A couple weeks ago, my Beautiful Girlfriend (you know, the one who let me marry her 45 years ago) asked me, “what do you want for our anniversary?”
“Nothing,” I replied. Well OK, I pretty much jiggled my eyebrows at her right after that, and she knew exactly what that meant. “You want that all the time,” she snorted. Yeah, I probably do. Hey, what man wouldn’t want to “tango” when you’re married to the Most Beautiful Woman In The Universe? Anyway, I reiterated that I really didn’t want for anything; so we picked out a ring for her and left it at that.
For a while…
Then I thought, well yes I think I do want something… a little getaway perhaps. Labor Day weekend is coming up, and and I had already put in for Friday as a vacation day. I thought it would be rather nice to spend a night at some local motel on the Lake Michigan shore. As luck would have it, Google helped me find just such a place. It’s called the Lakeshore Motel in Manistee, and the only thing between your room and Lake Michigan is sand. Considering the location, I was amazed at the price of a mere $110 for a night.
All the online reviews were stellar… very clean, very nice people, very comfortable. And we found out for ourselves that all that was indeed the case. One review cautioned that if you’re looking for a 5 star motel, this is not it. And we found out for ourselves that this was indeed the case. And yes I know I just wrote the very same sentence twice.
I’m pretty sure the motel was built around the time we were… meaning it’s gotta date back to at least 1960. And although it was very clean and comfortable, I’m not sure anything has changed much since that time. I was pointing out some of the more interesting “features” of the room to my Lovely Bride; and she says, “yes, this is called ‘shabby chic,’ it’s really popular these days.” “Dunno,” I retorted, “I’m thinking this might be just plain shabby.” So of course I had to go to Google and search for this “shabby chic,” and yes, my Beautiful Girlfriend was right, it’s a thing!! But I mean hey, check out this lamp (click on the picture for a better view)…
Weird…
Anyway, we really did love the location. And we really did have a comfortable, clean bed; and a cozy “shabby chic (?),” very clean room. And some interesting little melmac cups for coffee in the morning.
It’s August outside, and if you have read any previous “Happy Friday!!!” snippets, then you might well be able to guess what I’m going to write about tonight.
Hints:
A) It’s August outside… hot weather… dog days of summer.
9) Tuesday will be the 21st of the month…. getting warmer?
Blue) The writing will be about what I believe is something really cool; and
6!) It’s something that always makes me happy.
OK… give up? Let’s see… August, hot weather, really cool… makes me happy. Hmm. Must be…
ICE CREAM!!
Ummm… No. Although My Beautiful Girlfriend just came back from the movies and we did get ice cream on the way home. Yes that’s right boys and girls, we still go to the movies. And we even like movies about comic book characters. Tonight it was “Ant-Man And The Wasp;” a simply marvelous Marvel film. Lots of fun. Oh hey, and if you’re a Marvel movie fan, you know that there’s always some fun little clips that follow the movie; and there’s often something after all the credits have rolled though completely.
Yes. We went on a spontaneous date. I came home from work, and was reminiscing about the little tiff we had the night before. You see, we inherited this rental duplex thing where our son lives and the rental side had The Tenants From Hell in there for way too long and their animals forgot that carpets are not for potty and maybe the people forgot that too we don’t know but it stunk to high heaven so we got some cleaner folks in there to try to make better and they tried their best but the carpet turned out to be too far gone so now we’re having flooring folks put new carpet and also some vinyl floor in and gee it sure would be nice if we could spend some money on our own doggoned house but first we gotta do this and it sure is making us both crabby and we start harrmumphing for no good reason and get a bit pissy and then we kiss and make up and HOLY COW I’m sure glad that kind of crap doesn’t last very long anymore like it used to when we were only a couple days / months / years married but we basically grew up together and I REALLY HOPE nobody is reading this run-on sentence in one breath because if you are we need to call the Guinness Book Of World Records People RIGHT NOW!!
Whew!! That was a big one.
So yes, our marriage flows much more naturally now; and our harmonious times are about 99.9% and our “leave me alone or I’ll bite you” only lasts for about 0.1 % of the time. Probably less. I guess that’s what 45 years of marriage will do if you work at it.
WAIT!! That’s it!! The thing I was gonna have you guess about!! The 21st of August is our anniversary, and this will be 45 years for us!! Sheesh!! Where did all the time go??
“God Only Knows.”
