By Emily Woodbury
Hello, friends! Happy (almost) holidays! Are you staying sane, calm and relaxed? I hope you do not have to drive too much this week. Even just my few errands around town (well, city) have been horrendous. Everyone puts on their “It’s-the-holidays-and-I’m-going-insane” hats and feels the need to drive like a maniac. You know that Alka Seltzer commercial, “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is!” (this one). Well, that’s how I’ll feel after next week is over. Whew! All right, let’s actually do some work here…
Wow! You probably drive a truck, don’t you? In last Saturday’s poll, we asked how many of you drive a truck and a whopping (*Chuck told me a story last week about how when he first started writing for a newspaper he used to say “whopping” all the time. I throw it in every now and again just to annoy him. Wink.) 80 percent of you do! That leaves only 20 percent of you (of those that responded anyway) that do not drive a truck.
An even larger number of you than above, 83 percent, told us in Sunday’s poll that you do not carry tire chains with you in either your RV or your tow vehicle in the winter. Not crossing any mountain passes, huh? Only 13 percent of you do always carry chains though, and 4 percent of you sometimes do. I guess if you’re part of the 80 percent that owns a truck, maybe you wouldn’t need chains anyway.
Monday’s poll ties into my opening paragraph here. We asked: How much stress do you feel about the upcoming holiday season. I’ll go in order here so it’s easier: 4 percent of you feel very stressed, 32 percent of you feel somewhat stressed, 59 percent of you say you don’t feel any more stressed than normal, and a lucky 5 percent of you actually feel less stressed. Good for you!
Blehhhhhhh. Tuesday’s poll gives me the chills. We asked if you’ve ever had a tick on your body and a very unfortunate 56 percent of you answered that you have had one more than once. Another good chunk of you, 17 percent, have had a tick one time, and a fortunate 27 percent of you (myself included…thank goodness) have never had one.
One time my aunt and I were on Martha’s Vineyard and she woke up in the morning scratching her leg. It was still dark out, and our hotel room was dimly lit. She asked me to look at it to see what was bothering her. I held up my phone flashlight, saw the little wiggling legs sticking out of her leg, and immediately threw up. Right there, at 6 in the morning, on the lovely hotel carpet. Whoops.
OK, let’s run through Wednesday’s poll the same way as Monday’s. We asked you how often you volunteer. (Chuck phrased it as “How often do you volunteer for a good cause?” but I’m really hoping that you don’t ever volunteer for a bad cause…) A good-citizen 11 percent of you volunteer very often, 12 percent of you volunteer often, 29 percent of you do once in a while, 32 percent of you very rarely do, and 15 percent of you never volunteer. I see Ron H’s point. He commented, “I did more volunteering before I became an avid RVer. Now that I’m more of a ‘free spirit,’ it’s harder to commit to activities or organizations because I never really know where I’ll be at any particular time. Now I look for one-shot short-term events where I can help out in some way.” Thanks for being a nice person, Ron.
I’m kind of giggling about Thursday’s poll, where we asked if you fast-forward through TV commercials. So many of you left comments saying that you don’t know how it’s possible to fast-forward through live TV, but then 48 percent of you answered that yes, you do and another 18 percent of you fast-forward through them often. Y’all are funny. A smaller 12 percent responded that you sometimes do, 16 percent of you never do, and 6 percent of you don’t watch TV with commercials.
Have you ever met someone in person from an online dating site? That’s what we asked on Friday. Your answers surprised me. Most of you, 89 percent, never have! However, 6 percent of you met your current partner through an online dating site, and 5 percent of you met the person IRL (that’s millennial speech for “in real life”), but it never amounted to anything. [Hey, Emily. Maybe it has something to do with the ages of the majority of our readers. Some of us hooked up through classified ads in newspapers, etc., back before all of this electronic social media stuff. Just sayin’. —Diane]
Okay, my truck-driving, tick-bearing, probably-not-volunteering, commercial-skipping, non-online-dating friends. See you next week. Happy holidays to you, your family, your friends, your dogs, your cats, and your anyones. I wish you the merriest of weeks.
