Blue-Footed Musings

Last night, as I was writing in my journal, I realized something special about the date (8/17/18). It’s a palindrome (81718). My next thought was that palindromic dates must occur all the time, so no big deal.

But, after thinking about it for a bit, I came to the conclusion that palindromic dates must be fairly rare. Even if you’re willing to use different date formats (say, using two or four digits for the year, and/or putting a zero in front of a single-digit month or day), there aren’t very many palindromic dates in the average year. For example, I could think of only one for 1996 (6/9/96).

This year, by contrast, has several palindrome days (8/1/18, plus all the dates from 8/10/18 through 8/19/18), and one of them is even a palindrome twice over (8/10/18 and 8/10/2018).  So enjoy today and tomorrow, the last palindrome days for the year. And don’t forget to celebrate next year in September, when we will get another nice stretch of them.

P.S. I am willing to use different formats for the date if it will produce interesting numbers, so I’m also looking forward to 02/02/2020.

Today I am reminded about how we cannot judge other people’s situations and experiences by our own. Yesterday morning I slathered the kids with sunscreen, as usual, and sent them on their merry way to day camp. The weather was dismal and rainy here for most of the day, and in the afternoon a thunderstorm ripped through and knocked our power out. There was so little light coming through the window, I couldn’t even work until the power came back on. I thought to myself that the kids probably were being kept indoors, and that it was a shame they were getting so little benefit from their coating of sunscreen.

This morning I mentioned that thought to my husband, and he said, “What are you talking about? It was sunny all day. I felt like I was getting a sunburn.” He had been on the same side of town as the kids. It hadn’t rained at all over there. Apparently he had been surprised by how wet the ground was here when he returned home.

Same town, same day. Different weather, different experience.

I use two laptop computers. I have my personal laptop (on which I do all my online shopping, writing, and social media), and my work laptop (on which I do work only). I know some people think I’m crazy for having a computer of my own. Why spend that extra money, right?

Here’s the thing: technically, anything written on my work laptop belongs to my employer. They also have (obviously) the right to read it all. After 20+ years of employment, I know my employers pretty well. It’s unlikely they’d try to take ownership of my writing or even read it. But why give them the chance to disappoint me?

So, that means two laptops. I use them both almost every day. You’d think at least one of them could have a decent keyboard. But no. The keyboard on my personal laptop has such a sensitive touchpad that if I put any pressure near it as I’m typing, the cursor will jump to another place on the screen. This not only causes text to be suddenly inserted in strange places, but it sometimes causes on-screen buttons to be pushed, which takes me off that screen and eliminates any text I was working on. It is beyond frustrating.

For my work laptop, I use an external keyboard. You’d think that would be better, and it ought to be. But that keyboard has decided that it’s not interested in the letters G and H anymore. It just can’t be bothered (or, as it renders the word, “botered”). If I jiggle the keys, eventually I’ll get the letters I need, but I lose a lot of speed that way and risk a lot of errors.

I am used to things not working properly, and I’m used to being unable to fix those things independently. I’ve naturally developed a tendency to work around problems rather than try to fix them. This mental flexibility has saved me a lot of fuss over the years.

But geez! There are some things we should not put up with, and this is one of them. I am done with these keyboards!

Right around the time that our wild black raspberry bush stopped fruiting, the blackberries started to ripen. At first, it was just a few berries per day, then a few more. So, for the last few weeks, I’ve been eating anywhere from one berry to a small handful of berries every day. I do this because the fruit is free, because I love the seasonality and naturalness of it, and because I am proving to myself that I am not afraid to eat something that I found in my yard.

I don’t even like blackberries very much. Even the cultivated varieties seem overly seedy to me. The wild variety is not only seedy, but often sour and grassy-tasting, too. But I’m proving something, you see, so every day I eat a few more.

Sometimes I find weevils or spiders or tiny caterpillars on the berries. I bravely wash the bugs off and eat the fruit. I am not afraid, you see, and every day I prove it.

Now it is peak blackberry season. There are ripe blackberries all around. “Today,” I said to myself, “I will eat a lot of blackberries.” I started picking.

Then I noticed that one of the blackberries I’d picked had eggs on it. Tiny bug eggs. Loose eggs. Eggs getting all over my hands and the rest of the fruit. Ew. I threw that handful of fruit into the woods.

I don’t know why bug eggs are so much more disgusting to me than the bugs themselves. But I do know one thing: it’s fortunate that I don’t have to forage to survive. I would never make it as a forager, because I am, apparently, afraid of bug eggs!

I shouldn’t read the news. I also shouldn’t listen to anyone who wants to tell me about the news. My husband just told me the other day that the emerald ash borer has been spotted in Rhode Island. Great. Next will be the Asian long-horned beetle. We’ve already got enough tree killers to contend with. I wish I didn’t know about any of them, but the news keeps coming.

But the worst thing is, of course, global warming. It’s become such a huge issue that it’s in the news every day. I can barely stand to read about it anymore. Unless politicians all over the world can get their heads out of their asses for long enough to agree that there’s a problem and devote ALL of our scientific resources to fixing the problem, the human race is screwed. We may be past the point of solving the problem by merely weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels now, so we need other solutions. We need every smart person on Earth devoted to this task. We need a “Wartime President” to bring us all together and unite us in the battle against our own extinction. But what we have is a terrible mess of a man who only cares about money and glory. It is so depressing, and it really pisses me off, because if I were the president, making sure my children had a planet to live on would be my number one priority.

I really just shouldn’t read the news.