I capitalized “God Only Knows” and put it in quotes because it relates not only to my bewilderment at the very fast passage of time, but it also happens to be the title of a song we’ve been singing to each other lately. The lyrics are very simple, yet profound; at least in my professional opinion. I was reading about the development of the song by Brian Wilson (of Beach Boys fame) and Tony Asher; and they were worried that because the word “God” was in the title it would never get any air play. Brian Wilson believed that “God” could mean any interpretation of our Great Spirit; but the concern was that there would never be any popularity of a song with such a title.
Boy am I glad they were wrong.
The song was recorded in 1966; and here’s a more recent but very nice BBC music version I found on the You Tubes recently. Sing along with me if you like… but I warn you… sometimes I get mushy.
WARNING!! THE FOLLOWING STORM IS LACED WITH LARGE DOSES OF
PURE NONSENSE. IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO ASSIMILATE SUCH COMPLETE
SILLINESS, DISCARD THIS DOCUMENT IMMEDIATELY, IF NOT SOONER.
*************************************************************
Many of you may know this already, but I’ll say it again anyhow. I am married. Not only that, I married The Most Beautiful Woman In The Universe (FYI: all other women are The Second Most Beautiful), and we are very happy. This horrible marriage event occurred 44 years ago; and if we make it till August 21 it will be 45 years!! Is that crompulary or what?? We are best friends, and even love each other enough to smooch and all that other married people stuff. There appears to be no cure for our amplification.
So, on or about August 21, the date of our welding happen thing, we will probably go on our annual honeymoon. This reminds me of one of my favorite honeymoon outings at a nice getaway called the Hotel Frankfurter Hotdog Ranch, where you shell out $19.75 (or more, depending on the type of honeymoon suite you want) for a room, dinner and breakfast for two, taxes and tips all included in the bill. Very nice.
Back in 1876, or perhaps it was another year, I don’t know, I had booked a Ranch Room 22 years in advance, as a surprise. Finally the big day arrived. There we were, in the 1971 Maverick we never owned, galumping along the Lake Michigan shoreline, and suddenly several policemen sang polkas to us while blue smoke from our tailpipe gases filled their eyebrows. Then we started the engine and headed Up North to Frankfort ya shoor youbetcha by golly dere (dey are NOT yoopers dere… I just trew dat in for da halibut).
With an average speed of 12.7 mph, we made it to Frankfort in a record twelve days. Several parts of the car were missing when we arrived, but we just figured the noises were from that funny rope we substituted for the fan belt back in ’83. The hotel was everything we never expected it to be. Deep green clouds of putrid dust belched from the chimneys of the honeymoon suites. We turned to each other and winked, knowing that it would soon be OUR turn to ignite those famous bricks of dehydrated pond scum. At the main entrance, we backed up several yards and then ran through the masking tape barrier they put up to greet arriving guests. On the other side, the staff greeted us in their traditional lizard suits, urging us to bring them insects from the nearby chocolate shop.
After checking in, we decided to take a stroll down to the pier before dinner. There we found very sad fishermen chained to huge iron pilings. To our amazement, that very moment they were sold into slavery and commissioned to teach giant squid how to read and write. The squid plopped themselves on the pier and wouldn’t move to let us by, so we did our best to comfort the fish holders, who ate oversized jelly beans while they cried out for extra ballpoint pens. Suddenly, I had a terrible sinking feeling…
“My Mom knew this would happen,” I uttered.
“What? She knew WHAT would happen,” Kathy asked.
“My left leg just turned into scrambled eggs,” I pouted.
Kathy scolded me, saying, “Kenny, get theheck out of that broken sewage line!! This is no time for stink-o-rama!!” I apologized diversely, and she promised to make some sock puppets when we got home. She knows I’m a sucker for a bucket of removable training shingles (ching-ching!!).
We went back to the Ranch and waited in the basement to be called to dinner. I must point out that this was my least favorite part of our celebration. I couldn’t find the light, so of course I tripped over the giant rusty telephone and nearly fell into the washed popcorn they pulled from the dryer lint trap. Our reservation was finally stained, and we were shown to our topsoil.
