Soap for the Best

After spending years trying to persuade people with whom you live to routinely wash their hands, maybe it's time to throw in the towel.

Never mind that diseases and unspeakable disorders caused by unclean hands kill a child nearly every 15 seconds, you are fighting dirty and you will lose, because getting some people into a soap habit is surprisingly difficult given some people are undaunted by visible filth and invisible germs.

For example, take your soiled child--the one who's nearly a legal adult. Have you noticed how he considers his hands to be clean after holding them under tepid tap water for up to three seconds, before wiping them on his jeans?

You've tried everything from putting photos of magnified germs on the refrigerator to putting nice-smelling containers of antibacterial soap at every sink, to blaming all illnesses, including lung cancer and mental ones, on a lack of personal hygiene. And, still, your child, after taking out the trash, will pick up food and start eating without anything resembling handwashing. Then, he or she will neither blink nor gag when you point out the smudge of something on his fingers

You tried, and God knows it. And you know Godliness, next to cleanliness, is a vital yet slippery quest. So anyone who's determined to join an initiative for hand-washing with soap, be my guest. Seriously, you'd be welcome in my home if hygiene is that important to you.

Think Beans

The bacon was sizzling
The pancakes were hot.
Yep, it was morning!
I wish it were not.

Bacon is bad. Too bad, too, because, frankly, many fine-minded friends and fairly decent folks are big bacon-lovers.

You would think the raw texture of uncooked bacon would be enough to keep people, especially compulsive hand-washers and -wringers, from bringing animal fat home and frying it up in a pan, but no. We live in a world where an astonishing number of adults go to work every morning with shiny chins and glazed eyes, just a-reekin' of bacon. (Sizzling bacon smells good, I'll give you that, if you'll remember this: That lip-smackin' aroma a-waftin' in the wind? That's the sputtering flesh of creatures you're inhaling--creatures considered by some experts to be smarter than many a dog.)

So, who's for soy? Who is ready to leave the 'B' out of the BLT's? Let us shut down the slaughter houses by boycotting bacon, real bacon bits, pork chops, ham hocks, jerky sticks, and all other pig-related products and byproducts that were packaged without regard for your health or animal life. Oui! Oui! Oui! All of us, let's do that, let us sally forth as human beings who eat beans, instead of pigs.

A FLU BLOG

What's demoralizing to your mortality is the way you're feeling fine, standing there at the kitchen sink, say, when suddenly: ah-shoot! ah-shoot! ah-shoot! God bless you, it's flu season.

Within seconds you go from normal to achy, wondering if maybe this is all in your head. But no, your throat hurts, too. Your throat hurts like the chickens with their heads chopped off. Even worse, your throat hurts like it did back when you were ten years old and the pediatrician--whose name was Dr. Reynolds, you still recall, after all these years, whenever you use tin foil--told you to say Ah, then told your mother how a tonsillectomy is what you were due for and she agreed to this common surgery that was an altogether particularly bad idea, but who knew? Nobody, back then. So hell-o, Jell-o and ice cream and scream all you want, you'll never have another sore throat, guaranteed! Even though there are no guarantees in life, none whatsoever. So get over it and get well soon.

SLAP ON A HAPPY FACE

What's amazing is the way some people find time to lead blithe lives. Take scrapbookers, for example, with their unique way of looking at events through rose-colored lenses. (Now there’s a cliché with a twist! Feel free to use it.)
Scrapbookers are the life of potluck parties. They laugh a lot. They say “Smile!” a lot. They use lots of exclamation points. And when they arrive, rather than simply saying, “Oh, hello” like a normal depressive, they gleefully shout, “Hey! Hi! Great to be here! How the heck are you?” Then, before you can mutter “I’ve been better, thanks,” they are backslapping you and your mama and saying something debatable like, “Ain’t life grand!”
Well, nothing is wrong with that, nothing at all. Only now and then, it’s like being talked to by a flamboyant kindergartner teacher who fails to notice you are wearing big-girl pants and underarm deodorant.
Please, ladies! Keep it down out there. Some of us are trying to weep. Some of us tend to take a dimmer view of existence than you who are always making the grass grow greener. Still, that’s just me and right now I badly need some nighttime cold medicine.
Okay, we are back! Talking about convivial scrappers who improve each shining moment in their quest for silver linings, unseen benefits, and everyone’s good side. They way these people persons behave in public places makes it easy to assume they’ve never been sorrow-afflicted or addicted to anything other than scrapbooking. Yet, get a group of them talking around a table at an all-night crop and you discover each wife, wielding an exacto knife, has a life that’s rife with strife.

Despite their occasional woes, however, scrapbookers have snacks and a knack for focusing on what’s good. Even when times are grim they’ll slap on a happy face and spread sunshine all over the page, capturing moments not entirely the way they were, but rather the way they should have been. Their sunny ways of taking lemons and making (pictures of) lemonade comes from the heart and it goes to the heart of what makes scrapbookers extraordinary.
And that's why I love them SO much!!!