“If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?”
The mystery has been solved. My wheezing sounds like Dr. Who’s TARDIS when it lands. Tomorrow will be the one week anniversary of my having caught the plague. I’m thinking maybe cake. I’m prone to chocolate with a nice ganache filling and frosting.
The worst part of being sick is not seeing people. I called three this morning just to have a bit of human interaction but none of them were home. Poor Gracie had to fill in. I swear she was listening with her head cocked while trying to understand my conversation. She, of course, never replied. It is an exciting day for her with activity outside each door. In the front she gets to watch the roofers across the street and in the back she gets to watch my neighbor put up a concrete wall. I’m getting desperate enough that I might just watch the roofers. I’ll pop some corn, pull up a chair and enjoy the show.
Today is supposed to be in the 60’s. I may venture on to the deck just for some fresh air. I get the papers every morning and that’s about it for the world outside my windows.
Being kids and being sick were easy. Nothing slowed us down. Runny noses and coughs didn’t keep us from playing outside after school, but I do remember how gross those runny noses were on little kids. It was as if Kleenex had never been invented. Sleeves were the substitute. I remember being with my mother and needing a Kleenex. She always had a couple in her pocketbook and would rummage through it to find them. Usually they were at the bottom and crumbled. Some had lipstick stains and loose tobacco stuck to them. I didn’t care. I had grown beyond my sleeves so I took the Kleenex lipstick and all. She never wanted it back so I’d stick it in my pocket and generally forget about it.
I keep Kleenex with me in one of those little packages. The one I have now was in my Christmas stocking and has snowmen decorations. It’s crumbled and at the bottom.
Share this:
- Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
- Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
- Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
- Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
- Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
- Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
- Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
- Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
This entry was posted on October 20, 2015 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: chocolate cake, Dr. Who, ganache, human interaction, isolated, plague, playing outside, roofers, runny noses, TARDIS
Both comments and pings are currently closed.22 Comments on ““If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?””
Comments are closed.
keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
October 20, 2015 at 1:04 pm
Being sick, especially with a cold or the flu meant just one thing – Lucozade.
Sometime in the 20s out of Newcastle in a glass bottle, wrapped in gold cellophane came the fizzy drink that would restore energy to the afflicted. Me Ma would produce a glass with the skills of a nurse willing us back to health as the magic of Lucozade did its job. Every now and again, the fizz was to be removed, but generally the sparkling drink was welcomed as part of the road to recovery. Hell it was almost worth being under the weather just for a glass of Lucozade
Now don’t even get me started about Ribena
October 20, 2015 at 1:38 pm
My Dear Hedley,
I looked up both of these as they are unfamiliar. The first is described as an energy drink and the second as blackcurrant-based. It was given to kids during WWII as a vitamin C supplement.
My mother used to give us flat ginger ale if we were vomiting, and she’d rub our chests with Vicks when we had a cold. My father was such a Vicks believer he had a sweatshirt used only for Vicks times.
I have cough medicine, my inhaler and Flonase. I’m surviving.
October 20, 2015 at 2:22 pm
Kat – you are right – we were literally able to catch flies and moths with the amount of Vics Vapour Rub that was on us. All over our chests and around the nose, on handkerchiefs – pretty much everywhere.
You will see below that Ribena had a significant role for children of the 50s and 60s in the Old Country
October 20, 2015 at 7:43 pm
My Dear Hedley,
The worst was Vicks around the nose. You had to sleep on your back or it got on everything. I was never a fan.
Great commercial: glad to see the whole family enjoying their glassfuls of vitamin C. I wondered why that boy kept checking his glass.
October 21, 2015 at 8:57 am
Kat – I am scouring the Greater Boston area including various islands to find some Lucozade for you. Watch for a big black Jeep pulling up to your front door.
October 21, 2015 at 12:44 pm
MDH,
Now I’m hoping for a miraculous recovery delivered by that jeep you mentioned.
I have to go out today for more cough medicine. It will be my first time venturing out in a week.
October 21, 2015 at 12:56 pm
“Hedley’s in the basement mixing up the medicine”
And here comes a super duper new video and version of Subterranean Home Sick Blues
October 21, 2015 at 1:05 pm
MDH,
Nothing and nobody beats the Dylan of those days. Fun video for great song.
I don’t care who it is but somebody needs to be mixing up the medicine. I am about to get dressed to go out for the first time in a week. I have to pick Gracie’s medicine and more cough medicine. We are going to the dump first, but I haven’t told Gracie yet. It’s a surprise.
It will be nap time when I get home.
October 20, 2015 at 1:15 pm
A ganache killing? 🙂 I guess that if one ate too much of it that might be the result 🙂 🙂 But otherwise it sounded rather nice 🙂
I hated seeing those runny noses! Why oin earth couldn’t they just whipe it off? I would arther have died that to look like that when I was a kid and I think I still feel the same way. I’m not especially fussy but I draw the line there!
I don’t mind if I never see another human being again when I’m sick and I really dislike when neighbors feel the need to talk to me when I’m sick and waiting for death to release me from the awful disease I have 🙂 I want to suffer alone and write about it in my blog 🙂
Not long ago I realised that we say to pop corn wrong here, we actually say that we’ll pop some pop corn 🙂 I guess it has to do with the fact that we don’t call corn corn here, we say majs (from maize). I don’t understand why we don’t say that we’ll pop some maize though 🙂
Have a great day!
Christer.
October 20, 2015 at 1:33 pm
Christer,
I corrected it was it should have read ganache filling.
I think little kids are totally oblivious of runny noses. When they finally run too far, up comes the sleeve.
Right now, after nearly a week, I’m tired of being by myself. I had to postpone my friends coming down tomorrow before I infected them too. I figure I’ve written more than enough on Coffee about being and need to move on, but I don’t really have much to talk about.