Dining at “The Ranch” is nothing short of elegant. The long, dark hallway’s cracked cinder blocks are accented by the flickering light of Bunsen burners at each desk. I had to sit on the side opposite the chair slide-in place, but that didn’t dampen my moisture. I ordered fill-it magnum, and Kathy got shrimp on the half shell. We shared and split the entrees down the middle with a chain saw and splitting maul. Our waiter forced us to watch “Little Lulu” cartoons while we awaited the arrival of the meal. But that was OK; because halfway through the 37th cartoon, Kathy’s mood had been visibly altered. She gazed at me longingly, as if I was the next course, then began nibbling her napkin and pressing her butter knife flat against her eyebrows. What a woman!!
Dessert, of course, was the house specialty, “Frankfurter Hotel Rocky Ranch Hot Dog Heaven,” made with fresh hot dogs that were caught the previous Wednesday. They do magical things with mystery meat. We were awestruck by the lovely appearance of the dish and the surprisingly delectable cherry sauce and imitation peppermint rice filled avocado pebble crunch with boat scrapings and black mold filter cream toppings.
After completely filling our tummies, the Rollers came and boofed us up the stairs to our room. Special humor was exploding as they let us roll downstairs 23 times before the last upheaval; after which they finally shoved us into the room and slammed the room shut on us. We laughed most jolly and tried to reach the pondscum fireplace with our bellies dragging on the floor, splinters in our garments and happy broken belt loops. Needless to say, Kathy did the napkin-nibbling butter knife eyebrow thing the rest of the night, and I responded in turn by recycling the flypaper in the master cylinder accusation chamber.
You can bet we’ll be back again some other anniversary. Until then, please deform all your friends and neighbors. Their armpit hair, after all, will soon be converted into satellite receivers. Now please pass those hot dogs!!
Oh… one last thing: it has occurred to me that because I am older than most compost, many of you have never heard of nor seen a “Little LuLu” cartoon. Well here’s one from 1945…
Well girls and boys, tomorrow marks another anniversary for me and my Beautiful Girlfriend. We still celebrate May 19th of every year; because it’s the Anniversary Of Our First Official Date. The acronym for that would be AOOFOD; which sounds really dumb so please disregard that idea. Maybe I should change the acronym to DOOOFA: Date Of Our Official First Anniversary? How about OFOAOD: Our First Official Anniversary Of Dating?
Never mind.
Anyway, on May 19, 1972, my Beautiful Girlfriend and I officially became a couple. For those who don’t know the story, when we starting having mutually sparkling eyeballs, we both had long distance relationships. She wrote a “Dear John” letter to her boyfriend who was in the Navy (his real name was Richard). I drove my 1970 Honda CB175 to the local resort where my soon-to-be-former sweetie from Chicago was due to visit for vacation.
So here we are now, and after a year, my Amazing Honey Pie let me marry her!! That was very nice indeed. We reflect on our blessings (and to a much lesser extent, our challenges) during both anniversaries every year. The other day, My Baby sighed and said, “where did all the time go??” A former boss of mine handed out an answer for just such a question many moons ago, and I embraced it. So when My Lovely Lady asked where all the time went, I quipped, “times fun when you’re having flies!!”
That’s what frogs say, or so I’m told.
After my smart aleck remark, we both started reminiscing aloud. We’ve been blessed beyond belief, really. I consider myself a very wealthy man. Please don’t confuse my concept of wealth with affluence; although money is very helpful at times. No, I’m referring to wealth in the form of a very nice life that’s filled with joy (or at least contentment) 99.99% of the time. Of course our relationship had some rocky times. I don’t know that it’s possible to intimately spend most of your life with someone without some degree of turbulence. But we worked through those times; and came out better than ever on the other side.
So where did all the time go? Well, let’s see… there was courtship, marriage, having fun, growing up, raising children, growing up, having more fun, marriage counseling, growing up some more; being blessed with grandchildren, and having more fun. Oh, and stuff like work and chores were sprinkled in there… oh and sleeping… eating… bathing… going to the bathroom… Anyway, when I first met My Beautiful Girlfriend Who Let Me Marry Her (MBGWLMMH), she’d say, “life is laughing and crying, shagging and dying.”
Well OK, she may have used a much stronger term than shagging…
There’s a lot of truth to that statement! I’m hoping to learn from the past and avoid projecting what the future will bring. Sometimes I can actually do that!! All I know is, rather than sigh about how quickly life has rolled along, I’m trying to treasure each moment of each day. And each day with The Most Beautiful Woman In The Universe is a very fine day indeed.
