So here I am, working at what I’ve always worked for all my life, being retired, not needing to take any jobs to make ends meet, and now that it’s been a little over a year I can really relate to what the “old timers” used to tell me: “I am so busy now I don’t know how I ever had time to work!!”; and now I wonder do I put the semicolon inside the quote or outside because this run-on sentence is big but I needed to include the exclamation marks because hey, I wanted to emphasize that I often find myself with no time!!

Whew!

I had no idea what retirement would bring. My only goal was to be able to coast as long as possible without “working for the man” (or the woman) (besides my wife of course) (and now there are too many parentheses) (but I don’t care). So far, I’ve been able to be just fine without doing any work stuff for supplemental income. I am very grateful!!

Something is wrong, however. The days are zooming past my nose with great zippy fast kaboom all gone the days of quick time passing already!! And that may or may not even be a good way to describe it!! But I don’t care because I enjoy using words to make funny!! So there!! I mean, yesterday it was COVID outside, and today I hugged several friends at a gathering. Another example of how time has flown.

I have been vaccinated… I hope all of them have been too!!

My career as a “techie” has paid off in many ways, but it has also posed some very interesting challenges during retirement. For example, have any of you had the splendid experience of teaching an 86 year old neighbor how to use an iPhone? Much repetition. Much repetition. Much repetition. Also, I find myself repeating the same lessons over and over again. Additionally, I’ve been showing him how to recurrently do the same thing he did 2.4 minutes ago over and over again. No, he doesn’t have dementia. He has just never played with such technical things. Have I mentioned that I’ve been helping him with repetitive lessons on the same stuff multiple times? And he didn’t even get his landline ported over yet!!

Oh God oh God.

On the other hand, you have the vegetable garden. Makes my hands very dirty and I love every minute of it. I am an organic gardener, meaning I do not use any manufactured fertilizers or pesticides. All the soil building materials come from the dump. Yep. I put garbage by the trailer load in my dirt and wait for it to stop stinking. NO!! No, that’s wrong!! I do go to the dump (the politically correct term is transfer station) for fertilizer: free mulch in the form of leaves and lawn clippings. After 39 years of adding these to what was basically beach sand under the turf, I’ve been able to convert very sandy soil into a rich growing medium. And no, there is no such thing as “bad leaves” for the garden. When the worms are happy, the soil is happy.

Anyway, gardening can be very time consuming if you want to get a decent harvest. It’s always been a labor of love for me; and before retirement I had grandiose dreams of having a picture perfect garden. Guess what?? Uh uh. Nope. Sure I’m gonna get lots of food: snow peas, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, beets, Swiss chard, garlic (lots of garlic), popcorn, hopefully some squash… to name a few. But there are some unruly corners of the garden that are infested with catnip, milkweed, lambs quarters, purslane, even some clover. But you know what? It’s very OK. If I had nothing else to do, my garden may (or may not) be free of weeds. People think I’m nuts when I tell them that “weeds are guardians of the soil.” It’s true you know. Their root systems prevent erosion while adding organic matter to the soil. Weeds provide habitat for spiders and other beneficial creatures. And when the catnip is flowering, pollinators of all sorts come a-runnin’. Ever see a hummingbird moth?? So amazing!! And not to forget the milkweed that feeds Monarch butterfly caterpillars. We’ve even enjoyed the fact that plants like lambs quarters and purslane are very edible.

Since we are social people, our calendar has filled up quickly. That’s good, right?? Better to be wanted and loved than to have people shudder at the mention of your name! Of course there are lots of other things that keep me occupied on this 5 acre homestead of ours. Maybe someday I’ll even get brave and clean up the clutter bomb that exploded (very slowly) in my garage!! Or do something really radical like declutter my office!! Are you picking up on a clutter pattern here?? Oh well, retirement really is awesome. And yes, “I’m so busy now I don’t know how I ever had time to work.”

And I really like it!!

We don’t have a lot of money, but we have enough. We are blessed really. Here’s one of my old favorite cartoons about a bad egg who got way too greedy.

Our poor trees here in Beautiful West Michigan. So many of them must be terribly embarrassed these days. That’s because this year we literally have acres and acres of naked trees. In the middle of summer no less!! This horrible phenomenon occurs every 10 years or so due to infestations of that nasty import: the European Gypsy Moth.

