What If There Was No Zero?

          Did you know that there is no Roman numeral for zero?  Zero wasn’t even considered until it was put forward by Western mathematics.

          Well, I, for one, was aghast. How could they not have zero? What did they call it when they ran out of cookies? Or money?  Did they just stop speaking and writing?

          So, I looked it up, and I must tell you, the answer was not very satisfying. Experts say their additive system was for the business of pricing and trading goods. What—are you telling me no one ever got cheated and was down to zero? Or had zero goods left to sell?

How could you even have a decimal system, algebra, or calculus? How could scientists measure anything? How could computer science even have been invented?

          Guess when else you get zero answers? When you search “common uses of zero.”  You get a list of grammar sites that describe the Zero Article in English. These are times when we don’t use A, An, or The.  And they are super obvious, not worth having a huge explanation. (We don’t use them when we say college, winter, today, midnight, and probably hundreds of other times we omit articles.)

          So, not only was the poor little zero ignored by the Romans, but by today’s entire computer system as well.     

          And, for this, I give both of them a big, fat ZERO.

However, I will give you 100% if you join 10K of my subscribers, on my Youtube Mom Channel, filled with fabulous, short life hacks.

Live to be 150?

           I’ve seen several articles on social media, about various scientists who think they can help mankind live to be 120, 130—even 150.  These people are all beaming, thrilled with their ingenious ways to do this.

          Some of them manipulate genes, even using worms with whom we apparently share genetic circuitry (yikes). Some speak of rewiring with a gene oscillator, mitochondria, and other paths which make these experts “very optimistic.”

          BUT… has anyone interviewed old people to see if they even want this?  There’s more to this adventure than merely extending good health. I took a casual survey and not one of my elderly friends wants to participate.

          They cite technology as one of the worst inventions ever—they can’t even turn on their TV or use their phones without a tutorial. Modern music is awful, young people have terrible manners, parents are too busy to raise polite children, everything costs too much, and all the shows and movies use gutter language. “The world is going to pot,” one said, and then added, “quite literally!”

          One thing the scientists never address is how these seniors will get by—  will people be eager to hire them?  And, if not, how will their money last that long? Or will our taxes pay for 50 years of extended living centers, meals, health care, and transportation?

          Most people in their golden years have already reached their goals, or given up on them. Should they plan what can literally be a second life? Soon we’ll have great-great-great grandparents, and who wants to invite that many relatives to Thanksgiving dinner?

          I’m not against medical progress. I just think we need to consider all the ramifications. Like Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park, “… your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Hey, join 10K subscribers and check out my Youtube Mom videos of quick life hacks right here!

Let the Good Tans Roll

           This is the season when pale people everywhere try to get a tan. The palest of us try to spend time outdoors, but our dermatologists have warned us to slather our bodies with sunscreen, so we return as pasty as we started. Science can be a real party-pooper.

          We’re the ones who have to guard against skin cancer. I had a mole removed (turned out to be benign) from the back of my neck last week, and I told St. Bob he was now on Wound Watch. “It’s the same as Baywatch,” I said. “Except it stars old ladies.”

Some people get a spray tan. BUT… I tried this once and the brown mist gathered in my wrinkles and emphasized my crow’s feet.

Many of us rub tanning gel over our exposed parts, and this works until you exfoliate in the shower, and you have to start all over again.

            My only hope is that society will circle around, as it sometimes does, and worship pale skin again, like in those Victorian Era paintings. In those days, paleness meant you had a life of leisure, never needing to work outside in the blistering heat.

Today, a tan indicates the same thing—you have all kinds of free time to lie around and bake your body to a dark tan, while the rest of us are working away indoors.

You just never know when the whole world is going to flip a coin.

Inside or out, you can join 10K subscribers and watch my Youtube Mom short life hacks right here.

JUST RIP IT OUT!

           Bold words, my friend. But I’m telling you, you can do this. Just rip out that useless lawn once and for all (No more mowing! No more guzzling all that water!) and replace it with flowers.

          Nobody picnics on their front lawn. Nobody just sits there, enjoying the greenery.  Nobody plays games on it. All this stuff happens in the back yard, or in a park. 

          It’s as if we’ve agreed to be sheep, and just follow the crowed without thinking. Everyone else has grass out front—we must have a lawn, too.

So, I did it. I hired some strong guys to take out the lawn.

          Then I covered the dirt with cardboard, then new soil, and then planted a design of new stuff.  A little purple here, a little yellow there, all perennials so I won’t have to replace them.

