Author Archives: lindalouslife

It is finished – for now

Congratulations, y’all – we have successfully survived another transition to daylight savings time! We may be sleepy, but we made it. Personally, I love daylight savings time. I’m all about the longer days and extra sunshine. However, losing that hour of sleep sucks. At least the time on my my alarm clock automatically resets. Actually, now that I think about it, I’m lucky it did. I have a new alarm clock that I’ve only been using for a couple of months and I didn’t even give it a thought when I went to bed last night and didn’t set a back-up alarm on my phone. Fortunately, my clock did reset, my alarm went off as it should have, and I made it to church on time. Of course, I was patting myself on the back earlier for having reset the other random clocks in the house when I realized I haven’t reset the one in my car. Oh, well. I’ll get to it eventually. (Changing the time on a couple of our vehicles was so unnecessarily complex, we just didn’t bother.)

Now to enjoy the next eight months before we fall back to shorter days and longer nights.

Image from depositphotos.com

When Kenn and I married, I asked him when his various bills were due. He replied, “I just pay everything at the end of the month.” Yeah, that’s not how due dates work. So, I took over the finances and almost thirty-nine years later, I’m still the money lady. Sadly, part of handling the finances is taking care of the income taxes. I still remember the days of doing the taxes manually and pulling my hair out over the insanely complicated formulas for determining various entries. Who even came up with these ridiculous computations? I am extremely thankful that there is now software that makes completing income taxes relatively pain free. Now, if we could just not owe the federal government every year.🙄 At least we usually get some sort of refund back from the state to offset a little of the pain of what we owe. Even better, I don’t have to deal with this again for a year!🙌

Image from depositphotos.com

So, daylight savings time: love it or hate it? Income taxes: do you do them yourself or use a tax preparation service?

Late to the show

I have to admit that I have a contrary streak a mile wide. I’m not exactly the best at being told what to do. Ask me, and I’m fine. Tell/order me and take your chances. (I had to have a chat with the boss who entered my cubicle and said, “You! You need to do (whatever he wanted me to do).”) I’m also a resident of Georgia and don’t like the Georgia Bulldogs. I’m actually not a sports fan, but I don’t like the Bulldogs because they are everywhere, all the time – not just football season.

My contrariness has caused me to be reluctant to read certain books or watch certain television shows. (Still haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey and don’t plan to.) I’ll write a separate post about my reluctance to watch Criminal Minds.

I had never seen an episode of Friends until 2024. When the show first aired in 1994, I was married with two young children and a full-time job; I had nothing in common a bunch of single, late twenty-somethings living their best lives in the big city. Everyone telling me how great it was didn’t make me want to watch either. However, sometime last year, I realized that Kenn kept the television in his workshop on Friends. I was shocked. He said he just used it as background noise. (Big Bang Theory is one of my “background” shows.) At some point, I caught a couple of episodes and decided that – wait for it it – I like Friends. It has now become one of my background shows as well.

Kenn went to a blood drive in early December 2024. When he came home, he tossed something at me and said “Here, you can have these.” It turns out that the Red Cross had given him two pairs of holiday socks. Kenn is strictly a black socks kind of guy while I like bright and colorful, so the socks were perfect for me. The one thing I wasn’t expecting was that the socks were a Red Cross/Friends collaboration – a combination that I would never have guessed existed. I guess it was in honor of Friends thirtieth anniversary.🤷‍♀️

The pair not shown has a turkey wearing sunglasses and a fez.

When it comes the the characters, Joey and Phoebe are my favorites. (Ross is my least favorite.) I recently caught an episode I hadn’t seen before featuring Joey’s “moo point.” Not only was it hysterical, but I also love cows so I had to get a shirt. I guess this officially makes me a fan.

Do you like Friends? Who are your favorite/least favorite characters? Are you contrary?

Oh. You’re a redhead.

Being a redhead comes with its share of quirks, such as:

  • We require more anesthesia than non-redheads. (I can vouch for this. I’ve never had a dentist be able to fully numb my mouth, which has a lot to do with my dental work phobia.)
  • We produce our own vitamin D. This one makes sense since our lack of melanin means we can’t get as much vitamin D from sunlight.
  • Redheads don’t go gray; we go blonde and then go white. I’m well into the blonde spectrum now. I’ve heard it said that redheads don’t go salt and pepper, we go cinnamon and sugar. I love this!
Just call me quirky!

I’ve stumbled across a few other traits over the years:

  • When I gave birth to our oldest son, another redhead had given birth a couple of hours earlier, The other redhead had hemorrhaged and the nurses watched me like a hawk because apparently we bleed more than non-redheads.
  • When I had my wisdom teeth removed, the oral surgeon said that redheads bleed worse and swell worse than non-redheads. I did fine. When my oldest son (also a redhead) had his wisdom teeth removed, the poor guy had so much swelling, he couldn’t eat solid food for a week.
  • I had an endoscopy a couple of years ago and was given Robinul to dry up the secretions in the mouth and throat before the procedure. The nurse warned me that it would cause my heart to race for a few minutes but it shouldn’t last more than five or ten minutes. Hahahahaha! An hour later I was still experiencing periods of a racing heart. It was like have an hour-long anxiety attack; I was not having fun. The nurses finally called the anesthesiologist who came in, looked at me and said “Oh. You’re a redhead.” Lucky me! On that note, it will be a cold day in hell before I let anyone give me Robinul again.
  • The most recent instance came up last November. I had a bone density scan which showed osteoporosis in my spine and osteopenia (precursor to osteoporosis) in my hips. During my appointment with my general practitioner to discuss treatment I told him that I have been taking calcium supplements for thirty years; my now-retired gynecologist had me start taking calcium because he said that my being a “tall, slim, Caucasian female” made me the textbook description of someone who would develop osteoporosis. My GP nodded and said, “Also, your red hair.” Wait, what? I said “Seriously? That’s another one of the weird redhead traits?” He nodded. “Yes. Red hair/Norse ancestry make you more likely to develop osteoporosis.” Whoo hoo! He also said that without my calcium regimen, I probably would have developed serious problems five to ten years ago. So now, I have added once-a-month Boniva to my medication regimen and will have follow-up bone density scan in a year.

Are there any “quirky” traits associated with being blond or brunette?