Mild Amusement

As you've probably heard, the whole world is dealing with a pandemic at the moment. It doesn't matter where you live, your country and hometown have likely been affected by COVID-19. It really and truly is a pandemic at this point. The whole situation, in general, is far from amusing. People have been impacted in very serious ways, and it's not exactly a laughing matter. What I will say, however, is that the severity of the situation has made the Mild Wife and I make some very real changes to our lives. We are hardly the only ones, but we're trying to do our part to help things pass as quickly as possible. Namely, we are staying home pretty much all the time. I am lucky that I can work remotely, and we have enough groceries for a little while. Sure, we've adjusted how we cook in order to stretch the ingredients as far as we can, but we have basically decided to avoid stepping through our front door. Now, this works to help keep the two of us healthy, but we also...

Have you ever had to help a young child wash his or her hands? It's an adventure. The simple act that many of us take for granted is not yet second-nature to them, so there are all sorts of interesting, and unique, ways in which they do things in sub-optimal ways. An adult, for example, knows that you only really need enough water to get your hands wet. The soap is the star of the show, not the water. Little kids don't know that. They splash the water around like it's going out of style, often times getting the sink, their clothes, and any nearby adults wet in the process. In fact, I have often taken to letting them run their hands under the water for a few seconds, and then turning off the tap. That helps to minimize any potential shenanigans involving the water. They also don't really give the soap the attention it deserves. Again, you're supposed to scrub your hands with the soap, to kill all of the germs that may have attached themselves to your hands along ...

Every now and then, something happens that takes me by surprise and makes me chuckle to no end. That’s where this “unintended consequences” series of posts started, because I realized that there was a pattern to these particular instances. The last couple of times, a broken belt led to teasing about my closet habits and moving out of an apartment caused some clothing-related worries . In both cases, the outcome was entirely out of left field. Interestingly, in the two previous occasions, the shenanigans were clothing-related. This, however, has nothing to do with clothes. In this instance, a simple picture was the cause of shenanigans. You see, I’ve worked at the same company for a while, so I’ve known some folks for many, many years. And it just so happened that one of them had a picture of me from all those years ago. Specifically, he had a picture of me from roughly 2007. I don’t know where he dug it up, or even why he kept it, but whatever the reason, he had it. He also happen...

I'm sure you've heard stories of shenanigans in the work break room. It's an interesting space for food-related adventures, because of the various cultural norms around food. If you haven't experienced these wonders before, the work break room is a common place to leave food that you want to share. For example, a coworker of mine had a ton of lemons from their tree, so they brought in a bunch and left them in the break room. People picked up a couple if they wanted some, and by the end of the day, the lemons were gone. So, there is a certain expectation that some food will be shared within that space. However, there is usually a fridge there where people put their own, private lunches. It's usually not that hard to tell when the food belongs to someone els; if it's in tupperware or in a lunch bag of some sort, that's usually a dead giveaway. Heck, my rule of thumb is that if it's in the fridge, it probably belongs to someone else. People put their own ...

Every family and every culture has its set of home remedies for common malaises. I'm sure you've lived through a few of them, or you can probably rattle off a few of them that you swear work. It's just one of those things that people do. It's sort of like a combination between a tradition and a life hack; people gravitate to the ones that work for them. For example, when I was younger, we would sometimes have flat soda when we had a cold or flu symptoms. I don't quite know what the rationale was, but I do remember that as a child, I was happy when that particular home remedy made an appearance. If I had to try to reverse engineer why it became a thing over time, it probably had something to do with the sugar in the soda. They're empty carbs, but when your body is feeling down, it might actually do you some good to get a quick burst of energy. The interesting bit, to me, is that every family and every culture has its own set of home remedies. When it comes to...