Automotive, Fantasy, Media, Movies, Nature, TV, Uncategorized

Real Life

37 Comments

In a TV murder mystery I watched over the weekend, the heroine is trailing some bad guy at a hotel. He leaves the hotel and gets into his car right outside.   She comes out and gets into her car which is parked right behind his.  That’s when I realized that Aristotle was wrong about art imitating life.  When, in any movie or TV show does the hero or heroine have to circle the block to find a parking spot?  Or park 3 blocks away and hoof it to where they are going?  Or stop to pay a parking meter?  Never.

It made me think about other things that never happen on screen. Nobody ever scoops poop when walking their dogs, nobody ever seems to put groceries away (although every now and then there is actually time spent in a grocery store) and nobody EVER stops to worry about birth control.

I think it would be nice to have a world in which I could always find a convenient parking spot and have my groceries put away magically.

What daily task would you love to have disappear from your life?

37 thoughts on “Real Life”

  2. Cleaning and putting away dishes (see also: our dishwasher full of clean dishes and the small gathering of dirty dishes on the counter). Or clearing the crap that inevitably builds up on the dining room table (which currently includes glass globes from a couple of light fixtures we replaced, a couple of card games, a cat toy, and some junk mail). Maybe both.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  3. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    I really think I was meant to have a housemaid, like the maids portrayed in Downtown Abbey. And a gardener. And a scullery maid. And the inherited money and estate to support all of this. I commented on this at LJB’s memorial yesterday, too. These small chores are just so inconvenient, and the older I get, the more I feel this way. Maybe I should re-locate to Assisted Living right now.

    I just cannot make myself clean, but I do like a clean house, so I just gave up on it and have hired a cleaning lady. This started 30 years ago after I had someone to assist while I had chemotherapy, and after that it was over. That was just too nice. Things are clean enough that way. The rest of the chores I seem to be able to get myself to complete. I even prefer mowing the lawn to cleaning the house.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  4. It is very dusty here. I could dust and vacuum a couple of times a week and still have dust. I would like it to go away.

    This morning I am watering parts of the garden because it is going to be hot when we are in Denver later this week for Fathet in law’s memorial service. I get tired of watering the garden, too.

    I have been avoiding taking care of two vexing inquiries sent to my regulatory board. I will take care of them this morning. I wish they would go away.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

    1. We find dust at that level in AZ, as well. When we walk in the door after being away for 6 months, it is really thick, despite having shades drawn, windows sealed tightly shut. When we are there, I dust a lot. A wind storm really ices the problem.

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply

  5. Just for the record, when I pulled up yesteray at 10:59 for the memorial service, there was an open parking spot right across the street… This happens once in a blue moon.

    Currently, there are some daily tasks for our friend with Parkinson’s. We’ve tried to organized others from his “inner circle” to help out, but most of them are out of town these last two weeks. Now we’re trying to hire more in-home help till we can get him into asst. living. But we’re pretty much it right now, and we’re fried.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  6. Reading the comments so far this morning, I have to ask the respondents, do all of the household chores fall on you? It sounds that way.

    Sherrilee’s post reminds me that when I used to walk the dog and after gathering up the usual bag or two of poop, I would have the leash in one had and the poop bags in the other and I would have to be mindful to transfer the poop bags to the leash hand whenever I ran into an acquaintance so as not to wave to them with bags of poop.

    Liked by 6 people

    Reply

    1. The chores do not all fall on my shoulders—I did not mean to leave that impression. However, husband and I have very different definition of what “clean” means. It lead to conflict that became somewhat intractable. Conflict was relieved by hiring someone to clean. It was so much more effective and much cheaper than marriage counseling. Lou does many chores here, even more so since retirement.

      Liked by 6 people

      Reply

    2. Husband folds and puts away the laundry, does 60 % of the cooking and baking, considers it his duty to keep the kitchen counters clean, and mows the lawn. He also cleans his own bathroom. We both weed. I get the laundry going and dry it. I keep track of bills and do financial stuff. I load the dishwasher. He unloads the dishwasher. He cleans the cat litter most of the time. When we had a dog, he walked it. I vacuum and dust because I have better motor skills and can manipulate the equipment more effectively than he can. I think it is a pretty equitable division of labor.

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply

    3. Husband actually takes care of a lot of the daily chores. Dishes are a shared effort…and can pile up if our busy days happen at the same time.

      Like

      Reply

  7. I want the junk mail predisposed of before it gets to my mail slot. This especially includes all those fabulous offers to buy my house “as is”.