And yes folks, these little stinkers were actually brought from Europe on purpose; by a guy named Étienne Léopold Trouvelot. I did some digging on the interwebs and learned that he fled France with his family to Medford, Massachusetts during the ascent of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1851. Then in the 1860s he thought it would be really cool to raise some gypsy moth caterpillars in the forest behind his house. His goal was to raise a disease resistant caterpillar for the purpose of silk production. So he got some egg masses from Europe and brought them here for hatching. Unfortunately, several of the caterpillars “escaped” to nearby woods and the rest, as they say, is history.

This is by no means the first time people have transplanted invasive species from one part of the world to another; whether intentional or otherwise. One relatively harmless example is the introduction of mulberry trees into the U.S. in 1733, again with the intent of kicking off a silk industry. Mulberry leaves are a favorite food of silkworms you see. Well, the silkworms didn’t do so well, but the mulberry trees are doing just great, thank you.

Anyway, back to these doggoned gypsy moths. I admit that I mistakenly believed they only love oak trees. Well turns out they’ll readily munch on about 300 different species of trees and shrubs. A variety of control methods are being used with some success. One of the most important is not to travel around with firewood or other woody debris that may be infested with egg masses. Big no-no!! There are also sprays that target only the caterpillars; and there are traps that can be made. And yes there actually are a few natural predators like deer mice that actually love to eat the creepy crawlies. I’ll put a couple informative links at the bottom of this so you can educate yourselves if you like.

Don’t despair, this terrible sight of naked (and most likely highly embarrassed) trees will improve after a year or two when the populations collapse due to disease and other factors. Unfortunately, however, it looks like these boogers are here to stay. All we can do is learn to cope the best we can.

So here are a couple of very informative links for you:

https://www.canr.msu.edu/ipm/Invasive_species/Gypsy-Moth/gypsy-moth-around-home

https://fyi.extension.wisc.edu/gypsymothinwisconsin/

And now, as Mr. Cleese used to say, for something completely different:

We just watched Stephen Colbert’s Late Show from June 14, where he was able to enjoy his first live studio audience in 15 months. Being the mush ball that I am, I admit I shed a few tears of joy when I saw all the excitement. So much love, so much positive energy!! It was really refreshing. Almost like… normal!!

So what is “normal” anyway? Several years ago it was not unusual to hear someone say, “normal is just a cycle on the washing machine.” Ha ha… well maybe not… maybe actually profound. The pandemic has certainly turned pretty much everyone’s “normal” upside down. Now that it’s diminishing, in much of the U.S. at least, we can breathe a sigh of relief.

At least for now.

Here in Michigan, masks are still required in medical facilities, but most businesses seem to have removed their “No Mask, No Entry” signs. I’ve actually been to the grocer and other stores without a mask, and at first it felt rather strange. I’ve even eaten at a restaurant a couple times! Again, no mask. But I still sanitize my hands as soon as I get back in the car.

Still not ready to go to the movies yet. However, here in Beautiful West Michigan we have a very safe place to watch a movie on the big screen: The Getty 4 Drive In. That’s right folks, the drive in has been thriving here for some time, and especially during the pandemic. I actually have a date to go with my Beautiful Girlfriend tomorrow (I’m writing this on Thursday night).

We are both still pretty careful really. God only knows what kind of variants will show up in our midst; and whether the vaccine will actually prevent us from being infected. I certainly hope so… scientists have assured us and I feel fairly confident we’ll be OK. But just in case, when it comes to close personal contact as in hugging or even a handshake, our “normal” involves only people we know are vaccinated. And we pray for those who choose not to get the vaccine.

We pray for their safety.

Thankfully, I was able to retire just as the pandemic was beginning to rage. My Lovely Bride still works a couple days a week, but we are basically in retirement mode. Over the years, we talked about checking out Europe or maybe even just Hawaii when retirement came around. However, quarantine has blessed us with the ability to be grateful and content at home. So our dreams of foreign travel have been forever altered. Currently, our idea of a long trip is driving all the way to the distant land of Wisconsin later this summer. Although we’ve heard it’s fairly safe, neither of us is interested in getting on an airplane. We’ll probably drive to Florida some time, but I just looked at the latest COVID map and there are still some “hot spots” between here and there. Guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

So whatever “normal” is will continue to change for us I suppose. And that’s very OK. The bottom line is that we really are very blessed; and have learned to make gratitude our attitude. If anything, COVID has strengthened our resolve to be thankful for what we have, and our list of wants has lost importance. I mean really, who’s to say that there won’t be yet another pandemic down the road?

