2020 Nutshells – Nutshellcity.com

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Family, Holidays, Technology

A little closer together this Christmas thanks to tech

December 28, 2020 No Comments

It sounded like someone playing the bagpipes on a cat. Out of tune and out of time. Discordant.

I looked up the definition of “discordant.” It said sounds that are “harsh and jarring because of a lack of harmony. Ie., playing the bagpipes on a cat.”

The melodious mess emanating from my computer speakers took place on Christmas Eve. Across Zoom. A family stretched through three states – Florida, Virginia and New York – all gathering together to sing – for the sake of the story, we shall call it “singing” – Christmas carols.

Even without the coronavirus, many wouldn’t be together on Christmas thanks to the distance or the cost or other familial commitments. But now, here they were, joining one another for songs likes “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” and “Jingle Bells.” Butchering them.

But if not in key, definitely in unison.

Thank you, 2020. This year, you taught us that technology could finally live up to its promise of bringing us closer together. That it could be useful and essential, not just cool, gimmicky and an escape. Most of the time we think of tech as transporting us away – in revolutionary video games, in the promise of perfect pictures through ever-thinner TV screens, in isolating wireless earphones.

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Family, Holidays, In the News, Parenthood and Children

Reflections on 2020: A @#!%$ year like no other

December 21, 2020 No Comments

It was a pretty haphazard, thrown-together Christmas card. Conceived, shot, produced and sent to the store for printing in no time at all. We’re talking less than an hour. Maybe a record!

We crowded around the Christmas tree in whatever we were wearing. We had a dog, a cat, a chicken and a blind Florida yard lizard. All the while a camera on a crooked mount fired off photos. The lighting was mediocre at best. We took at most five shots, found one where the dog didn’t look deranged and then uploaded it to a digital Christmas card template with holly around the edges. We sprinkled in some words my wife heard somewhere:

“It’s fine. We’re fine. Everything is fine.”

It sounded like a song. A refrain. Something a kid says after launching himself on a bike off a wobbly ramp and plowing face-first into the dirt. Pop-up as quick as you can like nothing catastrophic just happened. Lift your hands high into the air to show your bones are still nominally attached. Smile through the terrible pain, and the fact that some gravel is now permanently affixed to your skull. Scream out in sing-song fashion: “It’s fine. We’re fine. Everything is fine.” Then collapse in a heap and wait for the sirens to arrive.

All-in-all, kind of sums up 2020, doesn’t it? Just get through it. Get done with it. As quick as you can. As best you can. Everyone will give you a pass. It’s a COVID-Christmas. NEXT!!!

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Family, Holidays

The last-minute gift-giver’s guide to Christmas

December 14, 2020 No Comments

It happens every year. You wait too long to get Christmas gifts for family and friends, and you realize you’re in mortal danger of having to handout rolls of quarters. And thanks to COVID-19, this year it’s even worse. Gift delivery is backed up, shortages abound everywhere and the thought of going to stores sounds both risky, but also like something a Neanderthal might do. I mean, what is this? 2019?!? So, I thought I would share a few simple, last-minute gift ideas, including some that DIY-ers in desperate straits could whip up in a hurry.

• Take an example from the kids and actually make something for loved ones and friends. Try finger-painting portraiture or making a sculpture of Alexander Hamilton out of glued-together macaroni. It works for them, why can’t it work for adults, too?

• Better yet, put the kids to work making gifts for you. They love that kind of stuff. And if you don’t have kids, try the neighbor’s children down the street. They look artsy and in need of something to do.

• Extension cords. I can guarantee that if you give anyone an assortment of indoor and outdoor extension cords in all manner of lengths and duty ratings, plus timers and splitters, they will love you forever.

2020 Nutshells, Family, Florida, Holidays, Parenthood and Children

The magic of Christmas decorating with dead lights and lizards

December 7, 2020 No Comments

Ah, the decorating for Christmas. Nothing speaks more to who you are as a person, not to mention your familial skills, than how you handle the annual tradition of turning your home into a holiday extravaganza. Most see it as a festive, joyous occasion that lets family come together and bond. Hooray!

