Phubbers Unite!

Happy Monday everybody!  I slept in late this morning.  Probably just as well since it was raining when I stepped outside.  I sit out there in the pre-dawn darkness, sipping coffee and wondering just what the heck I did wrong.  Haha, just kidding. 

I had to be quiet this morning though.  Cousin Fred is sleeping on the sofa in the family room.  It’s kind of fun to be within earshot of him as he sleeps.  He doesn’t snore, but his mind never seems to shut down.  All night long it sounds as though he is conducting an old fashioned tent revival.  The likes of hooting and hollering I’ve never heard from anyone who was conscious.  Once the revival meeting gets going, he’s there thrashing around.  Then the conversation starts, followed by singing, followed by maniacal laughing.  Okay, I said it was kind of fun…actually, it’s kind of creepy.  Plus, he begins…ummm…emitting short bursts of gas in time (and key) to whatever that is he’s singing.

Normally, Cousin Fred would be in the spare room sleeping, but the wife still refuses to come out of the bedroom until Cousin Fred leaves.  I haven’t told her yet, but that may be awhile.  So I’m exiled to the spare room.  After Friend Lamont arrived with his commercial-grade meat slicer on Friday, he and Cousin Fred flipped a coin to see who would get the smaller guest room.  Cousin Fred lost. 

We were all busy this weekend, with Friend Lamont doing his best to perfect the technique for slicing the hedge apples into thin slices to be coated with Aunt Daisy’s special caramel.  By golly, I think we got it.  Once the caramel sets up, the slices are really quite firm.  And, actually do resemble a buffalo chip, hence the name.  Taste-wise, ehhhh, I’m not so sure.  Honestly, they still taste like bitter hedge apples if you ask me. 

I put a couple on a plate and set them outside the bedroom door for the wife to sample. 
I heard the bedroom door open and knew she had at least pulled the plate inside.  That was followed by a shriek and a couple of thuds against the wall in the hall outside the bedroom.  I looked to find that the two buffalo chips I had left for her were now stuck to the wall.  One had a bite mark out of it. 
It occurred to me then, failing everything else, we could probably sell the buffalo chips as construction adhesive.  Seriously, I tried to peel the darn things off the wall and pulled off a big chunk of wallboard with it.

Guess the wife’s vote is no.  Actually, there was a woman who sent me an email last Friday after she read the blog post.  She said she used hedge apples to ward off spiders and other insects from her home.  Wow, cures cancer and scares bugs…talk about your basic panacea.  The thought also occurred to me that we could use the buffalo chips as sticky traps for things that go bump in the night.  The possibilities are endless, I reckon.

Cousin Fred was not to be discouraged however.  He commented that he would ratchet up the sweet a bit in Daisy’s caramel and maybe add some finely ground jalapeno to the mix. 

I have to admit that having all this activity going on around the compound is a bit unsettling.  But, Cousin Fred and I share a common strand of DNA, which is probably why we’re both so entrepreneurially inclined and challenged.   

Still, I’m beginning to worry about the wife.  I keep wondering what she’s doing back there.  Probably running up the data charges on her phone, binge watching Irish soap operas…from Ireland.  Her favorite is “As the Lager Chills” the storyline of which follows the lives of a family of pub owners.  Too much drama for me, plus I have a hard time with the accents. 

So, I guess I’ll leave her be, for now.  She’ll continue to ignore us in favor of her iPhone and iPad, which are, in the big scheme of things, probably better company anyway. 

That reminds me of an article on the NewOK web site this weekend about something called “phubbing” – short for phone snubbing.  It’s the latest concern for sociologists and others with advance degrees for which there isn’t any real work. 

Phubbers prefer to engage with their smartphones rather than the person sitting next to them.  They sit and zip through the various apps, checking to see if their long lost high school pal (who appeared out of nowhere after 30 years) has responded to their text, checking the latest prices on their stocks (even though it’s a weekend and markets are closed), checking the weather to see if it’s going to rain in the next twenty minutes (after checking it 20 minutes ago), and then finally running that damned ghost finder app to see any ghosts have taken up residence in the past 10 minutes (they’re everywhere I’m tellin’ ya!) instead of listening to the person trying to have a conversation with them. 

Phubbees are apparently suffering from depression and a generally “lower rate of life satisfaction”…judas priest.  I thought I’d heard it all.

You know something.  If that’s the biggest thing bringing you down, snatch that phone away from said Phubber and smash it into a million pieces.  Seriously…what the hell is humanity coming to that technology is pushing us to the edge. 

I could go on, but Cousin Fred is now reciting the Saint Crispin Day speech from Henry V in his sleep and I don’t want to miss it.