We certainly hope not, but God only knows!!

And now some more mush ball stuff. I would not be able to imagine what it would be like to lose someone close to me from COVID (God bless those of you who have).

This song tugs my heart. And this version is truly exquisite.

There are times when Happy Friday!!! jumps out of my fingers and into the keyboard; and there are other timing fingers not have word jump out. It’s almost as if they are fighting for something to breathe in a sea of oxygenated bread molecules that have never seen the blight of clay. In other words, they’re are sum thymes when I gist can’t stick an idea on the end of my nose thing and launch it into a narrative of weekly infestation.

Four egg sample:  tonight I was very late in the garden removing pesky weeds from one of my beds (not the kind I sleep on, I have only one of those).  So when the darkness arrived and I noticed how late it was outside, I knew I’d probably better dig up something out of the archives, massage it a little, and present it to your eyeballs to enjoy; hopefully without greatly flammable pencil warts.  Yes friends, there are times when I look back at the Holy Cow I Have A Lot Of Stories (HCIHALOS) and “recycle” one; so tonight I cheated and dug up one from 5 years before the day we’re having now.

So to continue with the “I have no eye deer what to write” crackle sauce:  when trying to discover a topic or idea for a Happy Friday!!! thing, sometimes a friend will tell me something that jars my cookies like no other fried banana milkshake could ever induce a nice warm cranberry casserole with fuzzy coconut thimbles mounted atop a psychedelically decorated Mambo Contest. This is a moment of inspiration from which I become most eviscerated with a nice piece of antimony topped with a small dollop of crème brulee.

Therefore in the spirit of my Grandma who never gave me any Grammar lessons, I hereby renounce this run-on introductory somnambulism; which was precipitated in a conservation in witch, once upon a time, approximately 5 years ago, in a land very near to my home, while riding in an automobile very near to my hiney, in a smell phone very near to my ear, my dear friend Dave Gordon, whose first name and last name are really both First Names; this Dave Guy he said unto me, “I think you should write something about whom. You know, like everybody says ‘who do you love,’ when it really should be ‘whom do you love?’ “

“So!” I said to myself while listening to this Grampa talk Grammar; “so now I must look this up, as I am ashamed to admit that although I try to indemnify my audible colonoscopy with good usage; there are times when I fall short, much like many U.S. citizens who seam to have difficulty with both spelling; usage; punctuation!, and the correct contextual use of the word “both.”

Its time’s like these when a much younger me would get all bent out of shape when a person would use an apostrophe to write plural’s rather than showing possession and / or when used in a contraction. Of course, many women who have given birth would probably rather not remember the contractions. However this is no excuse to vary from the rules of Grammar, or Grandma either for that matter. Ignorance of the Grammar rules may sabotage your chances of getting a job, while disobedience of Grandma rules may sabotage your chances of getting more cookies. Nay, I say unto you, I no longer flatulate over the lack of knowledge of “proper English grammar.” I do shake my head at times when I see it on billboards or in sentences written by college students; but it is not for me to judge. Mine is but to sing songs loudly and belch boastfully when my belly is full of delicious rock salt pudding.

Our son once pointed out a well documented fact that “who” was a word that was invented by owls. That of course is obvious to anyone who may have listened to owls asking that question over and over and over and over again. We may not know to whom they are posing this age-old question. That does not matter; because, of course, they know. And since they only use “who,” and never have I heard them use “whom;” well that just illustrates to me that they understand (and probably invented) the following rules that I just stole from www.grammarly.com:

“Whom is an objective pronoun; it should be used to refer to the object of a sentence. If you’re stuck, you can try this formula: if the pronoun can be replaced by he or she, then use who. if the pronoun can be replaced by him or her, then use whom (you can also look for the preposition).”

OK… so let’s have some “reverse fun” with that rule and substitute bass-ackwardly:

“Who are you?” could be switched to “He (or she) are you?” and…

“Whom do you love?” could be noogled to “Her (or him) do you love?” and perhaps one of my brand new, just now favorites…

“To whom it may concern,” could be flinkled to “To him (or her) it may concern,”

So in the case of a preposition like “to,” then whom is to be used, and please, try to remember that a preposition is a word one should never end a sentence with. You may wonder why anyone would object to such usage, but the object is missing so don’t go there with me you silly baroopy noise making person you!!