    Perhaps the same person disposing of the junk mail would also convey to them the asking price for my house (as in “this is what it would cost for me to completely relocate to the Island” which is the only way I would even consider selling), as I’m pretty sure they would not be willing to pay enough for me to live elsewhere in any sort of comfort.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  8. Taking care of the bills and finances is a pain that I can do without. The more I try to simplify things, the more complicated society tells us it must be what with website passwords that always seem to need changing, credit freezes and credit score monitoring, worrying about hackers getting into your bank or investment account, IRS forms and regulations change (usually for the more complicated). etc. Heck, just deciding which brand and type of toothpaste to buy takes 15 minutes of label searching at the drug store! So many choices, and of course you want to get the best value and quality, so you need to do some research via Consumer Reports, but they tell you twelve of the twenty top models of this or that or the other is a check-rated best buy, so you end up choosing via “eenie, meenie, meinee, moe” anyway.

    Oh, to be wealthy enough to hire someone to do everything financial in my life. But then of course you need to find someone you can trust, which requires research, background checks, referrals and recommendations, and everyone says “Oh, (s)he’s the best,” and are afraid to say anything bad about the person because they don’t want to get sued for slander, yadda-yadda-yadda …” Huh? No, I mentioned the bisque.”
    🙂

    Chris in Owatonna
    (OK, trivia buffs–for bonus points, what’s the source of that last sentence?)

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  9. Hi–

    If I could just get someone to haul out the garbage and recycling and DEAL with it. Don’t just haul it out to the garage; that’s not any better than I do.

    (We don’t have a garbage or recycling service so we seperate the recyling but have to haul it in ourselves. And the county recycling center gets busy and isn’t laid out very well. it’s just clunky.)

    We split a lot of the chores. Amelia does her own laundry and I often ask her to water plants. She’ll unload dishwasher and even load it.
    I do a lot of laundry and dishes. We sort of split cooking but often we’re all on our own for that too.

    As has been said, there are different levels of cleanliness. I clean my ‘mudroom’ bathroom. But it gets pretty dirty before I vacumn.
    Kelly asked one day why our neighbors house was so clean. Well, they don’t farm, they don’t have animals in the house, they don’t have a husband who walks through the house with dirty shoes all the time. And they have the cleaning service every Monday. Yep, that all contributes.

    It was good to see some of the trail yesterday. It was a nice service. tim, you did a good job with the intro and explanation. Thank you for doing that.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

    1. One of my farm wife aunts used to keep a fly strip over the kitchen table, to the chagrin of everyone in the family. It was effective, attracting hundreds of flies buzzing to their deaths as you ate. GROSS. Farm homes are very difficult to keep clean for many reasons–gravel roads, mud, flies, caring for animals, dirty clothing, straw and hay, and on and on. Another aunt designed and built her own farmhouse with this in mind, with a back entry, bathroom, mudroom, laundry positioned just so and that seemed to solve a lot of the “clean” issues for them.

      Liked by 5 people

      Reply

        1. That was close to what she did. With some clothing and boot space and a bathroom there. A closet with a clean change of clothing. My uncle c outdoor shower and chNge into clean clothing before hitting the rest of the house. Then the work clothes went in the laundry.

          Liked by 3 people

    2. It was really a nice service for our LJB and I was proud of our group to show such respect and affection for her in this way. Her HS friends who led the service did a very lovely thing for her memory.

      Liked by 7 people

      Reply

  10. In line with your notice of things they don’t do in TV shows, they also don’t appear to sweat!
    Watching HGTV or any of the number of home remodeling shows, and you’ll see a crew working on something and no one every looks dirty or tired. Kelly suggested they must bring in a clean crew just before cameras roll. Then the ‘clean’ crew backs off so the actual, dirty workers can come back in.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

        1. Well how would I know this other than seeing you do it? 🧐. I would never do such a thing and my dogs are so exquisitely trained they would not eat off the floor. 😉

          Liked by 3 people

  12. People only rarely get flat tires on TV. Husband is currently sitting on the side of the highway with a flat tire about 60 miles north if town. He has a spare. He loaned his jack and lug wrench to a friend on the rez the winter. She never returned it. He can’t change the tire. He is waiting for a tow truck., or perhaps a friend in a close by rez town, or perhaps a friend of an oilfield worker who stopped to help. I am somewhat disgusted with the lot of them right now, and I expect that in around an hour I will get a call to come and get him because no one else can come and help.

    Like

    Reply

    1. Well, some other guy with a lug wrench stopped, and Husband assures me they are changing the tire. I should be more hopeful, I guess, but sometimes Husband is a real mooncalf.

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply

      1. He is mobile. The tire is changed. He was in an area of rough terrain just north of the Little Misdouri River. It is the middle of nowhere with heavy oilfield traffic. He better not get another flat tonight.

        Liked by 4 people

        Reply

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.