2020 Nutshells – Page 3 – Nutshellcity.com

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Florida, In the News

Hooked on space and riding to the Heavens

August 5, 2020 No Comments

Maybe it’s a desire to get out of here – to break the COVID-inspired cabin fever – but I’ve been hooked by the space bug recently. Anything space-related that might take me to the Heavens above, both literally and figuratively.

Or maybe it’s that for the first time in a long time, space is at the forefront again. There are so many exiting missions and moments and milestones. Rockets are constantly rising from Cape Canaveral. American astronauts are launching from American soil again, and splashing down in must-see events. Plutonium-powered planetary rovers as big as SUVs are Mars-bound. A tricked-out dune buggy named Perseverance stuffed with so many fascinating experiments that science geeks need therapy just to figure out which to get the most excited about.

Meanwhile, SpaceX is testing its giant “Starship” launch vehicle that looks straight out of Buck Rogers and promises to take humans to the moon and even Mars. That way actual people can ride around on the plutonium-powered dune buggy. Tee up more therapy for science geeks.

I’m fascinated by it all, too. Like how the Mars rover Perseverance is carrying a mini helicopter so it can test out flying on the Red Planet. Which to me is just the pinnacle of audacity. I take my daughter’s drone out here on Earth, and in 5 minutes I’ve made it a permanent Christmas ornament in a pine tree. But know-it-all, fancy-pants Perseverance is going to drive out into the middle of an open field, set his little bugger off and probably nail it on the first try. He doesn’t even have to worry about pine trees!

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Technology, Weather

A recovering ‘doomscroller’ tries to break free from the news

July 29, 2020 No Comments

Oh, no! Am I a “Doomscroller?” Have I succumbed to this affliction? A pandemic within a pandemic? I fear I have. All the signs point to my transformation into one of these poor, wretched, ravenous beasts.

Did you even know this was a thing? Doomscrollers? That people could become one?

I didn’t either. Not until the other day when … well … I was doomscrolling on my phone, looking for the next breaking news article about how mankind was about to end. That’s when I came across this story from the Web site Wired: “Doomscrolling is slowly eroding your mental health.”

Oh, NO!

So, I doomscrolled through it and realized: Yep, that’s me. I’m a Doomscroller, all right.

The subheadline on the story read: “Checking your phone for an extra two hours every night won’t stop the apocalypse — but it could stop you from being psychologically prepared for it.”

Yikes. Punching a guy in his psychological gut. Not to mention I had already noticed funny neck pains. I thought at first they were headaches, but when I realized my neck was permanently pitched forward at a 90-degree angle, it got me wondering if the chronic reading of news sites on my phone was the culprit. Oh, and I think several vertebrae had popped out, too.

2020 Nutshells, Houses, yards and projects, Travel

Searching for peace and laziness in a summer staycation

July 22, 2020 No Comments

Some people rave about “staycations.” Taking a week off at home where you can do any number of things like a tourist in your own town. Even enjoy the pluses of your home like you’re a visitor, not the custodian.

I took a week off this past week with just such an idea in mind. Chill out. Read a book with some tea. Go to the beach. Get that worry-free brain that comes standard on vacation. Have not a care in the world.

Do a few house projects.

Do … a … few … house … projects!

And that is when the whole staycation idea fell apart. RIP! BOOM! SPLAT!

Maybe not for everyone. Some, I’m sure, can walk about their house and tune out the little projects and problems and perplexities staring them in the face. Can see their house not as a maintenance mountain, but a relaxing, restful respite to take them away from their troubles.

But I am a tinkerer. A putterer. A Mr. Semi-Fix-It who is a bit to OCD to chill when there is stuff to repair. The kind of guy who says, “I’m going to take my tea and this good book and … WAIT … WHY IS THE FAN MAKING THAT CLICKING NOISE!?! I better get up there and disassemble it.”

So goes the week …

2020 Nutshells, Childhood, Coronavirus, Family, Parenthood and Children

COVID crisis meet high school trepidation

July 15, 2020 No Comments

Come on, COVID crisis. Because going to high school isn’t, like, scary enough without you lurking around. Because I mean, like, oh my God! It’s high school, you know?

Shoot, just the thought of it has me talking like a goofy late-80s teenager.

Thanks a lot, COVID-19!

You just had to pile on with fears of contracting your virus and agonizing over whether to send my only child off to her freshman year in a pandemic. Because going to high school in normal times wasn’t hard enough?!?

I mean, most of my memories of the high school experience lie somewhere between being stuck in a vice grip and dropped in a sausage maker. Plus, I still have regular nightmares over how to say “algebraic.”

As we approach this major milestone for my daughter, I’ve found myself reliving more and more of those wonderful days. Transported back to an era when I wore clothes so bright and colorful that it ensured retinal damage to anyone who looked at me. (On particularly dry days, I could even start brushfires.) Shirts were a patchwork of different fabrics that resembled a designer hobo tent. Yet, in spite of this and my poof-ball hair, I fancied myself a pretty cool dude, strutting about the halls in my skinny legs that looked like chopsticks in a pair of oversized canvas boat shoes.

2020 Nutshells, Houses, yards and projects

Doing battle with the evil hot water heater

July 8, 2020 No Comments

I battled you, hot water heater. I battled you because you took up arms against me. You chose to follow a path of darkness and evil. To dabble in the occult, and maybe even larceny (not sure what that is.) For many, many years you were loyal, hard-working, dependable and there for me. But something happened, and you turned vengeful and became flooded with spite.

You had been a king. I built you a castle. A house outside my home for your very own. No living in a pantry or an attic. I even put real cedar siding on for you and added insulation for the winter.

