​When our kids were young, we developed a rule when they lost something: Retrace your steps. It worked (almost always).
 
“Dad, I can’t find my scarf.”
 
“Where did you have it last? Did you leave it in the car? How about the living room couch? Let’s go look.”
 
Off we’d go, starting from point one. Moving to wherever the next logical place was. Then spot numbers three and four, if they could remember that far back. If not, I’d pose questions to jog their memory.

“Where were you before you put your bicycle away.”

“Playing over at Matt’s.”


“Okay, let’s go over to their house and see if it is there.”

As noted earlier, eventually, most of the time, it showed up if you traced your steps back far enough. I felt vindicated. Like patenting an invention. I’d figured out a crafty method that successfully worked time after time.
 
As an adult, we still have to trace our steps. Reading glasses are a perfect example. Both our parents were fond of forgetting where they placed their reading glasses. Though that happened in the latter stages of their lives, so the method of tracking your steps wasn’t as easily successful since the short-term memory often couldn’t pull up where they’d been.
 
You can go nuts trying to figure out where you left something. It happened to me recently regarding my winter cap and a Green Bay Packers scarf I’d worn outside then placed somewhere I couldn’t remember.
 
Logically, it should have gone in the laundry. I checked thoroughly in the basket at the bottom of our laundry shoot, but no dice.
 
From there, the next step was to look where I always placed the cap. That is typically in a pile next to my bed. Neither article of clothing was there. Hmmmm? What next?
 
Perhaps it was in the car. I went and looked under the seats, and on the floor in the back, but again, without success. Frustration set it.
 
You keep pushing your brain in these situations. “Okay, did I have my backpack with me somewhere and left it inside?” Nope.
 
“Did I accidently throw it on the closet floor?” Can’t find it there.
 
“Did it already get washed and it came back upstairs, but got mixed up with some other article of clothing? Rummage through all the drawers and find nothing.

Take a deep breath. Think where you’ve been in the last day.
 
This turned on the electric light bulb thought machine and I remembered wearing it to our workout facility. “Did I drop it somewhere? Did I take it off and lay it down?”
 
Going through those options, I remembered setting it down to use the electronic massage chair “OH YEAH.” Drove on down there. Checked in the lost and found.
 
Bam, right there on the shelf the instant we stepped inside. The great feeling of knowing you conquered something silly that doesn’t really matter that much: Retracing  your steps to find an article of clothing.
 
I didn’t solve the U.S. hunger problem. Nor develop a new technology to mitigate global carbon emissions. But, man, did I ever feel vindicated.

​Anyone know how new fragrance lines are created? Or, how they come up with new product ideas for scented candles?
 
I have to imagine someone walks around, sniffs, and goes, “Man that smells good. I wonder if I can duplicate it. That sure would smell nice as a deodorant stick.”
 
Then again, maybe not. Probably a bunch of scientists sitting around trying to figure it out with an algorithm.
 
Regardless of origins, there are many wonderful scents around the world we could use to improve our moods, motivate our day or create (or invite) loving memories.

Campfire Smoke is one. Capture that smell of a campfire. Bottle it. Sell it. Encourage people to dab it on when they head out to see their friends. You’ll sell millions. “Brad, you been sitting around the campfire lately? You need to let us know next time so we can join you.”


“Nah, just slapped on some ‘Campfire Smoke’ aftershave.”
 
Fresh Cut Green Grass would be another favorite of mine. Next time you’re done mowing the lawn, package up the clippings and send them in for analysis. Let me know the results so I can develop a candle that smells similar.
 
Fresh Lumber is a one that those in the construction industry favor. I remember hearing a line that a man said, “That smells as good as fresh cut lumber.” Not many things you can say that about.
 
Someone has already done Ocean Breeze, you can count on that. Regardless, damn that smell is awesome, and I can inhale it to bring back memories of childhood vacations, playing running bases, body surfing and eating cotton candy on the seashore. I’ve been told that Kramer from Seinfeld has a copyright on this one, so for all you fans of the show, you can get your quick chuckle in.
 
I’d would be derelict in my duties if I didn’t include the smell of fresh-brewed coffee in the morning. Yes, I know candles are out there with this scent. They are good. But I have yet to sniff that hard tangy bite that perfectly captures the strong aroma of the early morning cup. Whoever gets that down deserves a special flight to heaven.
 
Saw Dust, though a spinoff of Fresh Lumber, deserves its own category. Something about pulverizing the wood into fine particles increases the loveliness of it wafting across the room to you.
 
Winter Morning Air, for you northerners who enjoy seeing your breath billow on a 15-degree day, should be captured for that unique market – people who enjoy living where it is cold and revel in the snap of the temperature dip that gives your lungs Canadian air to suck in.
 
Finally, let’s not forget Grilled Beef Smoke. Capture that scent from the barbecue grill (this could come in multiple meat varieties and seasonings). Place it on your back porch while you’re sitting outside with an evening cocktail, taking it easy, pretending Covid doesn’t exist.
 
Some of these candles/fragrances are on the market. Others await the ingenuity of the entrepreneur to take the information from this column, do the chemical research and bring the product to market. I’m waiting. Others probably are, too.  

