why their eyes can look very blue. More pigment accumulates in the iris over the first few months of a child’s life and blue eyes can become less blue or even turn completely brown. For most children, eye color stops changing after the first year, but for some kids the color can continue to change for several more years.

Genetic research has shown that blue eyes probably only appeared in the last 6,000 to 10,000 years. Before then, everyone had brown eyes. Blue eyes have probably spread through the population just because some people like how they look and chose to have children with blue-eyed people.

Why do some eyes change colors in different lighting?

People with hazel or green eyes might notice that their eye color changes depending on surrounding light. Green and hazel eyes are a mixture of pigment color and color from scattered light, so they can look different in different lighting conditions.

Since blue eyes get their color from the light that’s coming in and being reflected back out, they also can appear as different colors depending on the lighting conditions. 

What is the rarest eye color?

The Academy surveyed more than 2,000 Americans to determine what color eyes they have. Below are the results of that 2014 Harris Poll survey, weighted to reflect the United States population at that time:

  • 45% have brown eyes
  • 27% have blue eyes
  • 18% have hazel eyes
  • 9% have green eyes
  • 1% have eyes a color not listed above

New Rug Runners For Our Stairs

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There are two flights of stairs covered in Berber carpet in our place, and because one of my cats enjoys scratching Berber carpet, I purchased rug runners for the stairs shortly after we had moved in so that the carpet would be protected. Since each set of stairs has two L-turn stair landings, I had to purchase three separate rug runners for each set of stairs, but I had found some reasonably priced versions on Amazon. However, five years later, the rug runners were looking pretty shabby, partially because the scratch happy cat had switched to scratching the runners (never mind that he has had access to numerous scratching posts throughout the house), and partially because of wear and tear from foot traffic. The runners had definitely gotten to the point where they were a bit of an embarrassment, but since I remembered spending a small chunk of change on the existing runners, I wasn’t too eager to plunk down more money to get replacements.

However, I found myself anxious to shift the energy in my home after one of my cats and my mom died, so I went back onto Amazon to reorder the same runners. Unfortunately, the sellers I had purchased from before were no longer selling rug runners, and none of the other runners I found on Amazon were customizable to the dimensions which I needed. That spurred me to investigate other sites which specialized in rug runners, one of which actually had fair pricing, especially when compared to a couple of other sites which were prohibitively expensive. I placed my order at the end of July and was thrilled when the runners arrived within four business days.

The uninstallation of the old rug runners was exhausting and took about two and half times longer than the installation of the new rug runners, but once the old ones were removed and replaced by the new ones, the place was transformed into a much more welcoming home. I even decided to place patterned runners in one stairway, and though I was initially very nervous about how they would look, I absolutely love them. The quality of the new runners is far superior to the old ones, with a nice, springy feel under the feet. If you are in the market for rug runners of any kind (kitchen, stairs, hallways), I would definitely recommend runrug.com,

This is the first runner for the first set of stairs…

This is the main stretch of runner for the first flight of stairs

The third runner for the first flight of stairs

Our new Afrikans print taupe runners for the second flight of stairs

Second runner…

The final runner for the second flight of stairs

I hope that these new rug runners last for a very long time!

Cool Glasses Project

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Back in early July, I attended a music festival with a few friends. We noticed that there were numerous vendors with booths set up along the entry corridor, so we decided to take a look at what was being sold. At one point, we found a booth which sold accessories like body chains and sunglasses, and zoomed in on one particular pair of shades. My friend tried them on and absolutely loved them, so she asked the vendor how much they cost. They were $100, and though my friend hesitated over the lofty price, I could tell she was thinking about purchasing them, despite the fact that she couldn’t afford them.

I have to admit that I also liked the glasses, so much so that I took a picture of them for reference (see image above). I then told my friend that we should keep walking, and once we were out of earshot of the salesperson, I informed her that all of the styles of sunglasses at the booth, sans embellishment, were available through Amazon. I also stated that we could probably duplicate the look for a fraction of the price, and that it would be foolish for my friend to purchase the cool spectacles from the booth we had just visited.

