Random Thoughts: The TiddlyWinks Championships And Other Random Thoughts

Welcome to my weekly Randomly Thinking post where I share random thoughts that pop into my head throughout the week. Enter at your own risk. There is a lot of saracasm, teasing and jokes and a little bit of seriousness.

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I don’t know how the topic came up, but my son mentioned Tiddlywinks the other night and at some point he said he thought was what “old people were referring to when they think a couple is doing something inappropriate.”

I said, “Honey, no. Tiddlywinks is a game.”

So we looked up Tiddlywinks online and not only did we find what the game is but we found a Youtube link to the Tiddlywinks Singles World Championships. Yes, I’m serious.

In case you don’t know what Tiddlywinks is, here is a photo:

I offered commentary for the Tiddlywinks singles championship in a British accent because for some reason it needed to be narrated that way.

“Here we are, ladies and gentlemen. The Tiddlywinks singles championship. This is a tense moment for our finalists. Will Bob be able to flip that disc and hold on to his reign as winker of the world?”

No kidding. The term is “winker of the world.” That’s what the man who won the championship said, anyhow.

“It’s great to be the winker of the world again,” he said.

In case you need some fun, I’ve linked to the video for you, and please notice how the one man is squinting the entire time, which I think may be because he’s squinted so much trying to line up his shots. Also, full confession, I don’t remember ever playing Tiddlywinks. If you just really must know more about the game, you can find more information on this site.

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I’m plugging through Rescue Me by Susan May Warren despite the fact that she wrote that her characters ate chocolate donuts with orange juice.

Ew. Who does that? I asked my husband that and he said “People who worship the devil.”

I mean, something sweet like that with the organge juice and making the orange juice have a bitter aftertaste. Yuck.

I was reading the section and crying, “No! Why is she pouring orange juice?! She just offered him a cake donut with chocolate icing. They’re not going to drink that are th– Oh my gosh! They drank it! She actually wrote they drank it!”

I then warned my son against the evils of people who drink orange juice while eating a chocolate donut. He promised me he would never marry a woman who believed such a thing.

“Only milk with chocolate donuts, okay?”

“Yes, Mom, I agree.”

Whew. Crisis averted. I’ll keep reading the book but this woman is on very thin ice with me right now. If she has someone drinking milk with potato chips then it’s over. Book closed and put aside.

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I listen to this old late 40s/early 50s sitcom/radio show called Our Miss Brooks at night as I fall asleep as a way to focus my brain on something other than every day worries. I wake up at night and the show is still going. It plays through the next episode and I listen along until I pass out again. I’ve mentioned the show here before.

The plot of the show is about a teacher named Miss Brooks who lives with her landlady, Mrs. Davis, and interacts with her principal, Osgood Conklin, his daughter Harriet Conklin, Harriets boyfriend Walter Denton, and Miss Brook’s crush Philip Boyton, who is a total uptight moron who never gets how much Connie (Miss Brooks) is in love with him. He says so many stupid things that anyone walking by my room at night might hear me say things like “Good grief, you’re a moron,” or “Give up on him, Connie. He’s never going to get it!”

Anyhow, some guy transferred these shows from old reels or … I don’t know what.. to podcast form. He started uploading them in 2007 on Apple (which I didn’t realize until I looked it up for this post) and when he first did it he was all chipper like “Hey! Enjoy these reproduced old shows! If you want to buy the collection, you can go to my site here!”

By the time he hits 2019, it’s obvious the whole idea of making money off this endeavour has tanked and instead of being chipper, he starts sounding threatening: “Hey, I put all these on for you and why am I charging more now? Well, because I’m losing money on trying to be nice and I’m really tired of it. So I’m not going to be nice anymore. You want this stuff, buy it, or this podcast is gone.”

That’s not exactly what he says, but close. He does really say the thing about “I lost money on this whole thing last year,” like that is somehow the fault of the listener. It’s so depressing, I just skip over his intros now. But I guess he learned the hard way, like newspapers, that if you give people for free and then try to go back to charging them for it, they aren’t really going to be very willing to start paying for it.

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We visited my neighbor this week because she has been very down since her grandchildren were shipped across the country to live with their dad (my daughter has also been down because these were her only in-person friends). We went down to play a round of Yahtzee. She wanted to play two but the one round made the minds of us Math/Number Illiterates (me and my son) hurt so we declined. When we walked into the house, my neighbor immediately handed me a small bag of green leaves. If it had been anyone else I would have been worried. I actually thought she was handing me loose tea, because she drinks tea, but it turned out it was catknip for our cats.