With Mothers Day on the horizon, I thought it important to yell a BIG GIANT THANK YOUto all the mothers in the universe. After all, without Mom, none of us would be where we are today. Actually, without Mom, none of us would be here at all!!
We have lots of “holidays” on the calendar that, in my professional opinion, should not be holidays at all. Sweetest Day? Ummm… no. Conversely, we have holidays like Earth Day, Mothers Day, and Fathers Day that exemplify principles we should embrace all year long. Nothing wrong with making a bigger fuss once a year, mind you. But let’s put the focus on this Sunday, which of course is Mothers Day. Considering the sacrifices our mothers made to raise us all the very best way they could; don’t you think Moms deserve to be special all year long?
God knows I could have done a better job appreciating Mom when I was a kid. Too soon old and too late smart seems to be bonking around inside my head bone a bit regularly these days. Hindsight is 20/20 though, as they say. I truly believe in my heart that every Mom does the very best they can; which of course is governed by their awareness. All Moms are human; and there’s no instruction manual. We all just need to take the good that Mom gave us and let it shine whenever we get the chance.
So for this week’s Happy Friday, I’m just going to be short and to the point:
Dear Mom,
Thank you for everything.
I love you with all my heart,
Me.
My Mom is in Heaven, but I send her loving prayers and I know in my heart they are heard. And to all of you other Moms out there, thanks to all of you also. You’ve blessed me with wonderful friends and loved ones who could never have been here without your help.
Take care, dear Moms, and Happy Mothers Day.
A lot of men are raising kids these days, but Gabby seemed to have a pretty tough time…
If you’ve been reading this blog at all, perhaps you’ve noticed that I rarely mention politics. Believe me, I have plenty to say about the woes of the world; but my professional opinion is that if a person reads something like “Happy Friday!!!” they might appreciate a break from all the geopolitical falderol. Well tonight I’m gonna get on my soapbox a bit and complain about theft. I know that’s not political (well not in this case), but I’ve been feeling a smidgen victimized and I’m a gonna bark a little.
So there we were, my Beautiful Girlfriend and me, minding our own business on the way back from a funeral visitation when we heard this dreadful ker-whump!! coming from under the car hood; which was accompanied by a sudden loss of power and then the engine was running at way too many RPM but the car was slowing down so of course I hit the EJECT button and both of us were hurled out of the top of the car but luckily our parachutes got snarled in some pine trees so we were able to watch reruns of Gilligan’s Island on someone’s widescreen TV because they had their curtains open and “wow Honey look at how big their picture window is!! Even from up here in the top of the pine tree we can smell the Farmers Insurance commercials!!” and of course nothing after the words “ I hit the EJECT button” was real but it made for a pretty nice run-on sentence which I shall terminate… NOW.
Anyway… the nasty ker-whump!! was an audible warning that the end was very near for the transmission of our brand new, 2001 Chrysler Town and Country racing van. Thinking maybe our trusted service people on the other side of town could help, I drove the ailing minivan over there and the nice man shook his head and said, “nope… you need a tranny shop.” Gack. So I started to go to the closest one but then I remembered our other trusted service people right near our house. Drove over there and the nice man said, “we’re running about a week and a half behind.”
Gack.
OK… back to the other side of town we go but uh oh… not much reverse. Not much forward neither. Got it to limp to our house and was hoping to back it into the driveway. Nope. Reverse go bye-bye. OK… let’s see if I can get it up to the intersection and do a U-turn; come back and park. After several startings and stoppings, that worked. By that time I believe I successfully converted what was once an automatic transmission into a metal box filled with tranny fluid and metal shavings. Borrowed my Beautiful Honey Pie’s car to go to work, stopped at the tranny shop on the way home and asked if it was OK to have the beast towed over to his place after hours. “Sure,” he said, “we can have it for you in 3 or 4 days.” “Great,” I replied, “any guess on how much?” “Oh… around $2200, maybe a bit more.”
Gack.
I figured, hey, we want the car to work… engine works fine, body a tiny bit rusty but pretty good… pretty much everything works; so I signed on the dotted line. Silly me, after I heard all this nice news, I thought maybe I’d check the interwebs for how much this old animal was worth. Stopped at good ol’ Kelley’s Blue Book… what??? $1200 to $2800???What the heck did I do??? Oy yoy yoy!! It’s highway robbery I tell ya!! This car is stealing from me!!! I must now run outside to eat bark and poop at the moon!!
OK, maybe I won’t go barking at moon poop.
