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I am living in Paradise today. As I write this, every window in my third-floor apartment is open. Wide open. The air is deliciously fresh and cool. I am wearing a heavy sweatshirt that required an archeological dig to unearth, and I will put on a coat if I must, but I will not close the windows. I will not! The summer has been so long and hot. And humid. And rainy. Oh, the rains! Like hurricanes. In central Ohio?! The downside to this beautiful day is that it has given me a serious case of porch envy, a weather-related psychological condition not to be confused with penis envy which is…well, I can’t say for sure because I am afraid to Google it for fear of what will appear in my YouTube feed, or who might come knocking on my door. But envy, the g-rated kind, is defined as a sense of discontent or jealousy with regard to another’s advantages. Yes, even kids experience envy, and that’s exactly what I am feeling. I can’t seem to stop myself from looking at other people’s porches and feeling a sense of outrage that no one is sitting on them. And empty porch swings! My inner child is clamoring up those steps. I was born a swinger. I had years to practice on my grandmother’s front porch swing. How can I turn away? If you are going to take your porch for granted, then let the porchless masses have a seat. Isn’t that inscribed somewhere on the Statue of Liberty: Give me your tired, your porchless masses yearning to breathe free? And furthermore, don’t taunt the porch-deprived with a porch AND comfortable porch furniture. I think that’s what the law calls “an attractive nuisance.” When it comes to porches, the law is not just for children; it covers weather-weary grown-ups too. On a day like this, it is an even greater crime to be a porch owner and yet sit indoors scrolling while artificially cooled air blows through the vents. We should be strolling, people, not scrolling, and swinging instead of swiping! I am unplugging my devices, vacating my desk chair, putting on my walking shoes, and heading outdoors to enforce my God-given, Constitution-protected right to pursue happiness. If you’re looking for me, check your porch.
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The problem with modern living is that it is…well, it is just so…relentless. Brush my teeth? Didn’t I do that yesterday? Twice? I feel like a preschooler who just can’t believe I am being asked to do it again when there are so many more interesting things to do. Preschoolers still believe there is more magic to life than the daily routines. I am an adult now. I know better. When it comes to the repetitive tasks of adult life, my experience may be more like Sisyphus, the Greek prince who angered Zeus and was given the punishment of forever pushing a giant boulder up a mountain only to get it near the top and have it roll back down. Sisyphus was condemned to spend eternity in the underworld perpetually starting over. Apparently, the ancient Greeks who inspired modern mathematics, medicine and democracy also pioneered our contemporary version of hell where gravity is the devil. Sisyphus’s story is more complicated than mine, and I’m no prince, but I can’t help thinking of him as I wash a mountain of dishes left over from a gathering the night before. By the time I finish the load, it is time for breakfast, so I eat, and wash up more dishes. Then I go to the refrigerator to fix a cold drink, and, of course, the ice I remove from the tray is the last of it. I have to rinse the ice cube tray and refill it. Next, I reach for the pitcher in the refrigerator. You guessed it! I fill my glass by emptying the pitcher which then needs to be washed up…and so it goes. Followed by laundry… It appears that somewhere along the way I may have angered the gods, and from watching the news, this could be the underworld. Maybe the gods are ensuring that someone like me never leaves home. This leads me to consider that cave people didn’t have it so bad—naked meant no laundry, and eating on the run meant no dishes. Perhaps they were the more evolved ones and the lesson from Sisyphus is that daily life has been downhill ever since. As adventurers race to settle outer space, I have to wonder: what cosmic Sisyphean tasks await us there in a future of zero gravity? Will weightlessness be the new devil as I try to keep all of my balls in the air ceaselessly wondering: which way is up? I saw my young dentist on Tuesday. He was sporting a big, red bump and a long vertical scar on his forehead. He earned his injuries in a cycling accident. “I’m just glad I didn’t damage my teeth. I see a lot of that in here,” he said. Short-term ribbing aside, my dentist will carry on and the cycling accident will be forgotten. There is so much more to him than a rare fall from a bike. If he turns up in a doctor’s office for another reason, no one will ask him: “Any falls recently?” If I walked into a provider’s office with a lump like that on my forehead, I wouldn’t be worried about my teeth; I would be worried about my freedom. Adult Protective Services would be called. I would be one stitch away from the nursing home. My argument that suffering a fall while switching clothes from the washer to the dryer was a mere cycling accident would not save me. And that fall would haunt me at every future encounter with a medical professional. For my young dentist, his fall is seen as an aberration, for me and my peers it is seen as state’s evidence that we are incompetent and becomes a stain on our permanent record cards. Growing older is like driving around with the car’s check engine light illuminated. What now? Medical appointments are the new second career. And health care professionals don’t really see older folks. Now that the number of procedures performed has toppled patient well-being as a performance indicator for doctors, they look at us and see dollar signs. And don’t get me started on the pharmaceutical companies. I was in high school when the War on Drugs began. It went about as well as the Vietnam War. I admit it; my aging body appears to be in shambles. I don’t really want to look at it any more than my doctor