How to open a jar…..

photo by Susan Kauffmann

After our Arthritis exercise class the other day, friends gathered to chat over coffee. Isabel had given me a gift of a battery-operated jar opener. Goodness knows, I’d done battle with some stubborn tops lately and probably told her so. I said I couldn’t wait to get home to play with my new ‘toy’. This led to a discussion of our children and their toys.

My son, Rafi, was a ‘lets-see-whats-inside’ kid. When he was five, I thought he’d enjoy a walkie-talkie — okay, I would anyway. (This was before computers.) We both loved it and communicated with each other from room to room. The next day, after work, I returned home and found Rafi had taken it all apart. He thought he could put it back together. No more walkie-talkie. He was so sincere, you couldn’t get upset with him.

Rafi was a funny wonderful kid

 

70s toy Simon

The next thing Rafi took apart was the then-brand-new and very popular Simon game. I got the biggest kick out of it. It lit up! We loved it. If memory serves, it cost over $60, a hefty sum at the time — but well worth it. What happened?? The next evening I learned Rafi couldn’t resist taking Simon apart. He wanted to see how it worked. No more Simon.

I’m a slow learner and since I never grew up, I was soon entranced by a real working watch for children. An educational toy… The inner workings were clearly visible and coloured in bright red, green and yellow. It, too, didn’t last more than a day. Mr. ‘Take it Apart’ was at it again, and the loving woman who cared for him found it impossible to say no to him. That was the last toy I bought for Rafi  which could be taken apart.

I had several employers through Rafi’s growing up years. I asked if I might have any ready-to-be-discarded, no longer functional adding machines, telephones or radios. I’d tell little Rafi my boss wanted him to try to fix them. He happily took them apart with screwdrivers and spent hours working on them. He was perfectly happy — and so was I.

Balsa Wood Model Airplane

Rafi then became interested in building planes out of those kits kids used to play with. He put them together while I was at work. He never bothered reading the directions and there were always a piece or two left over. Yet, they seemed perfectly okay.

When we bought our first computer, my CPA husband and I thought we’d use it for accounting. It was a classic double disk drive — Microsoft?? Rafi had attended a summer computer class and he and his friends were playing/trading Apple computer games. These didn’t work on our computer, so we bought something perhaps called a ‘card’ (program?) to install. I planned to hire someone to do it since we wanted Rafi to be able to use it.

Remember these disks?

I’m still intimidated by computers, so imagine my concern when I got home from work to find the computer taken apart, and Rafi, about eight at the time, sitting there, cool as a cucumber, screwdriver in hand, putting the card in. I gulped. He did it. And, it worked. Not surprisingly, Rafi’s grown up to be a handy kind of guy.

automatic jar opener

So, what about my new automatic-battery-operated jar opener? Amy came over and the two of us experimented with my brand new toy. Press the button and it makes this fabulous noise, parts move, it does a little dance and removes the top —  just like that! It was so much fun, we opened every new jar I could find in my kitchen cabinets.

I’d love to do more. Have a few I can open? Just bring them over…..

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Coffee? An elixir of love?

photo by Susan Kauffmann

Recently, another report on coffee was published in the American Journal of Cardiology. Researchers at the Sheba Medical Center in Israel reported on the benefits of drinking same. Coffee, they suggested, can prevent heart attacks and improve your circulatory system and then some…. I’ve also read coffee can help prevent type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s and liver disease…. Is this all true?

I know for sure that if you have a hiatus hernia (GERD) coffee can give you heartburn. It did when I, myself, suffered with this very common condition. I refused to give it up. I’m stubborn and am addicted to coffee and often had heartburn as a result.

Vertigo, yuk.

Some members of the B.C. Balance and Dizziness Disorders Society (BADD), who have vestibular disorders, believe avoiding coffee helps prevent vertigo. Is this really so? I haven’t a clue, but there’s no way I’d argue with anyone who believes they’ve found something to help avoid what is a most unpleasant condition.

Chatting about coffee

The other morning, I ran into Murray at the coffee shop. We talked about the recent report on coffee — he’d heard about it on CBC radio. I expressed my doubts about all these reports.

‘Remember the one about oat bran,’ I suggested, ‘It was supposed to cure all your ills. Then the one which claimed men over 60 who drank coffee were more active sexually.’ (Maybe improved circulation????)

Oh, oh. I had unwittingly touched on a subject Murray and I had never discussed before. I was regretting I’d blurted out that particular study, goodness knows there have been so many conflicting reports about so many things I could easily have chosen another. Well, it was too late now.

‘Coffee???’ Murray said, ‘How?’

‘Ahem, well, yes,’ I cleared my throat, ‘Uh, coffee, it appears, uh, yup, it, uh, according to the study, it affects the….libido.’

‘Coffee, you say?’ Murray was incredulous.

Coffee you say???

‘Yes,’ I responded, trying to sound clinical and matter-of-fact. I read it in the medical section of the L.A. Times a while ago. However I don’t know that it’s really true — maybe yes and maybe no.’

‘It was in the paper?’

‘Yup. In the Times.’

‘Well, I’ll be,’ he mumbled, ‘My doctor told me to lay off coffee…’

Murray, don’t drink coffee

‘Oh, I’d listen to your doctor if I were you,’ I advised, ‘He probably had a good reason. You can’t believe everything…..’

‘But it was in the paper — in black and white!’

‘What does that mean? That it comes from God? Since when does being in the paper mean something is true?’

Murray wasn’t listening, his mind was no longer on what I was saying. He was thinking out loud.

‘That doctor. I had a funny feeling about him. I thought something was strange. I knew that guy didn’t like me. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.’ He thought for a moment longer. ‘He’s jealous of me. That’s it. He’s jealous — that SOB.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous Murray, why would your doctor be jealous of you?’ I meant well, but it wasn’t my day. I’d obviously made another mistake.

‘Why? Why?’ Murray was furious, ‘Why would he be jealous? Ha! A lot you know!’

What was it Murray couldn’t tell me?

Suddenly he calmed down and added mysteriously, ‘I can’t tell you…but I’m switching doctors.’

Hmmm. What do you make of that?