OR … a complete disaster when everything goes wrong and two lizards get loose in the house. Because … yeah … 2020. Booo! But I imagine these are common events as people dress up their domiciles for the holidays. How many of these traditions did you cross off your to-do list this year?

• Only in Florida do you get lizards perched atop a Christmas tree like the traditional star, or maybe even a Baby Jesus. In other parts of the country you might worry about snow or leaves or even squirrels getting lodged into your tree. But Floridians have to think about shaking out reptiles. I didn’t, so we ended up with two of the little buggers running around and needing to be corralled. “Oh, just leave him,” my daughter pleaded. “Look how majestic he looks up there surveying the land.”

• Then there are the Christmas tree lights that don’t light. That’s OK. Nothing lasts forever, and thank goodness they supplied extra bulbs and fuses. But I ask you this: In all your years of Christmas decorating, have you ever got a string of lights to spring back to life thanks to extra bulbs and fuses? I never have. I immediately turn to the fuses, always thinking, “Hey. I’m Mr. Fixit. I’ll save the day because I know stuff and my family will celebrate me as a hero!” What I don’t know is that replacing fuses that are about the size of dust mites requires the same kind of microsurgery equipment found only in the top hospitals.

2020 Nutshells, Family, Parenthood and Children

Coming to terms with a daughter driving … and soon!

December 1, 2020 No Comments

All year long, it’s been months away. Plenty of time to plan for it. To ponder its meaning and significance. To get myself mentally prepared. To decide how best to handle it. Or even avoid it. You know … how to make sure it NEVER happens.

“That’s 11 months away. Plenty of time.”

“Not really thinking about it. We still have 8 months before that’s an issue. An eternity in dog years!”

“Sure it’s coming, but it’s still half a year from now. And I’m able to put it out of my mind fairly easily … thanks to bourbon.”

And I would have successfully kept going like that if not for the ticking of time, and stubborn family members who keep asking: “So, Brian! What are you doing about your daughter’s birthday?”

“Um … who? ‘Daughter,’ you say? Don’t remember having one.”

“Yes, you do. The pretty one? With the brown hair? The one who is, you know turning 15 and will be able to get her learner’s permit to drive?”

2020 Nutshells, Family, Travel

The travel packer’s transcendental journey

November 17, 2020 No Comments

“Do you think we will travel when we retire?” my wife asked.

I had a long packing list in front of me, and I was meticulously going down it … machete, pocket knife, backup pocket knife, formal pocket knife, pocket knife for casual outing. You know, one that says, “Hey, I don’t want to mug you, but … like … I could.”

“Travel when we retire?” I said. “Sure. I hope so … a lot!”

I got the feeling maybe she was thinking the opposite. Probably because of the whole pocket knife thing. And when I asked, “Can you fit some of these knives in your suitcase?”

Plus, the packing. In general, everything about the packing.

We were heading to North Carolina. A little house outside of Asheville. A few nights there amongst the trees and the streams and the chilly weather. A fall getaway. We took my daughter and the dog, then meandered along the Blue Ridge Parkway. We strolled the trails and sat out on the house’s upstairs porch, watching the sun rise above the mountains. It turned the whole land shades of orange and brown and yellow. Like all the trees had caught on fire. I thought sunrises above the Atlantic Ocean were special. But mountains as a backdrop? In the cool, dewy North Carolina air? It’s my new favorite.

I love to travel. And maybe as importantly, I love planning to travel. It’s as much about getting there as it is being there, and I truly embrace that part of the journey. Especially when it comes to packing.

I like to pack!

2020 Nutshells, Animals, Family, In the News, Parenthood and Children

When surreal elections and real life collide

November 9, 2020 No Comments

I looked back 4 years to see what I wrote after the 2016 election had finally wrapped up. This is what I said: “It’s over. The presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is mercifully over. Look, forget who won or lost, just for a moment. If your candidate won, you’re still smiling and gloating. If your candidate lost, you’re still researching real estate in Canada. I get it. It’s been a tough one on all of us. It’s been emotional. It’s been trying. It’s tested us, individually and as a nation. But mercifully — whether you won or lost — there is this: We can all start to get our lives back.”

Rings true again today, doesn’t it?

I looked it up because I felt I had said it before. That I had FELT it before. Another time. Another place. What seemed like ages ago, but was just some 1,460 days in the past. (Yeah … I can do math. Not well … but math.)