A couple of days after the event, I decided to look on Amazon to see if I could find the glasses, and also figured that I could look for the aqua fabric, the rhinestones, and cool eyeglass chains. By some stretch of luck and a willingness to search for appropriate accessories, I quickly found everything I needed, and ordered them. Once the materials arrived, I printed out the image of the shades we both loved, and set up my workstation so that I could make two pairs of duplicates. Despite the fact that I did a fair amount of cursing while figuring out the sizing of the fabric segments and also while gluing the rhinestones, I was able to complete the project.

The reference photo with the two finished pairs of sunglasses

The best part of the project was that I made each pair for $32.77 ($38.76 after I added cases), and had a nice creative challenge. The next time I saw my friend, I asked her if she remembered those glasses from the event we had attended, then handed her one of the pairs. She was speechless. I then told her that I hadn’t purchased the glasses from the vendor, but that I had made them, along with a second pair which I kept for myself. She was truly blown away, especially after I told her how much I had spent on materials.

One Thousand Cranes

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Copyright: olegdudko

Last year right around Christmas, I taught my dear friend Karla how to make origami cranes, and though she struggled at first, she began to get the hang of making them. She thought they were pretty neat, and asked if they were ever made for a specific purpose, so I told her about the tradition of making one thousand cranes and stringing them up to hang for a number of different occasions, including making a wish for an ill person’s recovery, the birth of a child, wedding blessings, or to grant good luck within a home. Senbazuru (a thousand cranes) is the Japanese way to make a wish and bless it so that it might come true.

Emma Taggert offers an explanation of how the origami crane emerged in Japanese culture:

“The tradition of the Japanese orizuru (ori– “folded,” tsuru “crane”), or paper crane, began in feudal Japan (1185–1603 CE), when people gifted each other the paper figures as symbols of honor and loyalty. However, it wasn’t until the 16th century that the art of the origami crane was officially recorded. Hiden Senbazuru Orikata (“Secret to Folding One-thousand Cranes”), published in Japan in 1797, is the first known book on origami. It features the earliest known instructions on how to make origami cranes, along with countless examples of different kinds.”

Since I grew up making origami cranes, I can quite literally make them with my eyes closed, but I understand that for someone who is unfamiliar with origami, making that first crane can be a challenge. Here is a video tutorial for those of you who want to learn how to make one:

For those of you who already know how to make origami cranes, you might want to challenge yourself with renzuru, a form of origami in which multiple forms are made from a single piece of paper:

Getting back to my friend Karla, she amazed me in July when she gifted me with a thousand cranes for my birthday. I wasted no time in gettting a dowel and hooks for the cranes so that I could display them in my living room. Once they were hung, I realize I had chosen a great spot because during the day, the cranes catch the sunlight, and in the evening, the uplights which I have behind my sofa impart a lovely glow on them.

My Mom’s Eulogy

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My mom was the type of woman who didn’t apologize for who she was, and she was fully aware of her abilities.  It always amused me how she made sure I knew how to use basic tools like hammers and screwdrivers, and wasn’t afraid to do things like assemble furniture or fix a hole in the drywall.  However, she was also willing to admit when she was not as adept at certain tasks.  One case in point was cooking.  My mom didn’t really cook, and with the exception of meat loaf, broiled meats, and sukiyaki which was made with canned sukiyaki vegetables and fresh beef, her idea of cooking was looking at the back of the Stouffer’s box to see to what temperature the oven needed to be heated. 

Since Mom was always working so much, she was doing the best she could to provide for me, but even if she had time to cook, it just wasn’t her thing.  So I wasn’t surprised when she VERY eagerly encouraged me to bake and cook after I had revealed to her that I had an interest in doing so.  In fact, when I was 17, I told my mom, “Let’s not go to a restaurant for Thanksgiving this year, I wanna make an entire turkey feast!”  She was doubtful that I could pull it off, but when I did, she told me that I had full permission to repeat the process every subsequent year if I wanted. 

My mother was always interested in spy stories and mysteries, and had told me that she once wanted to become a private detective.  She also wanted to travel internationally, but sadly was never able to do so, mostly due to a lack of money, but also because she was so devoted to work and to me that it would have been difficult for her at best to go traipsing all over the globe. 