          I love berms, so I made a few mounds for variety. Granted, until they were covered with flowers, it looked like we’d lost one dog and two cats, and chose to bury them in front of the house.

          I put in a rock footpath so I can access each area if I want to trim or make a bouquet. We strung a drip system so everything gets watered. I added low-growing groundcovers which, when they’ve filled in enough, will hide all the empty spots.

          And… ta-da!  This lifts my heart. Every time I go outside, I smile. I see all the bees and butterflies having a ball, and I finally have the English (or French, whatever) cottage look I’ve wanted.

          Anybody want a mower?

Hundreds of short life-hacks await you at my youtubechannel. Join my 10K subscribers and get new ideas all the time!

         

Give Mia Break!

           Oh, no. It’s another Lucy episode. I wish they’d stop filming these; I don’t even get paid.

          This time I was at the nail salon. I’ve been going there for years, where Ethan does my nails in 30 minutes flat. We usually chat, usually about his darling 4-year-old, Mia.

          Only this time, I saw a cooking show on his cell phone and we started talking about food and recipes. Before you can say, “The oven timer’s done,” he was finished, at which point I paid and made a new appointment.

          I was standing up to leave when I remembered his daughter and said, “Give Mia a hug.”

          He came around the table, squeezed my shoulders, and I left, puzzled.

          ONLY THEN DID I REALIZE THAT HE THOUGHT I SAID, “GIVE ME A HUG!”

          This is a DISASTER! Too mortified to even go back in and explain, I got in the car and peeled out, totally embarrassed. Yes, I know I should have handled it right then, but I didn’t.

          I went home and wailed to St. Bob.

          Ethan probably thinks I’ve turned into one of these flirty old women who snuggle up to men and wink at them. EWWW!

          Now I have to summon the courage to bring it up again when I go there next, and explain the misunderstanding. WHY DID HE HAVE TO NAME HIS KID MIA? THIS IS A CATASTROPHE JUST WAITING TO HAPPEN!

          Mama Mia.

          And, speaking of Moms, you can join 10K subscribers, and watch hundreds of short life hacks on my Youtube Mom channel, right here!

Bubble Heads?

           The other day, my buddy Cori and I were speculating about what it will be like in heaven.  I was telling her about all my joints that need replacing. Both knees and both hips. So far. Hypermobility does this to you.

            And I said, “What I also need is a neck replacement, but I can’t quite picture how they’d do that.” Maybe that's why you never hear about it.

We agreed that the next life would be pain free, and imagined me without a neck (and hence without a body) just bopping around as a free-floating head. I mean, I use it so much more than I use the rest of my body.

          In fact, there could be a whole area for this, where we just park our bodies and enter a special Head Zone where our heads are encased in clear bubbles. We could transport them anywhere we want to go.

          But no soccer players allowed.

Hey, join 10K other subscribers who get my Youtube Mom life hacks right here.

A Perfect Toast

           St. Bob is a toast expert. Long before air fryers and other cookers, he had mastered placing buttered bread on a rack in the oven and broiling it, watching it every second until it was perfectly done. None of this toaster business.

          But now that he has a Ninja Air Fryer Toaster Oven, he is even more fastidious. First of all, it must be Dave’s Killer Bread.

          And then it must be pure butter, spread “from coast to coast.”  Yes, right up to the very edge. He requests this in restaurants as well, and gets mixed results.

But at home, he can be the King of Toast, and broil it exactly right, for 3 minutes and 30 seconds. This means the top has a glistening golden crust, yet the bottom remains soft and delicious (unlike using a toaster, which dries the bread out completely, on both sides).

Now, as often happens in life, he married a woman—me—who does not like toast. Here are my reasons why:

1.      It’s slightly burnt tasting (I mean, it’s been cooked once. Why the repetition?)

2.     It scratches the roof of my mouth.

3.     The crusts, which I’ve always torn off anyway, are now rock hard.

4.    It creates five times the crumbs of regular bread.

So, I watch with admiration as St. Bob gets his toast precisely perfect, and recently, he convinced me to try it.

          ARE YOU KIDDING ME? This does not resemble the toast of my childhood! It is simply phenomenal. Try his method and you will be in heaven. Be sitting down so you won’t faint onto the floor.

          This is the only thing he uses the Ninja for. So, if we amortize one slice of bread per day, the cost of this machine—hmm…

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It's Fun to be Crabby

           I have often said, that at my funeral nobody is going to say, “You know, she never complained.”

