Monthly Archives: July 2025

Jackie Wells-Fauth

That’s right, the English teacher has now been reduced to using the word ain’t; something I always swore to my students I would never do! But in this extreme instance, I feel strong words are appropriate.

Roy and I are in the exciting throes of planning a vacation. We have been semi-planning this vacation for about ten years. But now, we’re serious. We are using travel experts and high technology to put this thing together.

The only problem? We both struggle somewhat with high technology. And usually, I will bow to Roy’s opinion because for the most part, he understands the whole system much better than I do.

Until now. In the particular argument we are in, I am positive that I am right, and he is wrong. I refuse to tell you what the argument is about, for fear that you will agree with him and I will have to step down from my moral high ground and apologize. It’s happened before!

We argued it out until both of us were reduced to our standard conclusion. “Fine, you’re right I suppose. I never am right about these things,” I pouted.

“You could be right, I honestly don’t know for sure,” was his response, trying to be fair. “I don’t pretend to understand everything about technology.”

In the end, we did what we always do; we consulted with our IT people. By that I mean, we called our daughters. They couldn’t really understand our issue by an explanation over the phone, but I know they were inclined to think neither one of us was completely right. After all, they understand better than most how limited their parents’ abilities in this area are.

Believing that I am right about this issue instead of my husband who is better-informed technologically, gave me an entirely new attitude. Perhaps I can bank online! It might be possible to set up apps on my phone! There are so many things that I could do so much more easily if I just set my mind to learning more about technology.

Except for the fact that I have a 1950s mind trying to deal with technology that out-stripped my understanding and ability long ago. However, my daughter has frequently chided me, “You are smart enough to handle technology. You just don’t have the confidence to try.”

She may be right. I might understand more than I think. After all, I managed to get myself from a land line phone to a cell phone. I can even text. I know how to do Facebook, and I can balance my checkbook online. With this new victory over technology, maybe there is nothing I can’t do.

With a boldness uncommon for me in the tech world, I set about putting a new app on my phone to be used for vital communications. I got it all set up; I even got an e-mail congratulating me on the successful installation of my new app. Then, I went to the app to make use of it. It asked for my e-mail, which I proudly put in from memory. The next question: What is your password. Password? I was supposed to remember what I used for a password ten days ago? Maybe I’m not ready yet.

Not many others think I’m ready for it either, and with good cause. A former student spent some time helping me with some online work the other day. I was just in admiration of the way she could jump from thing to thing and maneuver around on the computer.

“I just can’t believe how easily you do that,” I told her. “I am just no good with technology.”

Before she could stop herself, she gave a snorting laugh. Trying to pull herself up and be polite, she said, “I guess after three years in your classes, I did know that Mrs. Fauth.” She was right. I have always thought my classes were informative and useful, but they were definitely not high-tech.

And that leads me to a new worry: What if I’m wrong about this tech disagreement between Roy and me? What if we’re both wrong? After all, tech experts we ain’t!

Jackie Wells-Fauth

As I have said, I love history. In fact, I love it so much that it was my major in college. I would have been perfectly happy teaching history, but English intervened and so history became my hobby instead. And I have always had the idea that I would fit right in with those hardy souls in previous centuries.

I nurse this fantasy all the time. Imagine, wearing the colorful costumes and riding horses and having all of those fun adventures! This fantasy, however, does not hold up against the harsh reality contained in the question of power.

I don’t mean political or social power, although the more of that you have, the better you are going to live. No, I mean energy, that which it takes to run my household appliances. I want to live in the good old days, but I don’t want to be the automatic dishwasher!

This fantasy about the past hit a brick wall this morning when suddenly, right in the middle of one of my favorite television re-runs, the television died. At first, I thought it was the television that was taking a permanent break. But then I noticed that the radio was dark and when I flipped on a light to check the time, there was no light.

Usually these outages are very short-lived, but the people at the electric company were having a very bad start to their day, because I waited in vain for quite some time. Still no juice to the lights and television. A call to the power company assured us they were aware of the problem, and they were working on it, but they couldn’t tell us when we would be back in the century of electric power.