does, and I am equally good at avoiding doing so. No matter how many miles I walk or how many leg lifts I do, time and genetics continue to conspire against me. Even if I get to Fort Knox before Donald Trump, I don’t think there are enough gold bars in there to cover all of the procedures I would need to lift every part of me that has fallen. Even my eyelids are sagging. There isn’t a stylist out there who could put together a flattering outfit for these proportions. My best look might be a body bag. But it’s what’s inside that counts right? I’d like to say that my good heart and clear conscience make up for the raggedy exterior, but that’s not the what’s inside I’m talking about here. No siree. You should see my labs! Popeye said, “I yam what I yam.” Well, so yam I. I should know; I’ve eaten enough of them. When Euell Gibbons asked, “Ever eat a pinecone?” I didn’t laugh, I took notes. Chipping teeth aside, I do think Grape Nuts are effective. I am constantly studying the literature on healthy aging and trading notes with friends. The homework never ends. I can list ten ways to lower cholesterol faster than I can shout out the Ten Commandments. I anticipate my lab results like the impending birth of a child. When any of my lab test results come back within the normal range, I want to send out announcements or put up a yard sign: An honor roll student lives here. And if I make it out of a doctor’s appointment without a prescription or a referral, I rush straight to the nearest convenience store to buy a lottery ticket. I try to imagine a new kind of beauty pageant for seniors, one in which it’s what’s inside that counts. Instead of the MC reading the contestants’ heights, weights, and body measurements, they read our best lab results out loud and everyone cheers as we walk the runway in comfortable shoes and sweatpants. Instead of a Miss Congeniality Award, there would be a special honor for the lowest A1c. Even better for seniors, this is a pageant that could take place remotely. Just email your numbers. No risk of falling on the runway. Have you ever wondered who invented pockets? Sure, I do have too much time on my hands, and nowhere to put them because I am in my pajamas and shock! They don’t have pockets. I try to imagine getting by in a world without pockets. All I can think of is Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. No pockets necessary or possible. Maybe pockets came with the fall from grace. God knew mankind would be spending a lot of time on the run and might need a place to carry a few nuts and berries. Sitting at my desk waiting for a storm to pass and feeling disappointed that the inventor of the pocket is not better known and celebrated by history, I decide to fill the time by doing a little research on pockets thinking that I might make up for this slight. I search the internet for the history of pockets and find that the invention of the pocket was not the Eureka moment I had hoped it would be. In my mind I pictured it like the discovery of fire or penicillin. In actual fact, it was a practical development that probably occurred to a lot of people at the same time maybe as much as 5,000 years ago. Seems pockets started out as external, wearable pouches, belt bags or tie-on bags for carrying small tools. (And I thought the fanny pack was a clever update!) It wasn’t until much later that the pockets became a sewn-in feature of clothing and a place to carry the pocket watch for the man who literally had time on his hands. (Sewn-in pockets came much later to women’s wear and became a symbol of emancipation.) As always, there are downsides to the story. About 1450 the word pocket entered the English language and gave a name to a growing criminal element, the pickpocket. Pickpocketing was much easier before picking pockets became an inside job, while it was still a slash and grab event. And, as mankind is want to do, the inner aspiring capitalist took a good idea and stretched it too far turning the simple pocket into wallets, knapsacks, backpacks, fanny packs, brief cases, suitcases, and trunks, and burdening women with purses and designer brands. But maybe I am onto something with my capitalist musings…The more I think about the history of pockets, was Henry Ford really trying to help us get from place to place? Or was he just upping the pocket game with the automobile? Aren’t most cars just giant pockets on wheels? I know I keep a lot of small stuff in my car: loose change, a pen, a few clean masks, some plastic utensils, paper napkins, handwritten instructions to friends’ homes, a worn out old map of the city, a compass, a small plastic bowl with a lid in case of motion sickness, sunglasses, caps for my tire stems…I know some people who keep their cars so stocked up that there is only enough room for the driver. Maybe Henry Ford was really a man who always dreamed of living inside of a pocket. Or making a fortune pocketing people. Well, this is taking up too much of my day. I am heading out for a walk to clear the pocket of nonsense that is my mind. I have other pockets: one for my phone, another for my keys, and one for some tissues and some chewing gum. Yes, I am an emancipated woman. I have pockets. And I know how to use them. Somehow, for reasons only the mysterious algorithms know, several YouTube podcasts popped up on my TV screen with YouTube stars eager to talk to me about manifesting. I always thought that manifesto sounded like a pasta dish and that manifesting was the verb for eating said pasta, but no. Manifesting means: establishing, demonstrating, displaying, revealing, showing, exhibiting, expressing, making plain. And a manifesto is a platform, policy, strategy, philosophy, declaration, statement, program, proposal, plan, beliefs, or guidelines. Mm-hmm. According to the aforementioned podcasts that included the usual man-on-the-street-on-a-phone types as well as respected neurosurgeons, if I think of something good that I want, and I write it down, and I repeat it to myself over and over, what I have been contemplating will show itself in my actual factual life. My mother used to call that wishful thinking, and followed with the warning: “don’t