So then I started looking around the interwebs again, this time for a nice, used, certified Toyota Sienna. No more Chryslers for this kid, thank you very much. Sure, they’re affordable… but stuff goes wrong that really shouldn’t. Never had a transmission go bad on a Toyota. I know others have; but from what I’ve learned over the years it’s rare. Chryslers, on the other hand, seem to have a reputation of eating at least one transmission during their life span. But now I’m learning a different form of highway robbery: almost new car prices.
Gack!!!
Looks like $25,000 or so will get me a nice used minivan with low enough miles to still be under warranty. $25,000!!!We bought a house with 5 acres of land for $36,900!!! Well OK, that was a couple of weeks ago in 1982. But still…!!!
Just gotta face the facts. Unless some rich benefactor surprises me with the gift of an antique Maserati or something; cars are always gonna take my money. They are thieves.
And car thieves are not my friends.
I’m unreasonably certain that my car hunt will go exactly like this:
The medical profession is a wondrous field with many modern marvels; but at our house we’ve had some big changes slap us in the face lately. For example, I had my very first stress test. The whole idea scared me to pieces for some reason. Maybe I was afraid of a bad result; but one thing’s for sure, I feel a run-on sentence approaching.
So there I was, minding my own business, huffing and puffing on the treadmill, really eager for my very first ever stress to be done, being completely frightened by the radioactive isotope they injected into my body for imaging, and I’m thinking yes OK Doc you can please tell me to stop now, holy moly I’m starting to get a bit winded here… no big deal but you can turn this stupid thing off any time now, and enough with the slanting of the treadmill awreddy, and yes I’m fine, we can be finished now, OK wow thank you for ending the test because I was lusting for my clobber hand to whomp the big red button that they never told me what it was for but it seemed rather obvious it was the EMERGENCY STOP; but I didn’t clobber it because I wanted to go through the whole test; and when I asked how I did they said, “you’ll find out later, go lay down in the imaging machine thing.”
So I did.
You see, after many years of an upper chest pain that seems to come and go with stress; my doctor finally decided I should have an EKG. She was a bit concerned about the waveform, so she sent me off for a stress test. About a week afterward, I received an e-mail that “the first part of the test was within the normal range.” Then I asked about the second (imaging) part, and they basically said, “we’ll tell you someday when we feel like it.”
I’m guessing this is an unspoken, extra stress part of the test?
Anyway, tried to get an appointment to have my physical exam; which needed to be done before the end of March to comply with the Blue (I don’t) Care Network (a cheapskate version of Blue Cross Blue Shield) requirements. The doctor was booked solid so I settled for a Physician’s Assistant. Now it’s been many years since I’ve seen a male doctor. I dunno, I just prefer females in that profession. However, this guy was very thorough.
For example, he had me do the “pole jumping maneuver;” during which I had to balance a fishing pole on my chin while jumping on one foot. Some kind of coordination test I suppose. Then there was the blindfolded “taste this and tell test,” which involves sardines, Tabasco, Swiss cheese, broccoli, and maple syrup. Why those all needed to be mixed together I’ll never know… but I think I have a great idea for a new sandwich. Lastly he had me bark loudly into an empty metal waste basket. That was my favorite part.
Well OK, maybe none of that really happened.
Seriously though, he was a great guy and really went the extra mile with me. Don’t tell my doctor but I think I’d rather have him give me an exam next time. Of course, I pestered him about the final results of the stress test, and he said, “let’s pull it up and see. Hmm… you aced it. You aced it.” So these chest pains are part muscular, part psychological. Nothing life threatening.
Very nice news indeed.
The second really big, pretty ocky and unexpected medical change thing came in the form of my Beautiful Girlfriend’s job. Unfortunately, the wonderful man she’s been taking care of for 33 years was informed that his insurance company would no longer pay for LPN care. Mind you, he is regarded by us as more of a family member than My Honey’s client. Sadly, his doctor made a huge goof on some paperwork; giving the insurance company the shark bait they’ve probably been wanting for years. In their infinite wisdom, the insurance scoundrels made the determination that our friend needed only the help of nurse aides; not full-fledged nurses. When My Sweet Honey Pie called her nursing agency, they informed her that she could continue to work for our dear friend; but for nurse aide wages. In other words, she’d lose almost half her pay.
Ummm… she said no. Well OK, she said lots of other things for which she called back and apologized. But hey, that’s just plain unacceptable and she stood her ground.