          But this isn’t about that kind of crabbing. It’s about my going off on a trip with some girlfriends 

and St. Bob immediately driving to San Francisco, to Hayes Street Grill.  And what was the urgency for this solo excursion?

          Soft Shell Crab, my friends. This man is crazy for it, and will drive hours and hours to get this delicacy. It’s hard to find (they’re from Maryland), so when he does, he pounces. The day he arrived, the restaurant was closed. So, he did what any sensible man would do—he came home, right?

Wrong. He booked a hotel room and reserved crabs for the following day (and they sold out while he was eating two of them).

          These crabs are lightly fried, and you eat the whole thing, shell and all. I plan never to do this. But Bob is a Foodie of extraordinary determination.

I had a great time with my pals, including the final day when we stopped at a casual restaurant with tables alongside a harbor. Suddenly I saw this sign:

Next time he decides to take off on a wild crab chase, I can save him some valuable time: Just ask moi.

10K subscribers enjoy my Youtube Mom videos—you can join their ranks and learn all kinds of easy life hacks right here!

True or False?

           I honestly think that when we die and get to the other side, we’ll find that half the things we believed were completely untrue. History-- and social culture-- are loaded with these.  As humans, we gobble up “information” without questioning it. So today I shall dispel a few myths:

You cannot see the Great Wall of China from space. Sorry. If you were going to sign up as an astronaut in order to do this, maybe consider being a travel agent.

And speaking of space, black holes are not holes. They are solid objects with strong gravitational pull.

Sugar doesn’t make kids hyperactive. That’s just how kids are.

Did you grow up hearing that painters who work on the Golden Gate Bridge start at one end, and when they reach the other end, they have to begin again at the other side? This is totally false.      

Ben Franklin never proposed the turkey to represent America (He actually suggested Moses).

Cleopatra was not, in fact, Egyptian, but Greek.

Your tongue does not have various sections for tasting sweet, sour, salty, and so on. All of it tastes all of it.

The left and right brain are not completely separate. You can train each half to do things the other half does.

Bats are not blind. Yes, they use echolocation, but they can also see.

          Isn’t it amazing how much “information” we swallow? If only we had a fact-checker in our brains, who could buzz when we’re hearing something untrue.  But then society would sound like a hive of bees.  (Oh—and only 5% of bees make honey.)

But here's a true fact: You'll love my Youtube Mom channel, filled with great life hacks. 10K subscribers agree!

Don't Be Fooled...

           I like connecting with others online. I assume you do, too, because you’re reading this. But what we all despise is falling victim to clickbait. What is that, anyway? Clickbait is an enticing, dramatic headline that hooks you, but leads to somebody stealing your data or making money off your curiosity.

          You click to see what a celebrity did, how someone cured their disease overnight, what can sabotage a great relationship, the five things that will sell your house instantly, the cheapest yet fabulous vacation, the secret your grocery store won’t tell you, how to lose 20 pounds in five days, what’s in and what’s out, and so on.

          We don’t want to be left out, unaware of the next big thing. The problem is that companies use this to keep you on their site, maybe get you to click for more information, and finally to purchase what they’re selling. If they can be like the Pied Piper and keep you long enough, they can sell ads you’ll see as you scroll along.

          There’s an ancient form of this, you know. It’s called Gossip. Today it sounds like, “Guess what I heard…”  And most people perk up and listen, waiting for a juicy tidbit to shock us.

          So here are four ways to avoid being scammed:

          Before you click, hover over the link to see its real source.

          Watch for unprofessional details—poor spelling, weird grammar, etc.

          Adjust your permission settings.

          Notice bottom line teasers, such as “then she opened the box and couldn’t believe what was inside,” or which make outrageous claims, such as “this vegetable could be killing you,” or ones which urge panic and hurry.

          Instead, check out my Youtube Mom videos. No manufactured drama, not selling you something, and you’ll even learn some helpful life hacks. Join my 10K subscribers and let your curiosity pay YOU!

Cell Mates?

          Pretend it’s 2007, and you are on the team designing the new smart phones which will take over the world, or at least teenagers. Here is your boss, explaining the assignment:

          “We want a hand-held device with a screen on the front, and buttons on the sides, exactly where you need to hold it.  These buttons need to be so sensitive that the simple act of handing your phone to another person will completely change what's on the screen."

          Check.

          “We want it to be nearly impossible to silence the device. Several clicks and maneuvers need to be used.”