​I need an intuitive robot to do all my paperwork. Think of how this could simplify your life, eliminate headaches and free you up for more productive work.
 
As someone who struggles repeatedly with new software programs and inputting data into complicated worksheets or matrixes, I am often confounded and stressed about keeping up. When you’re baffled, you’re not productive. I can’t be the only person feeling this way.
 
Recently, for example, my wife and I went through the COBRA health insurance extension exercise. If you’ve never gone through this experience, I hope you don’t have to. Beyond taking a financial hit in your shorts because you must now cover your entire premium, you also have to deal with an outsourcing company that handles your benefits.

Without going into the boring details, this of course means inputting your data to a password protected web site, selecting options, making sure you’re paying on time, connecting the payment systems with your bank, among other assorted decisions. After initially getting set up, we twice had to change coverage, once to drop one of our kids, then again to change coverage, all of which added to the “driving you nuts” equation. Where’s that robot the world has talked about to take care of these tasks?
 
Reaching the elder stage of life, I’m also now exploring social security benefits and Medicare. Yippeeee! Actually, the process hasn’t been that bad when it comes to your puzzlement at figuring out how to set up your benefits. I will only say this: get someone who has been through the process to help you with it. That, or find that robot.
 
After COBRA-ing earlier this year, we switched over to my wife’s insurance. Though I can’t rant about this experience, I got to overhear her as she spent several hours on the phone and online trying to get all our benefits accurately signed up for and established. God forbid we might face a gap in coverage, and of course that’s when you’d have a car accident and need to go to the hospital. That intuitive robot handling all the details sure would have been nice for my wife.
 
Then we get to those experiences we enjoy, but that still lend a degree of unexpected challenge to your life. I referee basketball. To keep your schedule up-to-date, we use a system called Arbiter. It’s great. Seriously. But you also find yourself pulling your hair out keeping with your schedule accurate and timely, the days  you can’t work, making sure you don’t get assigned on a day you’re on vacation.
 
The intuitive robot sure would have been nice to add when I first went online to download the program. That took multiple attempts just to set up a password accurately. From there, it’s not too bad once you get the feel for it.
 
Still, three hours of my time later, I had my fall and winter available dates inputted, and the games I’d accepted to officiate this year inputted. And that’s just to start the season.
 
We live in a world that challenges to understand quickly and INTUITIVELY multiple software programs, and navigate them like we’re experts, when we’re not. It’s frustrating. We all do the best we can, and some of us “get it” much more quickly than others. For the rest of us, someone please, please invent and deploy the intuitive robot for handling these functions. There’s a huge market of discombobulated individuals just waiting.

​You know things have gotten bad for your subconscious when you start dreaming about natural disasters. And I almost never watch the TV news, so I’m not inundating my brain waves with active imaging.

But, still, this past week I found myself waking up worried, stressed, overwhelmed and tired from a dream that went back to my childhood on the Jersey shore. Like any other dream, why the heck was I there? What triggered it?
 
More importantly was what happened. I was on the boardwalk. Wind whipped sand. The waves got bigger and bigger. On came the hurricane.
 
Torrential rain followed, buffeting me, and I ran and ran and ran inland, trying to get away, the water surging and chasing me, overflowing the boardwalk.
 
The wind blasted a car, flipping it over and over. It rolled right at me, charging like a rhino, and I had to dive to the side as it continued a westward assault.
 
That’s essentially the gist of what I remember. The feeling stayed with me afterwards -- making me wonder why a catastrophic disaster so thoroughly penetrated my thoughts that I’d dreamed about it in terror.

Why not the wildfires in Colorado or California? Why not the flooding in Louisiana? The venue doesn’t really matter, I guess. Your mind goes back to something you knew as a kid, and uses that as a backdrop to alert you to something.
 
A close friend recently mentioned how much of our country is burning and how much is flooding out. And, that we aren’t strongly addressing the causes leading to these increasingly intense weather events that affect millions of lives and livelihoods. She was deeply concerned about our collective lack of action.
 
I couldn’t agree more, and maybe that drove some thoughts deep into my brain to get me obsessing. Rain pelting you, cars flipping in the wind, waves surging down roadways tend to get your attention the next day when you think about them.
 
We have choices to make in the coming weeks, months and years. We aren’t going to solve the climate crisis with a quick decision. We’re not going to make things better by talking about things. We aren’t going to reduce human-made carbon emissions by standing by.
 
We will start making a bigger difference as we individually and collectively take actions. Three legs to the stool stand out: Individuals, business and government. All three play an integral role in terms of how we choose to address the issue of carbon reductions.
 
Businesses must lead. Government needs to set appropriate standards and enforce them. Individuals need to access their lifestyles and how their personal actions can make a difference in reducing their carbon footprint.
 
Decisiveness is imperative. Clear steps must be outlined. Everyone must recognize we’re in this together as humans.  Through our use of vehicles, through our power plants and industrial processes, we all contribute to carbon emissions. Which means we are all part of the solution.
 
This column isn’t going to change the world in a day. Hopefully, it will get more people thinking about their personal impacts on a daily basis.
 
More dreams are coming, that’s for certain. A fire storm might explode and chase me in the next one.  I hope not. The hurricane was bad enough.