There’s an old saying that “when God shuts a door He opens a window.” But after devoting 33 years to care for a person and the door closes abruptly, it makes very big ouchies in the heart. Very sad business. Our friend got his doctor to send the corrections to the insurance company, but only time will tell whether this will get corrected. In the meantime things are a bit different at our house (and I’m sure at our friend’s house too). I’ve also mentioned that insurance (and many other) companies treat their employees like the mob treats its members. Case in point: if the mob puts a hit out on your brother; it’s nothing personal, just business.
Might be that the window those God People are opening is in the form of Social Security. Weird to be able to say it, but it’s actually good that we’re both old enough to start receiving benefits now. I’ve told her not to worry, but to grieve all this and make whatever decision she feels is right. I’m being as supportive as I can.
However, I think I’m changing my mind about something I mentioned earlier. Don’t think I’m gonna go for that sardines / Tabasco / Swiss cheese / broccoli / maple syrup sandwich after all.
I hope none of you are feeling sorry for me… my Beautiful Girlfriend (who let me marry her some years ago) has left me all alone for the weekend. She went to a women’s spiritual retreat for the weekend. Not sure exactly what they all do there, but of course my mind can make up some “rituals” that they likely “never actually do;” but I’m already dreaming up some “cockamamie silliness” and “using quotation marks” for “no good reason.”
For example, I’m thinking they’re doing “trust exercises.” One such exercise may (or may not) involve the Blindfolded Egg Toss. One person is blindfolded, and “trusts” the other person to toss them an egg. Nah… that could get rather messy. Perhaps a more likely (or not) trust exercise could be something like “Oatmeal Surprise,” which again involves a blindfold. The blindfolded person is instructed to hold out their palms, and as soon as something is felt on one palm or the other, the blindfolded person must clap the two palms together briskly. Oatmeal flies zoom kerblooey all over the place!!
No??
Maybe they just talk and listen to speakers and help each other with life stuff… heck, I dunno.
Anyhow, being the red blooded, Spoiled American male that I am, I’ve decided to take full advantage of a raucous weekend with no adult supervision. Ooohhh yeahhh… this boy’s been PARTYIN’ already!! What did I do? Oh.. well, I went to the GROCERY STORE!! Yess!! And I bought my Beautiful Girlfriend some more miniature daffodils! Oh, and I got her a brand new obsolete DVD player so she could watch movies on her older, more obsolete, little tiny CRT color TV that also has a built in VHS player!! And yes this was in the same store (Meijer) where all the groceries are!!
And that’s not all!! Here comes the party part: I spent some money on myselfin the form of pizza makin’s and one of those German chocolate bars with 7 million hazelnuts per square inch!! Well, lots of hazelnuts anyway… Ooohh!! I also got me a bag of Pure Michigan (very locally made) La Fiesta tortilla chips to munch on while making pizza!! Thought about buying a pizza but nobody can make it as well as I can (homemade is still best). Took some time but it was well worth it.
Then I poured myself some sparkling (non-alcoholic) pear juice into a very fancy glass to wash it all down. My Beautiful Girlfriend found two fancy drinking glasses at an antique store. Anyone remember when Welch’s put jelly in glass jars that became drinking glasses when all the jelly was gone? They had dinosaurs and Tom & Jerry cartoon characters on them. Very fancy indeed.
Just to illustrate how naughty I am… I actually ate 3 PIECES OF PIZZA!! And I might accidentally have more in the middle of the night!! And then, I might even drink some more sparkling pear juice right out of the bottle!! AND I might even watch some old movies from the 1930s in glorious black and white!!
Then tomorrow I get to take a load or two of garbage to the dump (yay!!). Oh and I’ll probably stack some firewood too… maybe clean up the vines and such in the garden to get ready for spring.
OK, more like 99.999% of the time. You see, yesterday I celebrated my 64th lap around the sun. In other words, I’m getting pretty close to becoming an old fart. As I just mentioned, 99.999% of the time I have been blessed with joy. Well OK, I’ve just been blessed, period. That’s not to say that I’ve had absolutely no sorrow or sadness. Don’t know how anyone can go this far on the road of Earth life without some icky stuff. But the blessings are real, the joy is very real, and those icky life things have nowhere near the power over my psyche they once enjoyed.
