Pearl Sutton

Eric Hanson wrote:Ok, here is another one that I do.  I simply can't not open a door for a woman if she is near and I can do it without much effort.  

I am female, I open and hold doors for anyone I can. If I'm holding it for a group and a guy in the group wants to take over door service, I'm happy to let him. I think holding doors is just good manners for anyone.


On another note, I also tend to call people of any age "Sir" or "Ma'am" or assorted variants of that sort of thing.  It's partly habit because I was taught to do it with adults as a kid, part because I feel it's respectful, and part because I'm bad with names.  :D  I can pull off "Hello sir! It's good to see you again!" when I just can't come up with his name.

"Young miss" or "young sir" is common for me, as are variants like "Madam Cashier" and "Mister Car Parts Man."

If an 8 year old boy does something nice for me, I'll say "Thank you so much Sir!" and his reaction is always to stand up straighter and look proud of himself.  

I had a 15 year old girl working for me for a while who was stunned the first time I called her Miss, I don't think (knowing now what I do I about her family) that she had ever been treated as anything other than an unruly and useless child, and the positive effect my calling her variants of Miss had on her was obvious. I don't believe she had ever felt worthy of any respect at all in her life. Being asked a question by her boss prefaced with "Excuse me Miss Wonderful Lady" absolutely floored her.

I think it would be great to see more people being using polite wording, even if you are not as odd personality-wise as I am, find a way that works for you.  Not everyone's style can casually pull off "Excuse me, Miss Awesome Stuff, where DID you hide the framing hammer!?"  :D

Want to hear a Swedish joke?

Never mind, there's Norway I could Finnish it.

...when you sometimes wonder "is my resume tattooed on my forehead?"
At a thrift store, had chatted with a guy about long underwear season coming, and up at the counter he looked at me and said "You know about juicers, right?"  Not worded like "do you?" but worded like "I assume you do..." Why yes, yes I do. I looked at what he was buying and taught him how to not burn it out like he did his last one  :D

It must be tattooed on my forehead "Ask me weird stuff! Of COURSE I can answer it!!"  

And a story that I can't find when I search, guess I never told y'all...
Spring of 2025 my mom's Subaru did something horrifying. I ended up having it towed to the house. The tow truck guy was wearing a pink safety shirt, was a nice guy. Got the car where I wanted it, then looked at the flowers by the driveway "What are those?" I named off several types including zinnias. He was staring at them like he'd never seen a flower before. I said "Pick some if you want." He kind of panicked, "Oh, I can't do that, you GROW THEM!" I said "Look, this zinnia matches your shirt!" He agreed that it did. I cut the zinnia and gave it to him. He looked stunned and awestruck by it, looked at it very closely. I have never seen that expression on someone's face, I don't think he'd ever been given a flower before (or honestly, I'm not sure he's ever even noticed them growing.) Was odd.

You know you are a permie when what's a casual zinnia to you is sheer shock and awe to others.

I was out pulling weeds by the road, a neighbor came by, walking her dog. We were chatting, the dog was eating plants, and I told her "Oh, look at this cute bug!" and I lured a maybe 1.5 inch long caterpillar onto my hand, and showed it to her. "Isn't it pretty? Look at the colors! It's a swallowtail caterpillar, will be a a swallowtail butterfly." She admired it, I went to put it back, realized where I was going to put it needed the weeds removed out from under the plant. Didn't want to put it back just to traumatize it immediately, couldn't pull the weeds with one hand, so I said "Oh. Will you hold this cute bug?"  She laughed, we put it on her hand while I pulled the grass out from under the biggest parsley plant (they LOVE the parsley!) and then she gave it back to me and I put it where it would be happy and safe while I worked in the area.

She looked at me and said "You know, you are the only person who would not only tell me to look at a cute bug, but who would then ask me to hold the cute bug, that I would not only look at it, but hold it for them!! It's always weird to stop by when you are working in the gardens..."

You know you a permie when you can talk innocent victims people into holding cute bugs for you....   :D

Several years ago (2023 maybe? Or 2022)  I picked up the neighbors leaves, as well as my own, and stomped to compress them HARD into 33 gallon trash cans for storage, as I had a LOT of leaves and not enough trash cans, and I knew  I wanted most for summer use.  Things happened, yesterday I finally went to use what I think is the last one of that batch. It was HEAVY, I looked in it, leaves. Guess I stomped it harder than I thought. Dragged it out to where I need leaves. Took out a bunch...

And under a layer of leaves is about half of a 33 gallon trash can full of the best leaf mold compost I have ever seen!! (No wonder it was so heavy!!)



The picture doesn't do the color justice. It's super dark and crumbly and just LOVELY!! What a wonderful find! Some people grow trees by the Sheer Utter Neglect system, I seem to make leaf mold compost that way :D

The sugar snap seeds I'm planning on using are 60 days to harvest, short, and I have grow lights, they will have a good long day length. Probably about 12 hours. I want the sugar snaps for continual pick, I do have some short, 60 day beans but they are, like you said, determinate, and will go all at once and that's not what I'm looking for.

I have weird parameters, including bad head space for them, the grow lights are LED strips that I have hooked to the underside of the plate and cup cabinet. So at BEST they have the height of the counter to the cabinet. BUT the problems I had last year stemmed quite a bit from pot size and dirt depth, so I have a bottom watering planter that's 28 inches by 16 or something like that and they'll have at least 6 inches of dirt (maybe more) that I'll have them in, so they'll get even less head room. So plant height and continual pick matter most to me. The rest I can work with.

:D

I came up with a good way to make your phone returnable, if you lose it out in the world, especially if it happens a lot. Neatly write a the number of a recovery phone on paper, write something like "If found please call" and take a picture of it. Set it as your lock screen picture. If someone finds it, they know what number to call to contact you.

I have never blanched it, I just freeze it. I don't expect it to come out looking fresh, I expect it to come out tasting good. The oils that give it it's flavor don't do well when cooked, that's why I add basil right at the end of cooking.

Because of the "my phones are locked" bit, I use someone else's phone to call mine so either I can hear it if it's close, OR if someone has found it, they can answer it. I have also emailed people off my computer to call my phone. I had a flip phone fall and get kicked way under a fairly unmovable object. That was fun to find. Told the guy I was emailing to call once a minute until I answered.

A couple weeks ago I helped a lady who lost hers, it was set on vibrate, we could just barely hear the noise but not find it in her car, I called it and called it, we unloaded her groceries, dug between the seats. She texted me later when her husband finally found it, it had slipped off a seat, into a crack, into the space between a seat cover and the seat, then slid from there in between the the seat mechanisms. He had to remove the seat and take it apart to get it out!  Made us both feel better about not being able to find it while in the grocery store parking lot.