Oh I could go on and on with this, don’tcha know. None of those examples in the “reverse fun” substitution calamity are correct usage, but guess what? I don’t care!! Ha ha!! I laugh to this!! I am now chortling! Chortle chortle!! Guffaw guffaw!! Or if Popeye were laughing, “OCK ock ock ock ock ock!!” Weird laugh…

Anyway, although I used to be very persnickety about such things, I try hard not to snip and gribble about someone’s grammar, nor their Grandma. One thing I’ve learned during my sojourn in this plane of sentience is, to quote Ebenezer in my favorite Scrooge movie, “I don’t know anything. I never did know anything. But now I know I don’t know anything.”

Sew their.

And now for something completely different…

I am SO MUCH looking forward to Monday!! Why? Well I’m retired, so it’s not work… actually while working I don’t believe I was ever happy about Mondays. Unless I was on vacation.

So Sunday I begin the prep for a most wonderfully enjoyable procedure known as a colonoscopy. I think it’s pronounced co-LON-o-scope-eeee. Maybe not, but doesn’t that sound like fun? I can hardly wait to drink 430 times the normal dose of laxatives to clean my guts out. I had to do this before… and I “fondly” remember the happy intestinal volcanic rumbling that ensued during The Big Cleanout. I’ve always loved Intestinal Volcano. Has a way of letting you know you’re alive.

All this wonderful fun was prescribed as preparation for some happy probing of my southern torso by aliens on Monday. My exciting dining regimen for Sunday will include clear liquids and PKP (Poop Kaboom Powder). Around noon Monday they will clunk me with the anesthetic sledge hammer and have their way with my colon. Those medical people think they have me fooled… they think I am not aware of their little game. This is all an excuse for them to do pole vaulting experiments with my hiney hole. You see, when we are zonked out, they play funny games with our bodies and we just lie there with that anesthetized look on our faces. Perhaps while I’m there, they could take some of the hair from my back and plant it back on my head where it used to be. Or possibly they could do a little liposuction while they’re in there with the garden hose thingy that has the video camera on the end of it. I’m unreasonably sure the hose is what they use for the Happy Colon Scoping.

Perhaps they have a trained snake or eel that they use to climb inside and look around for clingons, or whatever else they hope to find in there. I’ve heard about polyps being removed during the procedure, and I figure that snakes and / or eels would be very good at biting those off from the inside. Of course, a snake would need some sort of breathing apparatus during all this. Maybe a snorkel or some kind of miniature aqualung. Eels probably would need something too, because although they can breathe in water with their gills, I would never send a trained eel into a poopy environment and expect it to try to breathe the kaka water. That would be cruel and inhumane treatment, even for an alien-trained poopy probing eel.

Or maybe this “procedure” is actually a ploy to extract methane from unsuspecting visitors. With all the tooting I’ll be blasting during the prep, I’m betting the gas could power a generator for the day. That would certainly help those medical folks curtail their energy bills. That’s probably it… they need the gas! I’m sure they don’t want the fertilizer from all the trips I’ll be making to the potty, because otherwise they would have specified that I collect it as I go. I believe enough fertilizer will be made to cover several acres.

While I’m sedated I’m sure they will have fun drawing cartoons on my belly with magic markers, or maybe they’ll be taking provocative photos of me posing with food and non-clear liquids. Pretty sure I’ll be craving a nice burger and a shake afterward!! All this in the name of prevention. Ya, right. Whatever. If nothing is wrong, I get to stay clear of this happy time for ten years. By then, technological advances will make a big difference. They’ll probably be able to zonk me out with a little zapper the size of a pencil. No prep, they’ll just use a machine to purge all the goodies out of my booty. Finally, rather than trained snakes or eels, they’ll be sending in the robot snakes and eels.

OK, maybe what I described about the Happy Colonoscopy Day is not what really happens. But I’ll never really know for sure now will I??

And now for something completely different…

COVID has provided ample excuses for sitting on the TV while watching the couch (or something like that) and eating deliciously fattening foods.   But since we’ve both been vaccinated and spring is here, my Beautiful Girlfriend and I have decided we need yet another adventure in food control. Again. For the 123rd time. I think. We’re trying to make our hineys smaller; that’s the bottom line. Get it? Bottom line!! I make joking!! Ha ha!! Butt seriously folks, in order to make that happen, it means eating differently: low fat, high veggies, less carbs, more protein and fiber. You know, rocks and sticks and stuff.