How did you repay me? By turning into a bubbling spring. A spouting fountain. A ruptured receptacle. Just like you ruptured my heart.

Imagine my shock when I bent down near your outdoor castle. (OK, it is more of a cabinet) and noticed the water streaming down the side of the walls.

“That’s odd,” I remember thinking. “This shed appears to be crying! Hot water heater sheds aren’t supposed to be crying … are they?”

Waterfalls: Yes. Portraits of the Virgin Mary: Yes. My face when another blasted appliance fails: Yes.

But hot water heater sheds: Unequivocally NO!

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Family, Parenthood and Children, Travel

Getting away in a mountain stream

July 1, 2020 No Comments

Dang! Dogs sure do love mountain streams. The cool, bubbling, rambling ones. Strewn in river stones where they can run and bound and realize how their little wolf-like paws were meant to tear through the world like a brush fire or a blast of wind.

Free. Frantic. Frenzied.

Oh, to be a dang dog!

Same with kids. They like them, too, those streams. With the same gusto. Even at 14. Big splashes. Shoes soaking wet. Egging the dog on. No care in the world. “Come on, Lily, this way!” they yell, and the dog jerks about and tears down the other way.

Not a care in the world.

There we were. Out along little trails with no one else in sight. Somewhere in the mountains of North Carolina. Near to Blowing Rock, but not really near to anything. Anything civilized, it seemed.

Or anything that started with “c” and ended with “virus.”

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Family, Travel

The over-the-top packing expedition

June 28, 2020 No Comments

Sometimes, the packing is the real expedition. Forget the trip. The trip isn’t the issue. The trip isn’t even the adventure. In fact, the trip is the vacation you need just because of all the packing and the planning and the getting it to fit in the car.

Especially in a pandemic. When, after several months of social distancing in your house – venturing out only to buy groceries and see if the sky is still blue – you decide to take the family away from home. To a rented house in the North Carolina mountains. Easy to get to. You can take everything you need. You know the area. And you can spend all your time socially-distanced on trails and out-of-the-way places where hopefully no coronavirus will show its face … because of bears.

But … sometimes, the packing is the real expedition. Sometimes, getting ready is so exhausting that you need an extra day just to recover from it all. Before you can go out and try to enjoy yourself. You need that time to recover from the planning. The loading. The fear that it would burst your car at the seams. Carrying it all in.

All so you can do it again a few days later … after you’ve used maybe 2 percent of everything you brought.

But I’m a planner. A worrier. A planning worrier. I’m so obsessive-compulsive that I keep detailed lists in order to manage my proliferation of detailed lists. That was certainly the case for this short, four-night trip designed to limit grocery store jaunts or anything that would take us out of the comfortable wilds and into the unknowns of civilization.

To achieve this feat was relatively easy. All I had to do was pack our entire house, plus our dog, into the back of our Toyota RAV4.

2020 Nutshells, Animals, Family

The dog-walk kitty shuffle

June 17, 2020 No Comments

“DON’T … EAT … THE … KITTY!”

I don’t know if you have ever had to utter these words. If you have, then you know how strange it sounds coming out of your mouth. Like you’re in the midst of some Grimms’ Fairy Tale. Having to warn about witches in candy houses or the dangers of poison apples or other gruesome dangers.

Like … EATING … THE … KITTY!

Because that would be bad.

But there I was. Trying to explain it to a dog. A dog who was maybe 1/3 of my weight. So, fairly big bugger. But looking at me, with her soft brown eyes, actually paying attention, she seemed to be taking it in. Trying to understand. “So … let me get this straight: Eating kitty … bad?”

Yes! Eating kitty bad!

It was my brother’s dog. He calls her Ella. I call her “Meat Chunk.” She is what you would get if a bored scientist crossed a dog with a bag of concrete.

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Florida, Weather

We have to hurricane plan in a pandemic? Ouch!

June 10, 2020 No Comments

OK, so hurricane season is here and we’ve already had three named storms. Forecasters are calling for an overly active season, and the tropics are spitting them out like a drunken shooting gallery. Add on top of that we’re still in the midst of a pandemic and it’s enough to make you go crazy … or move to Iowa.
Emergency officials always warn us to prepare early for the possibility of storms, but this year they’re also saying to take into consideration how coronavirus has thrown an extra wrench into the mix. Yeah, great! Because there wasn’t enough to think about before. So, as a certified “storm preparation artiste” and a year-round worry wart, I’m here to offer a few helpful tips on getting ready for this year’s season, which might just be a doozy:

2020 Nutshells, Animals, Coronavirus, Florida, Travel

Getting along with gators on a lazy Florida river

June 5, 2020 No Comments

Only in Florida do you float along next to one of nature’s most dangerous predators and think to yourself, “Hey, look at that … now, where did we put the pretzel chips?”

And it was upon that realization that I started to wonder if we’re alright. We Floridians.

There we were, kayaking along Silver Springs. Paddling through the turquoise waters and lazy river grass. My daughter had asked if I thought we would see any alligators. My wife had warned us both. She had a bit of a dream about it. Not a good one. More of a nightmarish premonition. I think it somehow involved us being devoured by a gator on some kind of fancy cracker.

She was nervous about the two of us going, in particular because earlier in the week a curator at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm had been bitten and pulled from a canoe while retrieving some photo equipment. Luckily, even while injured, he was able to get himself to safety. He was an expert and knew what to do. If something happened to us, though, what chance did we stand?

Our epitaph would read: Went out as an adornment atop a fancy cracker.

Did I think we would even see any alligators, my daughter asked as we cruised along. Nah! Probably too many people on the river. Or the spring water was too cold. Or too much shade when they could be out on some sun-drenched bank somewhere soaking it in and …

“Hey, look at that …”