What’s happened to resilience?

Are people getting wimpier with each generation? I’m only asking because once upon a time people had meltdowns when there was a really good reason to do so, but if the contestants on the 2020 season of The Block are anything to go by, the answer is yes, people may be getting wimpier.

I am not a reality TV fan of a general rule but I do love The Block because I am interested in renovations and I like to see what contestants do with their wrecks of spaces, because some of them have really clever ideas. Inevitably most of them understandably end up in tears at some stage because it’s a lot of pressure and a really hard, exhausting slog, but until this season, I don’t think any of them have done the tearful on Day One.

They wait at least until Day Three or Four but this season has got off to a bit of a soggy start. (In the interests of fair play though, one couple did receive some sad news just a few days in, which was very upsetting for them and that’s completely different).

Anyway, generally speaking, I’m starting to ask… why participate in something like this if you’re going to cry at the drop of a hat? Apparently it’s a common thing on reality TV though; you cry over next to nothing and that’s that. Something that may rule me out should I ever opt to participate in one (heaven forbid!) because I’m not a crier. I can cuss with the best of them but I need a biggie to do the tearful.

Meanwhile we have contestants with a brief explaining what they need to do, which is to adhere, wherever possible, to the era of the house they are renovating.  Simple right? The couple on the winning streak are doing just that, and not crying. The rest of them? Can’t decide on the wall colour for the guest bedroom? Cry. Not sure which tile to choose for the guest bathroom? Cry. Have no idea of the decor for the era they have been asked to recognise? Cry. Plumber does not turn up? Okay, definitely cry-worthy, so that particular couple get a pass on that occasion.

But they all have access to the Internet, right? So Google the era for goodness sake and take it from there.  Or talk to the people in place to help with these sort of questions. So why aren’t they doing this? Okay, so maybe they are but if that’s the case they should have it sorted, yes?

So why are they crying???

As I mentioned, there is a (so far) non-crying couple who appear to have their era down pat. They are comfortable with Google, have already had a few wins (of which they were definitely deserving) and have done all this without succumbing to tears. Which makes them pretty unique! Who knows, they might even win this season.

But look, just to be clear, I see nothing wrong with expressing emotion and/or having a cry when there is a genuine reason, so surely these guys can save the tears for the week they smash a digit with a hammer, nail-gun a foot to a floor joist, break a fingernail, or the newly-installed stunningly-detailed plaster ceiling (or whatever) has a moment and it’s not good. These are all valid reasons to cry, even loudly, and a few choice cuss words coming into play would be considered normal too under those circumstances, but going down in a flood of misery over decor choices is not. They have a brief. They have Google. They have informed sources to fall back on. Tears at every turn is just…just…there’s a word for it but I can’t think of it right now.  I’m not going to cry about it though.

I won’t even cuss.

 

Fright Night!

Okay, so here we all are, sitting in and isolating and being responsible. Well, most of us are. Our options to pass the time are go for a walk or jog, so long as we stay socially distanced, or run through an aerobics program at home, curl up with a good book, listen to some good music or watch the telly.

I opted to put the book aside and watch the telly last night, which meant a perusal of the program guide and Hello! One of the movies on offer was Contagion; all about a deadly virus slowly spreading throughout the world and the various Centres for Disease Control frantically on the hop to develop a vaccine to counter it and save the world’s inhabitants.

Right. Either one of the program managers has a sense of humour (a really black one) or they are genuinely weird enough to think we might want to watch a a film about a deadly disease decimating the global population, while staying inside and sitting out an actual deadly disease that is decimating the global population. Like, what made them think we might want to watch a movie that we are kind of living right now?

On the other hand, perhaps they thought it was eerily relevant to the world’s current situation and so would be a really good choice for weeknight viewing…? Of course, I may be completely off the mark and if I was to see the ratings for last night’s television tune-ins, I might see that a huge number of viewers had tuned in because there’s nothing like watching a fictional fear-raiser while living with a factual one going on right outside our doors, right?