No problem. These things happen. I would just go out and make my morning coffee. Except the grinder for my coffee beans is electric and even if I could have ground the coffee, the coffeemaker is electric. There was no need to panic, though, I would just put on the kettle and have tea instead. I am nothing if not adaptable.

Of course, the tea kettle sat on the stove like a cold, dead fish while I reached for the controls and realized that the stove was also electric. Okay, so water it is…except the water and the ice are in the refrigerator and as soon as I opened the door and looked at the dark interior, I immediately slammed it shut—need to save the cool, right?

Now, things were getting serious. What did those people in the “good old days” do without their power? Well, they never had it in the first place, so they didn’t worry about it. Maybe that’s what I should do, I thought; just build a survivalist hut and live without power. Then I laughed; this is me we are talking about. I need my flushing toilet and electric lights!

I decided to make use of the battery charged items. I flipped on my laptop because it has several hours of battery power. I’ll just check to see if anyone else is out of power. The first message to come up? Due to lack of power, you do not have Wi-Fi. Darn!

Things were getting desperate now. I sent my Roomba vacuum out to do the floors, just so I could see something that was powered to do its job. But when the time came to send it back to its base? It informed me in its robot voice that it was “unable to detect charging base.” It sat in the middle of the floor looking as lost as I felt.

So, no laundry (okay, I wasn’t too upset about that), no cooked eggs, no smoothie out of my electric blender and no non-stop re-runs of Midsomer Murders, Outlander, Eureka, etc. What to do with my days? What did all of those people in history do? Well, according to my notes, many of them died long before my age due to lack of proper hygiene and medicine and a few of them died in a shoot-out at the OK Corral—but that’s probably a different kind of power.

I was beginning to get a little panicky, with all these options to entertain myself blocked by a lack of power, when all of a sudden, it came back on. Thank you, power company for being efficient.

And as for those good old days of history, it’s during these powerless moments in time, that I decide that rather than living those days, I’ll just study them…over my second cup of coffee from my electric coffee maker! Power to the people!

Jackie Wells-Fauth

I have written on this subject before and before you say it: Yes, I know, there are worse addictions. But when I consider that my snacking habits are connected to my health, I know it’s time to take it seriously—so to speak.

I decided that now would be a good time to see if I could rein in my rampant snacking habit, so I looked for some advice. “I control my eating simply by writing down everything that I am eating,” a friend suggested. “That way, when I see what I am eating, I will always slow down or cut back.”

It sounded as though it was an idea with merit. So, here is the journal I kept of my snacking:

8:02 am – Had a delicious breakfast consisting of oatmeal and coffee.

8:30 am – The oatmeal was lumpy and the coffee was cold, so I rewarded myself with a cupcake…I slathered on the frosting because, well, I needed to get over the trauma of breakfast!

9:10 am – Feeling a little empty, so I went to get a graham cracker. I ate the afore-mentioned graham cracker…okay, so I had a package of graham crackers. Oh, all right, all right, I had a BOX of graham crackers! But that should hold me until lunch.

10:05 am – I had lunch a little early. I ate a sandwich and a few chips…and then some more chips.

10:45 am – I ate a banana…okay, then I ate another banana…I know you think I’m going to say I ate the whole bunch of bananas, but you’re wrong, I didn’t. There is still one left!

11:00 am – I finished the chips, but it didn’t count, because they were all in little pieces. Everybody knows that you can’t count chips or cookies that are in pieces.

11:10 am – Stomped on the Oreo package and then shoveled them in with a spoon. As I said, it doesn’t count.

I could go on and on with this tale and tell you about the three bowls of Rice Krispies I had with lots of milk and sugar, or about the rest of the frosting from the cupcakes, which I licked off the tops of five of them and then finished off what was in the container.  However, I comforted myself with the knowledge that at least I didn’t eat the cupcakes!

I’m sure you get the point by now. It did me absolutely no good to write down what I was eating. Contrary to slowing me down, it simply helped me to rationalize that if I ate the frosting but not the cupcakes, I was entitled to a reward, which was a cup of tea and a cucumber sandwich—topped with every kind of luncheon meat I could find.

Thinking about food obviously plays a big part in the life of a snack addict. I don’t watch cooking shows because while I wouldn’t go and cook the items on the screen, it would give me some ideas for other things I could eat.