I shoved it in my pocket and didn’t think much about it until later that night at home when I walked by where I had hung up my coat and it was laying on the floor with two cats pawing at it and rubbing themselves all over it. The kitten (Scout) had been sniffing the pocket when I first hung it up but I didn’t even remember the baggie with the cat drugs at that point.

It wasn’t until I saw the fat one (Pixel) had removed the baggie from the pocket and was trying to rip into into it that I remembered. I gave them part of the catnip and decided to save the rest until later. I have to becareful, though, and make sure the drawer with the bag in it is tightly closed because the last time I had catnip and kept it in a kitchen drawer and didn’t shut it all the way, the older cat found a way to pry the drawer the rest of the way open and dig out the bag.

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Some thoughts for world events right now: “If you’re a common sense person, you probably don’t feel you have a home in this world right now. If you’re a Christian, you know you were never meant to.” – Patricia Heaton, actress.

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I liked this take from Fuel From the Race on all that is happening these days :

“My knees bend to no one but King Jesus. Through the mix of hatred and political haze of confusion, I know the One Who still has His place on the throne of the universe. Kings and kingdoms will all fade and vanish and yet, He will still be sovereign.”

Random Thoughts: Week of August 29

Welcome to Random Thoughts for the Week, where I share . . . well, random thoughts or events from throughout the week. Feel free to share your own random thoughts in the comments!


  • I was so proud of the header I shared on my first Random Thoughts last week because I put the clip art together in my own design. My bubble was burst when I showed my son yesterday and he said “That brain is backwards. The brain stem is coming out of the mouth. How did you not notice that?”
AAAAARRRRRGH!

Public school is looking like a better option more and more lately (that being said, homeschool sessions start Wednesday here). Also, I redesigned my header, obviously, and now the brain stem isn’t coming out of the head’s mouth.

  • From my son: “We’re all born dumb, stupid and frail. In other words, we’re born a politician.”

  • Here are a couple phrases or words I will be glad to never hear or read again my entire life: social distancing, quarantine, face masks, or Fauci.
  • I was watching a movie on Netflix with Blythe Danner and Sam Elliott. No spoilers, but they kissed and my children walked in at that moment and screamed “Old people are kissing!!!!” while pointing at the screen. Next weekend at Sunday dinner I’m asking my parents to kiss so they will be traumatized even more.
  • I’ve always had a crush on Lou Diamond Phillips. I don’t know if this is a random thought or a confession.
  • Our kitten only likes to lay on my chest when I’m wearing a bra because the bra makes my chest more like a shelf. That’s all I’m going to say about being a woman and getting old.
  • My son, while playing Amish Paradise by Weird Al Yankovic asked “Whatever happened to all the Amish around here?” He had a good point. I haven’t seen any Amish in our area in years and we used to. We at least saw some Menonnites. Readers, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to research what happened to all the Amish in northern Pennsylvania. Let me know and I’ll include it in my random thoughts next week. (This is just a joke. I really can look that up myself.)
  • I won’t be surprised if all this COVID craziness reveals a few things for people, including the fact that colleges are over priced and many students can get the same education online for much less. Also that we need to focus more on skilled labor training.

  • I spent part of my Sunday Googling the phrase: “How did my cat get so fat?” How did I get to this point in my life?
  • I’ve been jokingly calling our cat Fatty and Fatso but stopped this week when she gave me one of those “I Will Kill You In Your Sleep” expressions. I had a feeling she was thinking: “I don’t call you fatty, lady, and I could, so back off.”

  • My mom recently told me that my dad told my grandfather, her dad: “I want to ask permission to marry her but if you say ‘no’ we are going to get married anyhow.” If you knew my dad and my grandfather you would know why this is a pretty surprising statement by my dad. To explain a little: picture one of those stereotypical stern Southern fathers in any movie or book and that was my grandfather. Picture the fairly polite, quiet, shy Pennsylvania farm boy and you have my dad. I guess he really wanted to marry my mom.
  • — Looking through and old journal app again I found another winner from my daughter.

Me to Little Miss : “I don’t want to cook dinner … I’m tired.”

Little Miss: “Well, then what are we supposed to eat? Air? Um… no… there is just oxygen in the air.”

That’s about the time I decided I needed to stop letting her watch any educational shows. She was almost five when she said this. Jesus, please help me prepare now for her teenage years.


So, how about you? What are your random thoughts for this week? Let me know in the comments.