Sweet (Mary) Jane

Ever have one of those days when everything breaks? Today was one of those days. There I was, chugging along at work, highlighting passages in a PDF of a study I was writing about so my editors could see where I got my facts and figures, and suddenly there was a pop-up asking me whether I’d like a free trial of Adobe Creative Suite or just purchase it outright. When I took too long to answer—because I was hella befuddled—it quit. Then I got an email telling me I had lost access to Adobe Creative Suite Pro or some such. Right as I was typing this into a group message on Teams, our art director sent a message saying he was dead in the water because he lost access to Adobe Creative Suite. A friend at another organization said the same thing happened there, too: People were suddenly losing their access at random.

Eventually access came back except for me, but one of our IT folks sorted it out and I was up and running for about an hour when suddenly my Word crashed. Thank goodness for autosave or I would have cried. Word never fully recovered so I finally just called it a day and headed home, when along the way I discovered that the escalator at my work Metro stop was broken. Fortunately, it was the one where I enter the system, so I only had to go down the stairs and not up, but maybe I’m not the only one whose depth perception goes bonkers after about 25 steps down on an escalator. Or maybe I am, and I’m the only one who just kind of suddenly freezes up for want of seeing where the next step is.

Then the Metro itself broke and I got stuck in a tunnel for about half an hour.

After all of that I was very glad to get home, where I could pause to admire the tree-topper on the Halloween tree in the lobby.

We’re having a Halloween door decorating contest and this year I may just participate. I’ll have to think about it. If I were more social I’d decorate my whole apartment, get a Halloween tree and ornaments, and have a party, but I haven’t hosted anything in over 20 years and I’d probably give myself a good bit of anxiety worrying that no one would show up. Decorating a door might be possible, though.

And now, for today’s candy, the Mary Jane, a molasses and peanut-butter taffy candy invented in 1914.

Someone left a comment on a social media post about how these always fall to the bottom of the treat bag when you trick-or-treat. Come to think of it, yes, they always were on the bottom, along with the pennies. (Don’t get me started on people who gave pennies. I hope no one does that anymore.)

I hated them as a kid, but sometime in my 20s I fell in love with them. Perhaps molasses is an acquired taste. Today I’d be just as afraid of these pulling out a filling or pulling off my crown as the flavored Tootsie Rolls in the previous entry. Some candy I just won’t eat anymore, but for those who like these, looks like you can buy a 30-pound case of them for $152.79 at Oh! Nuts, the website where I yoinked the picture. Your dentist will love you, if not your primary care physician.

Happy Horrordailies 2024!

Hello, darlings! It’s the most wonderful time of the year again, and so I’m back with Horrordailies—only this time I’ll try not to have a heart attack in the home stretch. Man, that was a buzzkill.

I noticed that some of you really seemed to enjoy the daily Christmas ornaments and the pictures of the state Christmas trees in my 2023 Holidailies posts, so I strained my brain wondering what I could do for Horrordailies that would be similarly engaging. Then I saw this post on Threads by one Dan Emerson last night and boom, there we go: Halloween candy!

Me, I loved the vanilla ones (blue wrapper) and banana ones (yellow wrapper), but as I read the comments on Dan’s Thread, I saw that the vanilla ones are akin to pineapple on pizza: you either dig it or you don’t. It would seem that these candies overall are polarizing because he said when he posted this on X people were all “ew, that’s gross,” but on Threads it’s “all love.”

What say you? Gross or love? Any favorites? Pro-vanilla or anti-vanilla?

Chartreuse

The pencil above is Berol Prismacolor PC 989 Chartreuse, the first pencil to retire from the set my father gave me in the early ’90s. I sharpened it for the final time last night, when I realized that the core would shatter if I did so again. It’s small, but not tiny: I could still use it if I wanted to, either with a pencil extender or a light grasp of my hand. But I have a small set of more modern Prismacolors from 2017 or so that includes the same color, so I removed the Chartreuse from that set and put this one in the tin in its stead. The newer one now sits in the old Berol box.

My favorite color is purple, a far cry from chartreuse, and I never thought such a bright lemony green would ever appeal to me, even back in the ’80s when it was everywhere along with the neon pinks, peaches, and purples that dressed a generation of teenagers.

But then Inigo the Nanday came into my life, where he was my constant companion for 21 years until it was his time to pass away last year. That the old pencil is the same shade as his feathers made retiring it that much more poignant, but I take comfort in knowing it will be safe in the tin, braced by a rolled-up tissue to keep it from sliding around and breaking the tip.

A bright green and black bird called a Nanday Conure.

One thing they don’t warn you about regarding your 50s is how many late goodbyes you start having. Things given to you many years ago by people who are now long gone wear out. The cards they sent you turn yellow and the stamps fall off. The classic, timeless items of clothing they gifted you for your birthday or a holiday start coming apart. Any rings they gave you get harder to slip over your knuckles, if they still fit at all. The glue in the bindings of the books they inherited and then passed down to you starts to crack. If you kept their perfume or aftershave, it turns acidic or loses its fragrance entirely. If you were born before cell phones and digital media, the photographs you have of those you lost fade and the tape recordings of their voices stretch and sound strange—if you even still have the audio equipment necessary to play them.

Some folks like to pick on younger generations because of all the pictures and videos they take with their phones, but as long as younger people still live in the moment and don’t create a hazard or rob themselves of the full experience just to get a good angle, I say good for them for capturing it. If they store everything correctly, they’ll always have something crisp and fresh to remember their loved ones by.

But listen, younger folks: Even if you have a ton of photos and videos, cherish the gifts people give you. Hang on to the little keepsakes you have of life milestones, either those you experience yourself or those of your loved ones, and preserve any inadvertent mementos you find in the bottom of a drawer that catapult you unexpectedly into a happy memory. Treasure the items that come to you from a place of affection, especially the small things you manage to take with you when you move from one home to the next. Those are things you can hold in your hand. Those are the things you can hold close to your heart, where the love that brought them to you still resides.