And I’m feeling it again. Exhausted. Glad it’s over. Won’t tell you who I voted for. But I will tell you about what I’m sure a lot of us feel: Elation that we don’t have to deal with the election anymore. We can start to get on with … well … whatever did we do before there was an election. And no one quite knows what that is.

What did we do before the vote counting went on for days? Before we swiped endlessly at our phones for the latest updates, or sat glued to TV’s talking heads – all remarkably good at saying the same thing over and over again as if it’s always new and profound and full of revelation. Before the debates and the conventions. Before the primaries, and back and back and back.

What did we do?

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Getting old ... er ... older

The fountain of youth in a face mask?

November 3, 2020 No Comments

OK, folks. I know masks have become a polarizing, hot potato issue. So, I’m not here to lecture about the health benefits or reasons to put them on in order to ward off COVID-19. Rather, I’m here to share one little-known benefit that not everyone realizes about face coverings: They make you younger!

I’m living proof of this. I kid you not.

I don’t know that a lot of research has been done on the topic, but I have all the proof I need. The truth is, they can take at least 25 years off of your age, if not more.

Don’t believe me? Listen to this: It all happened to me at the grocery store while I was wearing a gray mask with black trimming. (Not sure the coloring is the key, but wanted to share that in case.)

I was piling all of my groceries — mostly cookies, ice cream and my weekly ration of beer in a case so big you could carry a bear in it – onto the conveyor belt.

As the nice cashier slid the behemoth carton across the scanner, she looked up at me and without the slightest hesitation said, “Can I see your ID, please?”

A choir of angels sang and I could hear celestial trumpets playing in the background.

2020 Nutshells, Houses, yards and projects, Technology

Dread and drama over modern-day lightbulbs

October 27, 2020 No Comments

I hate light bulbs. I hate them to the point that I am about to remove every lamp in my house and replace them with kerosene torches staked to the walls. Like a Medieval castle. That way I won’t have to deal with light bulbs anymore. That way I won’t have to make so many futile trips to the hardware store in search of the correct size, shape or “color tone.” I mean, you would think I’m installing nuclear reactors by the complexity of the task. All the research, planning and agonizing over it and then still …

Meltdown. I got the wrong bulb base again!

I never get it right.

This all came to a head as I installed a remote control in my ceiling fans. After more than 20 years of banging my head on those chain pullies with the little wood balls dangling like kitty toys, I decided to wire in remotes and join advanced modern society. Also, because when your house already has 3,000 remote controls – most lost deep beneath sofa cushions – why not add a few more?

And with the fans and lights on remotes, I can walk around the house clicking wildly as I try to figure out which one controls the light I need. Won’t that be fun?

Seemed simple enough – the remote was, the wiring was – until I noticed one of the three bulbs in a dining room fan was dimmer than the others. Worse still, ALL of them seemed dimmer than the room’s other fan.

Huh?!?

2020 Nutshells, Family

Soft hands in need of a macho hobby

October 20, 2020 No Comments

My dad just hit the road pulling a tear-drop trailer. He built it by hand. A tear-drop trailer isn’t called that because you cry at how expensive it is. It’s the shape. Like an aerodynamic tear as you tow it down the road, off to some great adventure where you sleep in it under the stars with a little window and some kind of marine-grade battery running your computer. Because stars need Netflix.

And, let’s return to this: He built it … WITH HIS OWN HANDS!

Pretty cool.

More impressive: It didn’t fall apart as he hauled it up the interstate on a trek to drive my sister from Tampa to meet up with her boyfriend in Virginia. He parked at a lake in Georgia and sent photos. The sides didn’t seem to be shearing off. The roof wasn’t peeling away like the lid of a sardine can. It hadn’t hopped the hitch and plowed into a pine tree or dumped its contents all over the interstate before becoming a viral video titled, “Dude’s trailer just threw itself up.”

Remarkable.

“How’s it riding and working out?” I texted after getting a photo of a lake sunset and my sister enjoying it in a foldup chair.

“Beautifully!” he wrote back. Translation: I thought it was going to hop the hitch and plow into a pine tree. BUT IT DIDN’T!!!