Technically, I was born in the last official year of the baby boom generation, on the cusp of Gen X. According to my daughter the American Studies/History major, I really would be Gen X because I was not born in reaction to the end of WWII as I am the oldest child.

But anyway…

It doesn’t mean I don’t have strong feelings against the term “OK Boomer”…

I think it’s sort of mean to dismiss an antire age group because of their age…especially calling them old and out of touch…

I like to think I am somewhat “in touch”. I should be able to get some sort of passing grade if I were to take a pop culture quiz. I read Buzzfeed…

OK…

I used to read Buzzfeed…

Here’s the story (OK maybe I am old because it’s taken be awhile to get to the point I’m making…)

Buzzfeed does a lot of lists: best Netflix, best life hacks, best hoodies, etc. They also do a best cheap product listicle. I recently saw one about a really inexpensive, yet effective bra.

So I bought it.

Worst decision ever.

Worst bra ever.

OK…worst bra ever for someone over the age of 40…

It was uncomfortable. It gave me a rash. It made the girls look weird…

Total waste of 19.99…

So here’s my conclusion. I am too old to get underwear recommendations from buzzfeed, and I am OK with this.

Call me Boomer anytime…I’ve earned the right to better under garments…

I love a good argument.

And by that I mean I love to debate ideas with people. I love to think of a premise or situation or whatever, and bat it around. Disclaimer: I do not debate politics, religion and in some cases, money.

I like to know what people think. I like to know how someone came to a certain conclusion. I like to know what makes people think. I love anything that involves words, theories and ideas.

However:

In my personal life, I do not like conflict. I try to avoid large family fights. I’m a believer in pick your battles. I don’t call names. I don’t bring up things from the past.

The other thing I don’t do is pick fights with other people on social media.

I have a very lean (and getting leaner by the day) Facebook group. I have never said anything negative on the Facebook page of another person. I have never gotten into a fight with a friend of a friend.

I don’t tweet. At all. I mean, I don’t even have an account.

I don’t have any of the social media apps that many do.

I’m more luddite than I am social media savvy….

Yet….

I know people who will get into arguments with friends of friends if friends on social media.

And the tenor of the arguments declines quickly.

Friends of my sister have told my mother to STOP SCREAMING (my Mother only writes in caps) and told her to up her meds.

My sister will write FB posts about fights she has gotten into with friends of friends on social media.

(Ok- now that I’m thinking about it, maybe this is something only members of my family do)

So……

What’s the point of arguing with people that you don’t know on social media?

Does it really make you feel better?

Does it make you a better person to tell someone that they are crazy or stupid?

Do you think your ideas will be received better if you denigrate the person with whom you are conversing?

Does anger make your point, idea or theory better and more valid?

Is it reasonable to have a verbal spar with someone that you don’t know, based on one thing that you read that they said, and where you might not know the context of the statement?

I try to keep my blog comments positive. (well, on other peoples blogs anyway- on my own I really try to be nice, but the other day I almost ripped into someone…but anyway) In fact, I often use emojis so that my 👍❤🤞😢😒😘 is read exactly how I intended it to be.

Only once in my years of blogging have I commented negatively on the blog of someone I didn’t know well. The blogger said that you shouldn’t tell your kids “I love you” with adding something like “I love you because you cleaned up, or because you’re a kind person.” I told that blogger that there should be no qualifiers to love, and that those words should be said often to the people that you love, especially kids.

So there you go…

Do you argue with people you don’t know on social media platforms?

Do you think it’s a positive thing or negative?

What do you think of people who call people stupid?

I won’t bore you with too many details, but we had some time to kill in New Jersey. We saw a Dunkin Donuts with outdoor seating, so we pulled in. My husband and I went inside to get drinks.

As my husband paid for the drinks he saw that the clerk gave us the Senior discount.

My Husband, who is four years younger than me (four years and seven months if you are a toddler) was taken aback by this. Admittedly, my husband looks young, but whatever.

When we went to the seats outside, my husband was pretty confident the clerk gave us the senior discount because of me…

So…

I am grateful that when my Husband went inside by himself to get a bottle of water, a different clerk gave him, and him alone, the senior discount….

The other day I wrote about my pretend press conference where I left the stage accompanied by a song. Blog friend Parks/Living commented that it would be a great idea if we all had personal theme songs. sort of like when baseball players come up to the plate. So I thought… of course we should all have personal theme music.

