{"id":36621,"date":"2025-08-19T09:31:41","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T16:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=36621"},"modified":"2025-08-21T07:31:56","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T14:31:56","slug":"male-adornment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=36621","title":{"rendered":"Male Adornment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I put on a favorite Seiko this morning but my wrist woke up skinny and the bracelet&#8217;s too loose, so I chose another watch instead, one with a strap that&#8217;s easier to adjust. Don&#8217;t know how common this is, but my wrist size varies from week to week. It&#8217;s one reason I prefer straps to bracelets, which are a pain to re-size.<\/p>\n<table style=\"width: 100%;\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><a title=\"IMG_5338\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/halfmind\/54731352924\/in\/datetaken-public\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54731352924_67e017575d.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_5338\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/td>\n<td><a title=\"IMG_5340\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/halfmind\/54731150221\/in\/datetaken-public\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54731150221_35e096a994.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_5340\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Why do I love wristwatches? All the regular reasons, of course, but also because these little mechanical marvels say something about me. They&#8217;re an expression of my personality and my mood. They reflect my taste. And I don&#8217;t discount the adornment factor \u2014 watches are a form of jewelry, the kind men can wear every day, in any situation.<\/p>\n<p>In the early 1980s, I wore a gold chain around my neck. The older pilots in my fighter squadron had flown in Vietnam and wore Thai baht chains; we younger jocks copied them. When those guys aged out of the business, we quit wearing our gold chains. I never had the balls to wear an earring, or even a tattoo. The only adornments I wear these days are my wedding ring, sometimes my class ring, an F-15 lapel pin on the rare occasions I don a sport jacket (neckties are another form of male adornment, but I think I&#8217;ve reached the point in life where I never have to wear another one) \u2014 and a wristwatch, preferably a mechanical one, picking whichever one from my collection feels right on any particular day.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Our 50-year-old live-in daughter is working again, this time for a home health care service. She has EMT certifications, thanks to past college courses, along with more recent first aid and CPR training (the county had hired and trained her as a summer lifeguard, but she was a designated backup and never got any shifts).<\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;s had a hell of a time finding work. After lifeguarding failed to materialize she got hired at a local Fry&#8217;s supermarket, but a past DUI that was supposed to be expunged from her record popped up on a background check and that job vanished as well. Drama at home? Yes, and plenty of it. It&#8217;s been hard on all of us.<\/p>\n<p>She battles depression and alcoholism and had a crisis shortly after the Fry&#8217;s debacle, leading to a short stay in a county mental health facility. When you&#8217;re middle-aged and unemployed, forced to depend on aging parents for room and board, with no job prospects and seemingly no hope, you lose any sense of self-worth. After the county released her, Donna and I thought a possible last resort would be for her to hire on with a house-cleaning crew, the kind of job where they always need people and where background checks aren&#8217;t always a priority. Looks like home health care is another, an industry on the medical fringes, but a booming one. And for her, a lifeline, a way out of the slump she&#8217;s been in. We&#8217;re only one day in, but so far so good. She&#8217;s excited, feeling much better about herself, doing good for others, and making a little money to boot. Please keep your fingers crossed for her \u2014 she might find her way out of the woods yet.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>We&#8217;re off to Costco soon. Donna bought new tires for her car and now it&#8217;s time to have them mounted. I&#8217;m going along with my eyeglass prescription in hand so I can get a new pair of driving sunglasses (yet another form of man jewelry) \u2014 by the time they call my number at the vision counter, Donna&#8217;s car should be about ready.<\/p>\n<p>Stay fresh, cheese bags!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My wrist woke up skinny and the bracelet&#8217;s too loose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4432,18,2],"tags":[4799,4800,4798],"class_list":["post-36621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-seiko","category-consumerism","category-personal","tag-familydrama","tag-goingshopping","tag-strapology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36621"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36633,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36621\/revisions\/36633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}