Well guess what?? During a recent grocery store excursion, I was determined to find some low fat stuff that was fun to eat. Like maybe liverwurst or hot dogs or something. What??  Those are not low fat??  Well don’t ask me why, but about every six months or so I get a craving for that stuff. Yes, I know there are lips and noses and all sorts of weird stuff in hot dogs. And God only knows what all they put in liverwurst. Sure, they both have ingredient lists on the package, but you just can’t help but think they put something in there that they aren’t talking about. Although both can have sodium nitrite in them (not a good thing for your body), I don’t eat them often enough to get any nitrite nastiness. I hope… Anyway, I figured once in awhile won’t hurt. On our latest munchies mission we were looking around for some foods that wouldn’t put the lard in our booties, and guess what we found? Low fat liverwurst (known in these parts as braunschweiger) and fat free hot dogs! I grabbed a package of each, and very soon enjoyed the decadent pleasure of processed meat. A liverwurst sandwich with low fat mayo and a dab of mustard for lunch, and a couple fat free hot dogs with my stir steamed veggies for dinner. I was in hog heaven. Pun intended (there’s really no such thing as “low fat liverwurst”).

I suffered no ill effect, and got my processed meat craving out of the way for awhile. Well, OK, there was one effect, but I don’t really consider it a bad one. I got a free “movie” out of the deal. It’s like this, you see: I don’t eat processed meat very often. When I get that urge I mentioned earlier, I usually go in like gangbusters and have lots of yummies with chemicals that are not normally in my body. And I’ve noticed that whenever I stuff my face with things that have sodium nitrite in them, well, I have very interesting dreams…

There I was, minding my own business, on a pontoon boat with no side rails or canopy. I was one of several people on a fishing trip, and we had just sighted some huge bluegills when the guide started complaining aloud, “well, we can’t fish here. The grocery store doesn’t want us fishing in their parking lot.” I was pretty disappointed, but when I looked over the side and saw the parking lot markers on the asphalt (about 6 feet underwater) I knew that this was just the way things had to be. We motored off into the middle of the lake (or whatever it was) and slowed down while we passed a strange wooden dwelling that jutted out of the water. The structure was not painted, and had obviously been there for a very long time. Inside, people with very long noses were speaking a strange language and drawing pictographs on each other’s backs. Then suddenly, the scene changed…

I found myself in a college lecture hall, and my sixth grade teacher was having everyone stand up and do recitals that were due that morning. I got the sudden sense that my turn was quite awhile off, so I decided to take Bishop the Wonderdog (who lives in Heaven now) for a walk. We walked through a nearby neighborhood which was bordered by some woods, and stumbled upon a very large cat. My first instinct was that we had met up with a mountain lion, but the coloring was that of a domestic feline. However, this kitty was very large, probably in the neighborhood of eighty pounds or so. I expected the cat to get all poofy at the sight of my doggie, but quite the opposite happened. I heard a thrashing noise, and turned to see Bishop’s fur getting all poofed up. He was visibly trembling and excited, and his ears were flapping about and looked like small horse tails flying every which way. At this point I went back into the lecture hall, only to learn that my turn to recite had long since passed and everyone had gone home.

Now how does one analyze that dream?!? It was just plain fun!! That’s my analysis. Recreational dreaming. I’ve told stories of hot dog dreams to friends at work, and I remember a guy was envious a few days later, because he had eaten several hot dogs and had no dreams. He thought maybe he might shoot up some hot dogs before bed time, but I am pretty sure that HOT DOGS MUST NEVER BE TAKEN INTRAVENOUSLY. And really, with all the chemicals and whatnot; I wouldn’t even advise eating them at all, except for the fact that sometimes they just plain taste good. So the next time I go to the store, I’ll try to help my non-dreaming friends out and see what kind of cool dream foods they have…

Probably start in the frozen camera section. I’ve heard that deep-fried watch batteries are very delirious and full of norg oxides, which strengthen your screaming bones. While urging the ceiling tiles to quit sniffing crayons, Clamp Store Managers often shout at squid as they have cart races through the small table mazes. Ink-flavored baggage has been found to prevent shoe decay, so when the Amazing Puckered Jelly Mixer begins to twinkle in the closets, all the new employees will be happy to learn of their celery. As we move now to the chain-operated video spray, thick woolen camouflage breadsticks push other bagels out of the paper fudge racks. Now, we are sure, no foods in this whole universe are better than freeze dried pajamas.

I think I should maybe stop eating braunhotschweigerdogs for a while now…

Maybe a place like this could help me lose some weight…