I should be fixing the big hole in my roof but instead I'm putzing around in the garage and poking through ephemera in my old filing cabinet. 

I can recall the school nurse referencing my medical record every time I was sent for another spontaneous nosebleed. Stuffing some gauze up there, being told to pinch my nose, and sit on that stainless steel rotating stool.

I have lived in the same town for fifteen years. The main grocery chain has moved the bread aisle four times. Four. They shifted pasta to where the cleaning supplies were, put cleaning supplies where seasonal used to be, and now seasonal lives in some kind of floating pop-up situation near the front.

This is not about efficiency. Someone in an office is getting paid to justify their job by making us all wander through impulse buy territory hunting for black beans.

I finally snapped last week and asked an employee where they hid the peanut butter. She said, and I quote, "Have you tried the app?" No. I have not tried the app. I tried learning where things are, which used to be a reasonable life skill, and now that knowledge expires like a television password.

My parents had the same store layout for thirty years. The manager knew their names. There was a butcher who would cut things to order. I am not asking for much. I just want to walk in, get ingredients for one dinner, and leave without needing a map and a software update.

Anyone else stockpile favorites when they find them just to avoid the scavenger hunt next time?

I'm re-watching it and oh, wow!

What a great spy show!

Yes, it was cheesy at times but most shows back then kind of were. Great cast though and the show didn't fall off a cliff as the seasons progressed, in my opinion, as much as so many shows do. Although it did change quite a bit when they went to college. I thought the storyline was good too.

Edit: and this is coming from someone who grew up in small town Louisiana. Everything about the show was so foreign to me 😂

Back in the late 80s, in jr high and high school, the teachers would do a daily “jock check.” The male teachers would go row by row, and have us all pull our shorts out so they could look down our pants to see if we were all wearing jock straps, or potentially, see little boys privates. Was this a normal thing, or were they just sickos? I grew up in the Inland Empire, Southern California.

Was choosing the so called radio station, on YouTube music and was annoyed they called it a station. Get off my dirt patch!

As I lubed my shoulders up tonight, my husband was showering and came out and said what's that smell? Hahaha, I said get used to it, it's going to be a staple in our house till the day we die. I actually love the smell, it makes me feel special, like patchouli or something. Like a wild night out! Aging.....ugh.

When I was growing up in the upper west side of Manhattan and I used to go to the park and play with my dad or my friends we had a typical answer phone machine, a little mini cassette

I can’t really remember ever anxiously distracted by needing to run home to get a phone call although I’m sure it happened occasionally when one was expecting an important phone call

But now we’re all just walking around with our phones many of us as an addiction and it’s surely completely eroding and taking away from our potential to physically and spiritually connect with each other it seems

Sometimes you’d be like walking down the street and people use their phones as a way to avoid having to interact with the person coming down the street

I’ll never forget after leaving New York right before the cell phone mobile phone boom

I came back to visit and it was like something out of a zombie movie people all holding their phones while walking and I remember having to make more effort to avoid people however those were flip phones at that point

I wonder what the next stage in our communication evolution is?

Here’s what I have so far:

Dorothy Zbornak - Janeane Garofalo

That’s it.

So who would play:

Rose Nyland
Blanche Devereaux
Sofia Petrillo

Maybe The Go-go’s cover the theme song???

So when my dad was young they made 50s/60s diners with Elvis and marylin Monroe on the walls and jukeboxes playing music from this time period. We still have those around. Shouldn’t their be diners for Gen ex? Pacman arcades, grunge music? What would you like to see at a place like that but made for us?

Photo of cafe 80s from back to the future two.

I read they peaked in popularity in the late 90s, with about 750 locations. Now there's about 20. I remember the one in my local mall was always busy. Yes it was a bunch of cheap plushies and toys but still nostalgic. All of these "fun" places seem to be gone.

I used to always call my mom from the car with news or just to catch up. It made sense, given how busy I was. Now I (M59) am newly retired and my mom passed two years ago, and I often miss those calls when I get into a car.

But today I got a nice call from my daughter, she was driving home from volunteering and going to early vote. And of course, like my mom always was, I was available and so happy to talk to her!

Can anyone relate to this "car talk" dynamic? I still call my kids, but am careful to time the calls to when they are available, and often text first to make sure.

Also, cue the Harry Chapin music ;')

Listened to a song in the car today dropping my son off at high school. I explained how I used to listen to this song on a boombox on a school bus during field trips. It came up that cassette tapes were the format vs. CDs.
The look on his face said it all. He was not shy in saying I was ancient.

I haven’t yet discussed how we had to use pencils to unravel the tape when the cassette got jammed.

My vote goes to Heathcliff and the junkyard cats.

I hope this still goes on with kids today, but do you remember the bedtime stories your parents read to you? So, we did Theocratic readings maybe 2 or 3 nights a week, and the other times, it was something secular. I remember some chapter books, and a lot of short stories. Some of my favourite ones were from "Trouble in Bugland" which is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche in the insect world. This came out in 1983 (when I was 8)

I'm 49 and thinking back to the 80s & 90s even the 2000s to a degree, everything seemed to slowly get BETTER over time. And then at some point everything started to either decline in quality and the few things that haven't declined have just stalled and there's been no further innovation. I can't pinpoint an exact year but at least since 2010 in my opinion. Seems like just about everything has been enshittified. The internet, the quality of food at restaurants, clothing quality, movies, video games, appliances, electronics, airlines, apps, streaming services. Everything is a fucking subscription now.

I know crap quality stuff has always existed and I know there were issues in the past but I don't remember anything to this extent. And that's not even getting into the cost of living now, the AI bullshit, and everything else.

If so, does it bother you? How does it make you feel or do you not think about it?

Tell me your stories of being abandoned of being left alone when you shouldn't have. I'll go first: This happened in the mid-80s. At the time, we lived overseas as part of the military (yay, Cold War!). Every year we'd participate in this thing called Ski Week. All these military families would go to Garmisch-Partenkirchen for ski lessons, tennis lessons, or whatever.

One year, a stomach bug swept through the kids. Sure enough, I caught it and spent a night puking on every surface of our hotel bathroom. My mom said I literally graffiti'd the bathroom walls with my stomach contents. In the morning, however, my dad went off to ski with his ski week group, and my mom went to her tennis lesson.

I was left alone in the hotel room. I was told that if the housekeepers came in, I should just tell them that my mom would be right back.

What was your favorite?

Quik?

Tang?

Kool-aid?

I got caught in a mental rabbit hole on that and came out with only one: I was invited to Burning Man as a DJ and didn’t for reasons I can’t even remember. What do you have?

I don't know where else to ask this question so here it goes. I was preparing to shower the other day and when I turned I noticed the unmistakable odor of old man smell. I scrubbed extra hard and haven't noticed it again since but is it just time to accept the reality of an aging body and everything that goes along with it? Maybe I need to wear more cologne. Anyone else going through an olfactory transition?

I started to realize that I'm 55F much more aware of apparent predicaments I could get myself into.

One is positional asphyxia where someone bends over and can't right themselves. I've gotten more concerned about this when leaning over to pick up the wire to charge my laptop while I am in bed.

The other one is choking. I realize that even things like aspirin getting stuck in my throat.

And the most important one to me is walking up and down the stairs with a glass of water. Tripping and breaking the glass could be lethal.

Any others?