wish your life away.” But it appears that when a neurosurgeon gets into wishful thinking, it is called manifesting, and it becomes science. Perhaps a neurosurgeon’s extraordinary salary and connections help with the manifesting part, but I can’t say for sure. I’ve never moved with that crowd. While surfing these manifesting manifestos, I learned that the opposite of manifesting is hiding. Now that was a revelation worthy of my time: I didn’t wish my life away, I was just well hidden! In the next podcast fed to me by the algorithm, l learned there is something called “the dip.” Everything dips. Each of us has to decide if we will quit at that point or go on. If we choose to go on and weather the dip, we have to figure out “where to put the tired” until we rise from the dip. I don’t know about you, but I usually keep the dip in the refrigerator next to the leftover manifesto which is what I consume when I am tired. Usually with chips. And maybe some ice cream. All of which I eat while watching YouTube videos the latest of which pointed out to me that we need more zest, which, again, I keep in the refrigerator next to the dip and the leftover manifesto. I learned some important lessons from all of this podcast watching. First, my smart aleck devices are spying on me and the contents of my refrigerator. Second, I am either a hider or a quitter. And third, there is a lot of money to be made on YouTube if you can come out of hiding, lose the tired, and survive the dip. Right now I am sorting through my refrigerator for inspiration, something worthy of manifestation. I feel on the verge of something big…it has something to do with yogurt and tofu. But wait! Is that manifestation or fermentation? I don’t know. There must be a podcast for that. In any case, something is brewing. Look for me soon on YouTube… if I survive the dip. We’ve been goosed! By our polite Canadian neighbors. I don’t know why it took me so long to catch on. While news outlets have provided non-stop coverage of the United States putting the squeeze on Iran, no one seems to have followed the story of how our Canadian neighbors have been goosing the United States for years. I realized this quite by accident. I was driving down the five-lane highway toward my home when I saw the traffic ahead of me slow to a stop. As I approached the line-up, I could see two adult Canadian geese high-stepping across all five lanes of the busy highway. In front of the adult geese were four goslings, little yellow and grey powder puffs on tiny webbed feet. In their determined, goosey, take-your-time way, the avian family made its way into the parking lot of the International Union of Operating Engineers. The geese walked up the driveway as though they knew exactly where they were going. I wondered: could they be members of this international union? The people who build our roads, bridges, and buildings? The people who do the heavy lifting, so to speak? It seemed quite possible. I thought about what a strong and vocal union the local geese had become. They hold up heavy traffic at their will. They bend the arc of pedestrian and bicycle traffic with their droppings. When they take a stance, they mean it. They will shout and squabble all day long defending their positions. They are not timid in swooping down on busy roads and tall bridges, and they don’t show a smidgeon of fear of the few local bald eagles that nest along the river that they share. The bald eagles are way outnumbered. These engineering geese have been busy working and reproducing while the American bald eagle’s idea of being busy is looking majestic, nesting and having its photo taken by enraptured passersby. As I see it, Canada has been quietly and slowly taking over the United States one goose at a time. If my town is any reflection, this is a serious invasion. And the geese regularly shut down my busy local thoroughfare, the Strait of Vamoose, the route into and out of downtown. While the geese generously supply us with fertilizer, they do impede the flow of traffic into and out of the gas stations along the Strait. More importantly, these frequent closings of the Strait of Vamoose do impede the flow of morning coffee at the ports of Tim Hortons, Starbucks and Sheetz, and that right there could start an all-out war. By teasing us with repeated tie-ups and shutdowns, the geese have learned that they own the straightaway. As of now, the traffic has been cautious in stopping and waiting while the geese cross the Strait, but I don’t know how long it will be before there is open retaliation. We are all living on borrowed time waiting for the Strait to open once and for all. No one has tried to round up these illegal avian immigrants. As a matter of fact, citizens are strictly forbidden from causing injury to these invaders. (I am guessing they are all here on Einstein visas being members of the International Union of Operating Engineers and all, and many are claiming birthright citizenship.) In any event, what’s clear to me now is that Canada gave us the bird a long time ago and no one in the administration has yet to cry fowl!  After a splendid run at the top of the ratings, the American viewing audience has tired of What About the Other Guy. Responding to the changing tastes of its audience, WHY (We Hear You) Broadcasting Corporation has launched a hot new game show that blends America’s true crime fascination with the tremendous success of the lottery, honoring American’s love of danger and taking chances. The show is called Who Said? Name that Psychopath. Contestants will be offered quotes from famous psychopaths and asked to identify the correct notorious villain from a list of choices. Think you know a psychopath when you hear one? Let us be the judge of that! Join us for a round of Who Said? Name that Psychopath. Winners will receive our thoughts and prayers and an updated high-tech version of our very popular moral vacuum. Losers get to drink the Kool-Aid. The response choices are:
Here we go! Name that Psychopath! Who Said?
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AuthorLilli-ann Buffin Archives
August 2026
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