          Check.

          “Also, to turn it on you’ll have to press the same button as turning it off (except off will include yet another button), and you’ll have to hold these buttons for a mysterious amount of time. In fact, put another button there, which can accidentally snap a quick photo of your screen. The more buttons on the sides, the better.”

          Check.

          “Not only that, but the phone itself must be very breakable, with a screen that can easily shatter. And no water-proofing—no, no no.”

          Check.

“To utilize the speaker phone, you can start with one button, but over the years make it two, and then three, because people like complication.”

Check.

“Oh—and make sure that accidental dials are so common that they get a cute nickname.”

Check.

“Congratulations! Now when you see someone shaking their cell phone in frustration, you can smile and think to yourself, “I did that.”

One good thing about phones is that you can watch my Youtube Mom videos there. Join 10K others, and be sure to subscribe!

To Bee or Not to Bee

          Well, well, well. Here’s the latest in my attempt to encourage pollinators. Besides planting a zillion flowers

 
          I have hung three bee hotels, which have attracted several kinds of bees. Here they are supposed to rest, sleep, and raise babies.

 (Dark, evil music plays here.)  Narrator: But Joni forgot about Blue Jays.

Yes, indeed. Turns out the hummingbird is not the only one that can hover in place. Blue Jays do the same thing in front of bee hotels, where they stick their beaks into the holes and EAT whatever’s in there. Like these are birdfeeders.

           It’s useless to wave them away; they just come back once you’re gone.

If you look them up, you get no indication of the dastardly lives they lead. You learn that they can imitate hawks, that they’re members of the corvid family (more like Corleone), which means they’re almost as smart as Ravens and Crows. This is not necessarily a good thing. That’s why we have the phrase, “Criminal mastermind.”

You’ll read that they form tight family bonds (again, like the Corleones), and they travel together in flocks called bands. As in Band of Robbers. I’m surprised it’s not called a gang.

            They’re even wearing a disguise!  That blue you see?  Totally fake. It’s actually brown, but the feathers scatter light to make them look blue. I am not making this up.

I thought about taking down the bee hotels. But then I realized I can put them behind chicken wire to keep the Blue Jays out.  Nanner,  nanner, Nature.

I have hundreds of other life hacks you’ll enjoy right here, on my Youtube Mom channel.  

Now Hair This!

           They say (the great They) that “life is a series of challenges and disasters, but eventually you find a hairdresser you like.” Why is it so hard to simply find a good stylist, right?

          But I finally found one—a hairdresser that listens to me, and gives me what I want, without an argument.

          Sounds so simple, right? But I’ve had hairdressers speak to me as if I’m a child (That’s not how toner works. Let me explain how toner works…),

           and as if I’m an old woman (you know, as we age, we need to embrace more neutral colors…)

          I even took my cancer wigs (!!) to one hairdresser, to show her the highlights I’m talking about. Even that didn't work.

          At last, after a string of disasters, I finally found a stylist (on April Fool's Day, of all things!) who gave me the right color, the right low-lights and the right high-lights.

            So here it is, like it or hate it, I'm sticking with it.

                 You can uncover secret life hacks by subscribing to my Youtube Mom channel right here!

Feeling Sheepish?

           We all know moths lay eggs on your wool clothing, and then their larvae hatch and eat holes in your clothes, right? 

So… enquiring mind here… why aren’t there clouds of moths over every herd of sheep?  I mean, that’s where there’s a surplus of wool, right?

          I know you’ve been wondering the same thing, so I researched it for you, and here’s the skinny: A moth can be carrying 200 eggs, but she’ll only leave them in motionless places. Sheep, though slow, are on the move. 

Turns out moth larvae (who also eat silk, cotton, angora, and other fibers which contain keratin) like their dinners undisturbed.

          So, in addition to keeping your wool sweaters scrupulously clean, you should wear them often. I don’t know about you, but this makes me picture people wearing layers of sweaters, just to prevent egg-hatching.

Or, since larvae like wool clothes that are kept in drawers and closets where it’s dark and still, should we display our wool items near a sunny window, and riffle through them a few times a day?? 

My final advice is simply to store your sweaters in the freezer, which will kill any sneaky eggs. Now, if you still want to know more fascinating facts about sheep, I wrote a blog about them here.

And another blog about actually SHEARING one, here.

I also show you how to fold and store your sweaters here, in one of my short Youtube Mom life hack videos. So many places to click!