By the time I actively began pursuing my own international travel goals, my mom was already ill, so there was no way that she could join me in those travels.  In an effort to bring exotic locales to her, I would share all the photos, videos, and funny stories I had collected from my travels.  I often thought that if she hadn’t had me, she might have been that jet-setter she had dreamt of becoming, but as we all know, life can take us in all kinds of directions we hadn’t anticipated.

Even though I was her only child, my mom probably also really would have been happy to have had other children besides me, and I was able to see her motherly devotion given to others when I got her a Scottish Fold kitten, whom she named Spencer Tracy.  That little dude stole her heart, so much so that I got a bit edged out! After she had had him for about a year, she started referring to the cat as my baby brother!  There was one time when I was at her apartment, and figured I would sleep in my former bedroom, but Mister Spencer would have none of it!  He hissed and carried on so much that I was effectively banished to the sofa for that evening!  What a bratty brother!

Harriet also adored my ex-husband, not only while we were married, but throughout the years after we divorced. Whenever he would visit her at the assisted living facility, my mom would pretty much ignore me, and devote all her attention to him.  This would prompt me to say, “Hey, what am I, chopped liver?”  But I always secretly enjoyed the fact that she was so close to him.  She always had a keen interest in in hearing about other members of her family or my dad’s family as well, and even my friends, some of whom she had never even met in person. 

Over the 19 years after her brain aneurysm rupture occurred, Harriet’s tastes changed, and they were unexpected and interesting. She became a Bingo master, and I could tell she enjoyed being the boss lady, calling out the numbers and monitoring everyone else’s boards.  She won so much virtual money from those Bingo games, I tell you…if that had all been real money, she would have been able to buy something like a television! 

Speaking of television, she cultivated a passion for the Lakers, despite never having followed the NBA, or ANY major league sports for that matter, prior to 2013.  She had Lakers posters in her room, and would talk to me about the games.  Mom also kept up with current events, and was pretty hip for an elderly woman.  She surprised me shortly after Prince had passed away by telling me, with a devilish glint in her eyes, that she thought Prince had been a VERY good looking man. 

All in all, Mom was a remarkable, caring, supportive, tough, honest, opinionated woman, who made sure I developed a backbone. You would be asking for it if you wanted her opinion about something, and this was the case until very shortly before her passing.  I think people actually got a kick out of how sassy my mother could be, even though she could also be cantankerous and defiant. 

Now that my smart, strong, sassy, beautiful, amazing mother is gone and no longer suffering, I can honestly say that I must have been the luckiest person in the world to have had this wonderful woman as my mother, my hero, and my best friend. 

The Hot and Cold Man

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About a month ago, I went on a date with a man I will call Oliver. We started out with drinks, and as the evening progressed, we had a nice dinner, all the while enjoying stimulating conversation. I was actually excited about the prospect of seeing him again. Then one of my 14 year old cats became ill and died within several days, and my attention was diverted away from Oliver. I was very honest with him and told him I needed the weekend to process the death of my beloved cat, but he was insistent and kept pressuring me to pay attention to him, which only aggravated me. He finally backed off, and I contacted him at the beginning of the following week. We exchanged some nice sentiments via text, and I let him know that I was open to seeing him again.

About ten days passed without a peep from Oliver, so I contacted him to say hello. He informed me that his mother was ill with pneumonia, and that he had been at her home taking care of her. I expressed my wishes for his mother’s recovery, and told him to let me know when he was available. I heard from him three days later, on a Thursday, when he sent me this text:

I want to make it up to you because I like you and I feel that there’s a good connection between us. So please consider this, if you have any time over the weekend, I would love to see you over the weekend if not the beginning of the week. Give us a chance, OK? I will make it up to you Stacey.

Oliver ghosted me for another ten days, then suddenly popped up with text messages like, “I want to marry you”. It was as if he was incapable of exhibiting consistent behavior, which was a major turn-off for me. One morning, he asked me to give him a day on which we could have a second date, so I accommodated his request. Just as I expected, he completely ghosted me on the day he had selected for our second date, so I gave him a piece of my mind via text and blocked the jerk.

Are there any decent men out there anymore?