Maybe your popcorn isn’t maize. There are several types of corn kernels which pop, and maize is only one. They grow some sort of corn here just for popping kernels. Have a popcorn machine which does all the work for me. All I have to do is fill it and add a bit of butter to the top. I do like popcorn.
Have a wonderful day!
October 20, 2015 at 6:31 pm
All maize will pop to some degree. Popcorn is a strain of maize that has been bred to pop consistently and with particular shapes to the popped kernel depending on what the end use will be.
Other grains like sorghum, amaranth, quinoa and wheat will also sort of pop when heated. Perhaps the Swedish just wanted to be clear as to which kind of “corn” should be popped. 🙂
October 20, 2015 at 7:10 pm
Caryn,
I went hunting before I answered Christer. That’s when I found out they now grow corn just for popping. Most of the other grains aren’t consistent poppers.
I like regular pop corn from my machine more than the microwave popcorn. I don’t know why-maybe it’s just psychological.
October 21, 2015 at 11:34 am
I think it would have been a great murder mystery book title though, The Ganache Killing 🙂
October 21, 2015 at 12:29 pm
Christer,
There are actually murders where chefs do the detecting. Their recipes are always part of the books.
October 20, 2015 at 6:19 pm
Hi Kat,
When you’re feeling crappy, sometimes watching the roofers or the concrete wall construction is all the excitement you can take.
Little kids are generally unaware of drippiness on their faces. I think they have to be because they don’t aim for the mouth very well. If goop on their faces bothered them, they wouldn’t be able to eat. Often the very same kids will flip out if their hands get sticky.
I will confess to using my sleeves sometimes even now. There are just times when there is no tissue anywhere and no hope of getting one anytime soon. It’s better than feeling the goop on my face. Ew.
My mother was great for shoving tissues up her sweater and shirt sleeves or jamming them in her pockets. She would forget to off load the tissues before putting those garments in the washing machine. Whatever was washed right after that load came out covered in raggedy splotches of tissue.
Today was mostly heavy clouds but warm and windy. It looked like it would rain but the sun did peek out for a few minutes.
Enjoy the day.
October 20, 2015 at 7:17 pm
Hi Caryn,
They finished clearing the old shingles off the front of the house. I won’t be able to check on their progress tomorrow as they will be working on the back. Gracie and I will have to find something else to amuse ourselves.
Kids can be gross. I had to get beyond being disgusted by runny noses and flies when I was in Africa. It took a long time and I still always wanted to shoo away the flies.
Africans use the ground, cleaning each side of their noses while holding the other. I think I’d prefer that to my sleeve.
I’ve done the same thing and have pieces of Kleenex all over my laundry. The nuns used to keep handkerchiefs up their sleeves. Convenient I suppose.
We had sun pretty much the whole day until late afternoon when it got cloudy. It is much cooler now, even cold, compared to the daytime.
Have a great evening. Stay cozy!!
October 20, 2015 at 8:14 pm
Sometimes you use a word that I haven’t heard since I was a little kid in NY. That word is pocketbook. Folks around these parts use the word purse, or bag. I think officially in the industry it’s called a hand bag. My mother always called it her pocketbook but she passed away in 1961 and haven’t heard that word since. Colloquialisms are wonderful and keep American English interesting. Here in Texas folks will say that they are fixin, meaning getting ready to do something, except when referring to cooking. Such as I’m fixin your breakfast.
I hope you feel better soon.
BTW Did your mother give you a Kleenex or just a tissue? Kleenex is the brand name of tissues from Kimberly Clark.:-)
October 20, 2015 at 8:48 pm
Bob,
Pocketbook came to mind immediately because that’s what my mother called hers. They say bag more around here. It’s true about American English. It changes from region to region and state to state. Fixin isn’t used here except for the meaning of the word, like fixing your car.
Thanks! I am so tired of being sick.
Kleenex has become one of those generic trademarks like Xerox, Thermos or Aspirin. People say they’re going to Xerox something when they mean copy. Every tissue is usually called a Kleenex.
October 20, 2015 at 10:45 pm
You are correct about fixing, it’s the alternate Texas pronunciation of fixin, that indicates the usage. Another example is oil, which is pronounced in Texas as all. “The price of all is fixin to go down again”. When I was learning to fly in Texas my instructor asked me to fly a constant radius turn around a point on the ground. He said, “fly around that tank”. We were out in the country at 1,500 feet above the ground and I didn’t see any tanks. I was looking for a metal thing that contained some kind of fluid. He thought I was blind and he banked the wingtip to point it at a pond. In Texas a pond is called a stock tank, or tank for short. Who in NY knew?
October 21, 2015 at 12:22 pm
Bob,
I wouldn’t have either.
My friend from New Jersey calls a playground slide a sliding pond. Even her husband from Jersey never called it that.
Regional differences come down to even the smallest of things.
October 21, 2015 at 12:06 pm
Kleenex. That’s not a ‘guy thing,’ y’ know … sleeves or the back of a hand often serve the purpose of removing the problem. I remember the big rectangular Kleenex boxes and, later, the ‘personal-sized’ ones in clear or semi-clear plastic that were ‘take-along’ size. I never used any of ’em. On the positive side of your illness, the Cure By Chocolate always works … especially if ganache is involved. I remember one illness I cured using nothing more than a can of ready-made chocolate icing … I love the advances we’ve made in Mod’ren Medicine – and they’re tasty also too …
October 21, 2015 at 12:26 pm
Richard,
The back of the hand would make me gag. I can see a cuff in an emergency.
I have to go out today so chocolate is definitely on the list. I’m going to the dump and the pharmacy then the chocolate store!! I’ll be healthy by tomorrow.