Now, I’ve been thinking about this for about twenty seconds, so let’s see what sort of guidelines we should use…

1. Recognizability: The song probably shouldn’t be a “B” side song. It helps that it’s something that many people have heard
2. However….it can’t be too recognizable. I am a Journey fan, but I know that “Don’t Stop Believing” can become a little cliché
3. Strong chorus or tag line- I think it helps to have the impact of well chosen and powerful words
4. Crescendo- you need the music to get louder, which brings a level of excitement to the gathered crowd
5. It should give you an identity

These are just guidelines: you can choose anything to be your theme song. One of the NY Mets (sorry I don’t remember who, and I’m wondering if they played theme music when no one was at CitiField) used the Frank Sinatra classic, “Fly me to the Moon” which did not have a crescendo, but had the obvious hit the ball to the moon reference that made it work so well as a theme song?

I have narrowed my choices down to two songs:

“I Want it All” by Queen

or…

Ride of the Valkyries by Wagner

Which one should I choose for myself?

And more importantly…

Which song do you choose for your personal theme music?

What should your theme music be?

Also– as I am notoriously bad at adding links, please tell me if the above links do or do not work. Thanks in advance…

Flashback: A few months ago I was watching Grantchester on PBS. I heard a quote during the episode but I didn’t write it down- I was watching the show and didn’t want to lose focus. I figured since I was DVRing the show I could always rewatch the scene. Then DVR had to be replaced. Lost the episode. I did write about the quote anyway, because we always follow the established blog pattern here at waking….but it irked me that I didn’t have the actual quote. And then….the episode aired again….

I now present to you: the quote…

Nun– (speaking about being a nun and living in a convent) Some people find this life constricting

Will– (sarcastically) I can’t imagine why

Nun– Others find the constriction a form of freedom

So, now that you see the direct quote…

What do you think?

Does constriction offer it’s own sort of freedom?

I’ll tell you, personally, I am not liking the the pandemic restrictions. I don’t like all the things that we can’t do, or aren’t supposed to do. I don’t like how everyone is judging everyone else’s choices either. The particular constrictions we are living under is bringing out the absolute worst in people…

True, some have risen to the challenge…

But as time marches on, people’s patience and fortitude are eroding…

The supermarket workers in my neighborhood…they are really tightly wound right about now…Months of food shortages, long lines and annoying customers have worn down even the most optimistic of them.

Gone are the posts about baking bread and tie dying clothes. Gone are the lists of things to do, plays that are streaming…

The constrictions are really starting to get to people…

But anyway….

How do you feel about the quote?

Do you find freedom in constrictions?

Does lack of choice have benefit?

Now that you’ve seen the quote, what does it mean to you?

My Husband and I recently finished the Netflix show Away. I enjoyed the show: I like character driven shows and I loved how the characters in this unfolded and grew/changed throughout the course of the episodes. I give it a 👍

So my family was discussing this show over dinner, and my Husband asked:

“Is the show renewed?”

Before I had a chance to answer, which means my daughter jumped in really quickly, she responded:

“Did you google will this show be renewed?

My Husband and I looked at each other….

“No. I didn’t google that.” I said.

My daughter laughed the laugh of the Gen Z who knows everything. “Well” she stated “That’s how shows get renewed. It’s based on how many people google, tweet or respond to a show on social media.”

Whatever happened to Nielson? Remember those ratings guys? Sweeps months? Advertising dollars?

It’s a brave new world out there and I’m not even sure I want to be a part of it.

I freely admit that I have never googled a TV show to see if something is returning. The only time I google anything about TV is when I’m watching a show and I see an actor and I can’t place where I’ve seen them before. I hop on IMDB and figure it out. But my TV googling stops there…

Do you google TV shows?

Do you tweet about TV?

Do you do anything on social media revolving that box or computer or anything that puts out shows?

Are you part of this brave, new world?

Is my lack of social media presence the reason why I can rarely find anything I like on TV?

????????

1. What are the shows on tv/streaming/whatever that you currently enjoy?
2. Do you go on social media to talk/read about these shows?
3. What do you think makes a show renewable?
4. Do you like TV or find it a necessary evil?
5. Do you watch/stream less than five hours of TV a week, excluding news?

Discuss anything you want about TV/streaming…

I am not a chef.

However…

I love to cook.

I love to look through magazines: old school. I get Real Simple and Good Housekeeping: I love flipping actual pages and looking at glossy 8×10 pictures of delicious food. This makes me excited, knowing that I can create a reasonable taste facsimile to anything I see on the page.