To be honest, I actually did consider (albeit briefly) watching it myself but opted for one of the Alien movies on another channel instead. It was one I hadn’t seen and while I knew there was bound to be some blood and guts, I figured it might be a better option as it was one of the Alien films I hadn’t seen and on the whole, it wasn’t bad. Except for the part where some of the crew were accidentally infected because they unknowingly squished some little round egg type thingies and a fine mist of minute particles became airborne (uh oh) and found their way, disease/virus-like, into the crew members via their skin, their mouths, ears and noses (without them realising) and then developed at warp speed into baby aliens which…well, we all know what happened then so I won’t go into the gory details of them emerging from their human hosts.

And I started wondering if I would have been better off just watching the global disease movie after all. Or better still, watching neither of them and just getting back into my book instead.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it. We all love a scary movie, especially when we know it’s just fiction and once the credits start rolling we can get up and move on with our normal routines. Except we are kind of living in a scary movie in reality right now and have no idea what the running time is, which means there’s no normal at present. We can’t change the channel or just switch it off either. So not good.

On the plus side though, at least the disease we are dealing with right now does not hatch out (really messily!) into baby aliens that want to hunt us down and rip us to shreds! At least that’s something, and eventually what we are dealing with will hopefully run its course and we will be able to venture out again and begin to pick up our lives. Eventually…

I think I should have just stuck with my book.

 

Don’t Try This at Home

Right, so we are all in lockdown basically, which means there are a lot of things we may be used to having done professionally, outside the home, which some of us may be considering doing ourselves while unable to visit our favourite personal maintenance places.  Well that can work, in some cases, but in others it just might prove to be a very bad idea.

Can’t go to the Gym? Generally this would be fine because you can keep fit at home. Even if you don’t have any gym equipment, you do have floor space and can make do with aerobics for now. Food cans make great aerobic weights but if you’re used to heavier lifting, there’s always the couch or something. Anyway, you are making a good start by continuing with your fitness routine and adapting it to your lounge room.

But doing the gym thingy at home can also be a not so good idea if the last time you did anything vaguely exercise-like was back in your school years, or in the first days after buying that do-everything exercise machine a few decades ago, and you decide to dust everything off and do a three hour workout to kick off the New You. This will probably lead to the Totally Incapacitated You long before the end of the day and will probably have you flat on your back for the next week. Not the outcome you’d like.

Making over your house can be a good idea too, especially if you have been wanting to spruce it up a bit but have never been able to find the time. Now you have the time. It could be something as simple as a new paint job or a more complex renovation (assuming you can still access what you’ll need) but being able to utilise the lockdown time to tackle some DIY is a great way to spend the days.

Unless you absolutely suck at DIY. If you don’t know a paintbrush from a hammer, a house makeover might not be the best way to use your sudden and unexpected free time. This also applies if you have never done any painting or renovation work in your whole entire life. If you are still tempted though, just remember that you will have to live with the end result until the country is back in business again. And if you live with a partner who was adamant that you Not Do It in the first place you might find yourself living in a state of angst and tension for some time. You will really need to think this one through.

Fake tans. Although why you’d want one when you aren’t going anywhere is beyond me, but to each their own. Salons are closed right now so if you are used to having your golden glow sprayed on all nice and even by a professional, please do not opt for doing it yourself out of a bottle. Getting a bottle tan right takes years of practice (look, I don’t care how easy the directions tell you it is) and if you get it just the insy-est, tinsy-est bit wrong, you will spend the next five days trying to scrub it off and it will be resistant to every cleansing product known to woman. So if in doubt…don’t.

Waxing. If you’ve never done this yourself, stick to depilatory creams or shaving. End of story.

Hair. If it’s just colouring, and you sensibly opt for a hue that will gradually wash out, you can’t really go wrong. Even if you’re a novice colour-er and you get the colour wrong. It’s going to wash out over a few weeks and it’s not like you’re going anywhere anyway. But cutting is a whole different animal. If you are a professional hairdresser, or a really deft amateur, who can manage to do a good job using two mirrors then by all means give yourself a cut or trim.

Not a professional or a deft amateur? Then lock those scissors up. Unlike a bad colour that will wash out, a bad haircut is going to be with you a lot longer than the lockdown is and will send you into meltdown every time you look in the mirror. Just put up with the split ends and overgrown fringe until your hairdresser is back in operation. You can always tie it back or put it up until then and console yourself with the knowledge that all your friends are in exactly the same bad-hair boat. Feeling better now?

