Suebob's Red Stapler

If I had to pick one iPhone app I wouldn’t want to live without, what would it be?

No, not Instagram or Camera+. In a pinch, the regular camera will do.

Or Spotify. Or Pandora. I almost never listen to music on my iPhone. Weird, I know.

Forget Facebook. Slow. Clunky.

Who needs Tweetbot? Well, I do, but not as much as I need….

White Noise Ambience. SO I CAN SLEEP.

I love it so much I even paid for the full version. There’s a free version, but I wanted to support the creators since I love, love, love this app.

Instead of me lying awake listening to the faucet drip, this sweet little app lets me sleep the sleep of a tired puppy. You choose from a bunch of noise possibilities, some from nature, some electronic noises, some more regular than others.

I just plug in my phone, set it to “Airplane Cabin” or “Floor Fan” and drift off to sleep with background noises blotted out by the soft soothing sameness.

You can also create custom sound mixes and save them.

When I’m feeling spiritual, I put on a combination of Tibetan Bowls and Ocean Waves. Then I can meditate while I’m asleep. And all those books say you can’t do that!

Red Noise and Underwater are a nice sound mix, too – burbly and a good soft hiss. Ironically, the actual “White Noise” noise is too harsh and bright to be relaxing to me.

There are certain sounds they include that I would never cue up – noises like “Grandfather Clock Ticking” or “Typing” that are the types of noises that keep me awake. But your mileage may vary.

This app has improved my sleep quality at least 50%.

Best $1.99 I ever spent. Not sponsored, just recommended.

The other night, my friend and I were walking through a new shopping mall when I said “Oh my god! There’s one!” and began fumbling for my camera.

“What?” he asked, looking around and the expanse of sidewalk and shrubberies. “What?”

So I had to explain my weirdest hobby: collection skateboard prevention device photos.

Skateboarders like to “rail slide” – hop their boards up onto handrails or the edges of benches or planters or wide stairs so that the wood part of the board slips along the surface. I think they stole this move from snowboarding. Here’s a quick video that explains this better than I can in words:

They even wax the surfaces to make sliding easier, which also leaves a greasy-looking trail along the edges of the bench or what-have-you. This is where anti-rail-sliding devices come in.

They’re little objects embedded in the edges of things to interrupt the surface.

Sometimes they’re metal or plastic. Sometimes they are pretty or sculptural.

Sometimes they’re just divots cut out of the surface – this is more common where it freezes.

They’re all around us, though, and mostly unnoticed.

I don’t actually care about the devices themselves as much as I care about noticing what is around me. Taking photos of these devices is like a treasure hunt. Just when I think I have “collected” all the designs, I find a new one.

So far I have found 39 completely different kinds of these devices.

That’s my weirdest hobby. What’s yours?

I titled this picture “The little princess in tulle.” Goldie will always be my princess. Abbie is more like My Little Ninja.

Last night I went to the Target toy section, which is conveniently divided into pink aisles and blue aisles, so you won’t get your toys with a side of gender equity.

The pink aisles are so…princessy, aren’t they? It’s like a band of roving princesses took over all of the toy workshops of the world, pointed guns at the toymakers, and forced them to make only toys that princesses would like or it’s “EAT LEAD, GEPPETTO!”

Princesses and ponies fit for princesses, that’s pretty much it for girl toys.

I want someone to ask little girls if they’d really like to be princesses. I’d have to explain the real Princess deal to them: Sure, people fawn over you and you get to live in a castle, but everyone also watches your every move.

If you were a princess and got pizza sauce on your dress, 100 people would take a picture of you and post it on Facebook with “Can you believe she’s a princess? She sure doesn’t eat like one!”

I think it would be exhausting to be a princess, and there’s no such thing as a part-time princess. You either are or you aren’t. And once you are, you can’t just say “Oh, hey, I changed my mind.” Unless the prince grants you an amiable divorce and you go on to become a highly paid weight loss plan spokesprincess. But that’s a whole different fairy tale.

These guys are my friends. They know I carry snacks in my pocket. I call them “Old Man” (the big dog) and “Killer” (the tiny one, who has a big bark).

My little dog is a social beast, and she makes friends everywhere she goes.

Dogs that used to try and tear Goldie apart through the fences stop and wag at Abbie. She charms them by standing with her head dipped, wagging easily until they crack and become friends.

This includes Max, a giant of a deaf German Shepherd with bad hips, who barks at almost everyone. She also charmed JR, another old guy on my block, who hated Goldie as well.

There are two massive grey pit bulls with cropped ears who have fallen under her spell, standing goofily at the fence, grinning at her cute face.

I have named all the dogs in the neighborhood, though my names tend toward the obvious – there’s a Chesepeake Retriever I call “Brownie” and his neighbor, “Blondie” and a Bichon, “Fluffy.”

The only dogs Abbie hasn’t charmed are the tiny hounds of hell – a whole yard full of snarling Chihuahuas that race to the fence and slam their tiny bodies against the bars, spitting and biting.

For those guys, we cross to the other side of the street.

I decided to pick a random photo (with my eyes closed!) and write about it.

This is El Capitan State Beach, on the Pacific Coast of California just north of Santa Barbara, California, and close to where I spent the first years of my life in Gaviota.

The fog is typical of summer weather there. Yeah, not exactly Baywatch material, is it? But it was the beach, and it was close to home. One summer, we packed up our little travel trailer and went camping there for a few days.

Being summer, we had a friend with a plum tree and the usual overabundance of plums, so we had a big shopping bag of plums, all ripe and sweet and sticky. So, so, good.

Do you know how many really ripe, sticky, sweet plums a hungry five-year-old can eat?

Too many, that’s how many.

Public service announcement: plums are high in fiber.

So now it is impossible for me to think of El Capitan State Beach without thinking of plums and their surprising aftermath.

I always envy those women who carry teeny tiny little purses that look like they hold maybe a folded hankie and a quarter for a phone call.

I call my purse the Mary Poppins bag. It isn’t black, but it holds an endless amount of everything. It must be like the TARDIS – bigger on the inside than on the outside.

I want to be someone who can be a minimalist, but it’s just not me. The real me insists on having a pen and a back-up pen. And a Sharpie just in case I need to label something. A couple of pairs of earplugs in an old prescription pill bottle. A little flashlight. A tin box of various kinds of medications – Advil, Beano, antihistamines, and Tylenol just in case a friend can’t take Advil and needs a pain reliever. A nail file and nail clippers. Probably a little pair of scissors, too. Plus all the usual hair brush, makeup, phone kinds of things.

It goes on and on, and sometimes it’s so annoying, having a purse that weighs as much as some carry-on bags.

It’s not annoying, though, when I can swoop down and save the day. My friend needs a throat lozenge? Why, I believe I have one right here! Hand sanitizer? No problem, my friend, your germs are now dead!

So tell me, which are you? The person with the tiny purse or the wallet with only one credit card, or a Mary Poppins like me? And if you’re Mary Poppins, what’s the weirdest item in your purse? C’mon. You can tell me.