Dutifully, when I finish pretending to read all the articles, I rip out recipes and I put them in a folder. Every Sunday I hand the folder to my daughter and husband and tell them to pick out a recipe: everyone gets a choice. But I pick all the other meals: after all I’m the one shopping and prepping and cooking…

My daughter is usually game for this experience. She rifles through and comes up with something. My Husband will grumble that there’s nothing good in the folder. This in itself is a microcosm of how people are: some will work within the framework that’s provided, while others will complain without adding a viable solution.

My Husband will say something like, how about gumbo?

Have you ever made gumbo?

Do you have any idea how long you have to stir a roux?

Or he’ll ask about a long, carefully braised meat…in the middle of the summer when it’s 93 degrees and humid and I can think of nothing I’d like more than having the oven on for three hours…does make you consider that choice can be a bad thing…

But you know what happens along the way, when you give people a little bit of say in something…

Even your ever optimistic daughter will start to get a little big for her britches.

Last week I made a fish stew.

I’m started hearing complaints about the fish stew even before I had even made the fish stew…

But my daughter said- “It’s fine. But it’s never something you would order in a restaurant…”

I looked at her…

I looked at her hard…

“Well” she stuttered “I’m not comparing you to a restaurant. I mean, I know you’re not a restaurant. I just mean that this doesn’t sound exciting…”

I still looked at her as I closed the folder on my desk, the fish stew prominently in front of me…

Husband chimed in “We mean, fish stew is fine, but do we ever just want fine?”

I stood up from my desk, my full five foot two inch persona glaring at them:

“I have canned tomato’s. I have a half bag of frozen shrimp. I have celery. The only thing I need to pick up is a piece of cod. I use up things I have in the house.” I am really big on using up what’s in the house “It’s also a one pot meal.” Sorry, not sorry, but who doesn’t love a one pot meal?

They glared at me…

I pointed at both of them: “Feel free to make your own dinner…”

Insert grumbling noises here…

So I made the fish stew.

They complained.

But should you ever really complain to the person making your food?

Wonder what I’ll make them tonight…

Guess what happened a few weeks ago?

I went from being a wordpress.com to a .com!

How exciting is that?

Just when everyone is considering leaving WordPress because block editor isn’t as easy as stacking a bunch of blocks, I take ownership and buy my domain name.

Huzzah.

It was a weird feeling plunking down that money. My first thought, of course, was that I would get bored and stop writing. Because isn’t that what always happens? As soon as you invest in something the novelty erodes and you never pick it up again?

But, for now, I’m still here…

This is where you would stand up and cheer if we were all together in a packed room and I was unveiling my new product. Chants of LA LA LA would be echoing off the walls. But since we can’t actually be together for this momentous announcement, I will just run the soundtrack through my head…

LA

LA

LA

But anyway…

It did feel a little scary when I first saw the plain .com. I mean, what right do I have to an actual domain name? Does having wordpress in there have any street cred? Is having my own .com entitle me to use the term street cred?

I don’t sell anything (except my discount brand of pragmatism) I have no dreams of becoming viral (take that in any sense of the word…no post being spread millions of times, no testing positive for anything) So what am I?

Thoughts of am I a fraud? popped through my head. I mean, do I really have any idea what I’m saying everyday when I spout my philosophies on just about everything? Or an I just spouting?

And then the pragmatic side took hold real hard.

Of course I’m just spouting. But really, so is everyone else.

We all think things and say things and wonder what comes next.

We are all just getting through the day, hoping that tomorrow will be just a little better. Even if out lives are 100% perfect at that moment, we optimistically think, maybe life can be just a little better tomorrow…

This is the moment in my blog where I would usually check the word count… Has anyone figured out how to check word count in block editor? Because I do miss that… I miss that little reminder of when I’ve babbled endlessly for a hundred or so too many words…

So I’ll just sign off for now.

Welcome to wakinguponthewrongsideof50.com

I aim to be a little snarky, a little sarcastic, 25% pessimist, 25% optimist and 100% myself.

Thank you and Good Night.

the crowd roars as I exit the stage in a pillar of smoke and “Eye of the Tiger” plays in the background.

My other highlight was attending a lecture given by one of my daughter’s professors. He used some of her work for a project. Seeing your child’s work displayed never fails to make me happy. But what’s better is seeing your kid’s face light up when they realize the Prof has shown their work….as they wave across the room “That’s my thing! That’s my project.”