I cannot walk by cookies, pies, chips, or toaster strudels without trying to reason why I should be able to eat them. As for Twinkies and Ho Hos, they are the work of the devil and I sell my soul for them whenever I can!

This is a continuous process. We went to the latest Jurassic movie the other night and all I could think of while that tyrannosaurus rex was chomping on person after person was, “Man, no wonder he has such a big belly. He’s taking in a ridiculous amount of calories! I mean, a whole human being in one bite, what a pig!” I may have missed the point of that movie.

Now you can see that, like the tyrannosaurus rex, I have a serious eating problem, but at least I’m not eating people! And indeed that was me, justifying the fact that I should be allowed to eat sweets as long as I’m not devouring humans!

I don’t see a cure in the future. I have thought about contacting the tyrannosaurus rex and starting a snacks anonymous group and I may get around to doing that; right after I’m done finishing off this package of pieces of cookies from the Keebler Elves!

Jackie Wells-Fauth

This week, I indulged myself with a little back surgery. I say indulged myself because I really needed some help in that area and so far, I am glad I did it. I knew there would be benefits in lessening my pain, but what I didn’t realize is what an educational time the recovery would be.

I learned a lot of things, starting with the fact that after you have back surgery there is no comfortable way to sit. Additionally, there is no comfortable way to stand or lay down. But don’t worry, you will have a back brace, a form of torture so refined, they still haven’t found all the ways it can break a person down until they promise to tell you anything you want, as long as you get that hot, bumpy thing off of them!

Some things I learned were just reminders. Like the Murphy’s Law which states that you will not wish to clean your house when you are capable of it, but the minute you are incapacitated, it becomes essential. The house is filthy (as it has been for months) and you must have it clean right now; scrub the kitchen floor someone, and clear away that stack of newspapers and magazines that has been piling up for a year and for the love of all that is holy, wipe that smear off the living room window before staring at it drives me insane—further insane.

I received an important object lesson in using a public toilet. You know those toilet seat liners that are supposed to be a handy aid to reducing germs? Well, I learned that I can’t open them up, figure out how to place them on the seat and sit down fast enough to prevent the automatic toilet from flushing—thus gobbling them up! I finally stuck the third one to my posterior as best I could and sat down. The toilet flushed, pulling the toilet seat cover down with it. I would have been as well off with a Sears catalog in an outhouse!

Continuing on the journey of discovery: I am too old to learn new body maneuvers. I was instructed to lie on the edge of the bed, tense up my body muscles and “log roll” to wherever I wanted to end up in the bed. I discovered that I am not a lumberjack and there is no way this particular “log” was going to roll anywhere! After five tries and various curse words along the way, I slept in the recliner the first few nights, which didn’t require a log roll. Finally, I resolved to sleep in bed. I positioned myself as the log, tried to do the roll and ended up cross corner at the foot of one side of the bed. I congratulated myself on getting  right where I wanted to be and slept that night teetering on the corner of the bed. “Log roll,” my eye!

On an interesting note, I learned that if I want a new stove, all I have to do is have Roy cook for three days on the clunky old one I’ve had for ten years. He didn’t much care for the cooking quirks that the old stove threw at him and now it looks like a new one is on the horizon. As a side point, Roy will be operating a variety of household appliances for the near future, so I expect we will be going on a big ole buying binge this month!

I discovered that we CAN go to the grocery store together without getting a divorce, but it is best to have the argument over the shopping list before we get there! I learned that while Roy is in charge of laundry, I can expect everything to be hung on the clothesline instead of going through the dryer. While this is economical, it means my sheets, towels and underwear will have all the softness of a Brillo pad! I see no way out of this one for the time being so forgive me if I have to stop and scratch; my outfit is a little prickly!

I have learned a lot of things this week, but I think Roy has learned a thing or two as well. After he cleaned the bathroom, he shook his head and said, “Boy, cleaning in and around everything is rough.”

“Yes, I know,” I said, trying to move past him into the room.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m going to use the bathroom,” I answered.

“What, now? After I just cleaned it?” See, now Roy knows how much fun maintaining a clean bathroom is! For the record, Roy has been a wonderful, invaluable help through this. I say this first, because it is true, and second, because I don’t want him quitting the job anytime soon