No, me neither.

 

 

The Toilet Tissue War

Forget the blue chip shares. Forgo the usual moneymakers. Looks like toilet tissue is set to be Next Big Thing and those who have emptied supermarket shelves in their headlong determination to stockpile sufficient bulk packs of it, enough to see them well into the next decade, may be warming to the idea that they could be sitting on a fortune! But let’s hope they aren’t, because they don’t deserve to profit from their greed.

It would have to be something like that because why else would people be loading shopping trolleys with far more toilet tissue than they will ever need for a long, long time?  Because a global crisis inevitably brings out the worst in people and it becomes an every-man-for-himself situation. Hence the feral coming to the fore down in the toilet roll aisle in supermarkets all over Australia as some members of communities decide they are more entitled to household staples than others, and are prepared to come to blows over a packet of toilet rolls. That they have already overbought is beside the point. They want more.

Which inevitably has gone viral and I am pretty sure Australia has become the laughing stock of the planet as a result. Like, I am almost embarrassed to admit I live here at the moment!

I think the “It’s all mine! Mine!” mindset initially surfaced during the bushfire crisis. Emergency Service organisations repeatedly advised people to forgo their coastal vacations over the 2019/2020 Christmas/New Year period because of the fire threat, and because the small towns and villages along the coast would be trying to see to the safety and wellbeing of their own. They did not need to have to deal with an influx of tourists as well. So those in the big cities ignored the advice, headed to the NSW South Coast and were trapped by the inferno. Then they systematically cleaned out supermarkets, petrol and water supplies and left the locals floundering. Then they stayed on, despite repeated requests from emergency services to please leave, as they were placing to much strain on the local infrastructure and services.

I had never seen a supermarket made so devoid of stock, and in so short a time, as I did in my local supermarket on New Year’s Eve. People just raced in and cleared shelves of everything, whether they needed it or not, and the rest of us were left to try and manage. I’m guessing that mindset is still alive and well if what I’m seeing now is any indication.

But toilet rolls? And now facial tissues? Yes, those who have missed out on toilet rolls have resorted to boxes of tissues. Or maybe it’s the same people? Who would know, but laughably, the next thing after toilet tissue and facial tissues has been paper towel and that’s so not a good thing. Those resorting to repurposing paper towel as toilet paper are going to have a big plumbing problem because paper towel is not designed to be flushed down a toilet. It will clog. The toilet paper crisis will probably end up being a boom time for plumbers as a result, so at least there’s something positive. Sort of.

Meanwhile, non-perishable food items with a long shelf life remain stubbornly on supermarket shelves! Sure, I know some people have been stockpiling food in the event that lines may become scarce for a while, at least until after the Corona Virus has done its World sweep and gone away,  but wouldn’t you have thought that food would have been the first thing to get the Big Rush? Before toilet tissue? Seriously, that was the first thing to cross my mind and that’s what I expected to see. People need to eat and yes, if they eat they will sooner or later need to take a trip to the bathroom, but if you ran out of toilet tissue you can find away around it. But you can’t easily find a way around running out of food.

Thing is, none of this stockpiling is even necessary. Supermarkets are not threatening to close. Toilet tissue manufacturers have not stopped production or shut down. Supermarket trucks are still doing their usual rounds with their usual deliveries, which include toilet tissue. There is no shortage, except for the one in supermarkets created by people who think they are entitled to clean out the supplies in one foul swoop. Supermarkets mostly have invoked a limit per customer but they should have done that sooner, and have someone there to suss out if family members were posing as individual shoppers because some people will do that too.

Where’s the point of having a room full of toilet rolls and facial tissues if the pantry is nigh on empty? Even if you were to sell some of your toilet roll stockpile at an exorbitant price , if the food has all been bought up while you were brawling in the toilet roll aisle, what are you going to spend the money on? More savvy types stocked up on canned, bottled and dry goods with Use By dates of late 2020 or into 2021. Those guys will get around the lack of toilet tissue but, unfortunately for the toilet tissue hoarders, may well be unwilling to trade food for it with the likes of you!

Especially if you were the one who punched them out over a six pack of Sorbent when all this nonsense started.

And it is nonsense.