Life is very good these days. Sure, my wife and I still bicker at times; but those little roller coaster rides are very brief and always end up with us remaining best friends. She even lets me snuggle, and get this: I get to smooch her!! We even have silly conversations that make us both laugh with great bigness:
Me: “Honey, will you please tell the firewood downstairs to bring itself up to the wood stove?? I don’t feel like going in the basement right now. They need to start coming up on their own.”
Her: “Ummm… no… they know you are just going to toss them into the fiery furnace!!”
Me: “Oh! FINE!! They can just stay down in the basement… and I will call them really nasty names and stuff!!”
Her: “Well, who’s gonna be our friends???”
Don’t try to make any sense out of that. It was just an actual silly exchange we had the other day that gave both of us a good belly laugh.
Then today I composed a very silly instant message and sent it to many of my friends via good ol’ copy-and-paste:
I can’t seem to decide on the best type of arm pits to use. Peach? Plum? Avocado?? Any suggestions??
I got several nice replies, all of which gave me wonderful smilings. Hopefully my friends got a smile or two also. I confess I’m not always sure what this aging stuff is supposed to mean really. I feel great, I can do pretty much everything I could do when I was much younger, although sometimes it takes a bit longer and other times it hurts. But when I pass a mirror there’s some old geezer gawking at me like I’m the Hunchback of Notre Dame or something. When that happens, I stop and look the old fart straight in the eye; and say with a threatening sneer, “alright old man, what did you do with the body??”
But of course, it’s just me; a child in old man’s clothing.
I even went for my very first stress test after seeing our new doctor about some chest pain I’ve been plagued with for lots of years. Never have an difficulty while exerting myself; but it’s often given me pause about what might be happening. Our previous doctor heard about it too… but she after carefully checking me over she was convinced that my heart was not going to implode. I saw our new doctor about it very shortly after a friend of ours died suddenly of a heart attack. After an EKG, our new doctor saw an anomaly on one of the waveforms and she thought I’d better get a stress test. I went, I tested, and I figured I must have passed because nobody freaked out or sent me to emergency surgery or anything.
Although I thought I had an inkling, I knew pretty much nothing about the procedure of this test. Turns out the hospital staff isn’t allowed to tell you diddly-squat about the results. You get to wait for a few days. OK, so I got a message from the patient portal thingy that “the first portion of the test was within the normal range.”
That’s nice…
Then I replied to the message and asked, “so the second portion is the imaging?”
“Yes that’s correct,” was the reply.
So then I sent another message asking when the results of the imaging portion would be known. Mind you, this is 4 days after my deductible for the test increased my credit card debt to the tune of $670. Seems like I should be able to get results in a timely matter, right?? Well, the reply I got was, “the results have to be finalized and signed and we will let you know when that is complete.”
I found that to be a rather stress-inducing answer.
Breathe… let it go… breathe… (sheesh!!) Hey, looks like I’m writing so I guess I ain’t dead yet.
Well I must be doing something right, I got a very nice compliment from the Nice Restaurant Lady when our Beautiful Friend treated my Beautiful Girlfriend and me to dinner last night. The Nice (older) (as in older than me) (I think) (OK enough with the parentheses) Restaurant Lady said, “it’s your birthday?? HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! How old are you? No!! Let me guess… 50??”
I told her, “we can be friends!!”
For this week’s video I did a search on the YouTubes for some cartoons about aging, but found out about this lady. She made me laugh…
I was wondering if I’ve ever mentioned that I’m really eager to retire. Yes? No? Well if you say no, then I must whisper loudly into your ears: I AM REALLY EAGER TO RETIRE.
Some have said, “Ken! For why you are don’t already retired being?? How long must you endure this work ouch when you could be playing checkers with English Eskimos Looking Snappy (E.E.L.S.)? Or perhaps you could relish an excursion to places like the booming metropolis of Enterprise, Wisconsin; with all its delights and exotic population density? Do you not understand that life is a bowl of deep fried ice chips waiting for you to savor the taste of rest and relaxation??”
Yes, each of them said it exactly that way.
To all who have urged me to retire yesterday or the day before, I must painfully remind you all that if I could have saved more money instead of doing silly things like cashing in a pension from a previous job and paying off debt and buying a car, or if I had maybe not withdrawn moneys from my 401K to pay off our mortgage and all other debt, or if I had just plain saved much more money in the before times rather than singing the blues about my small amount of retirement savings, or perhaps maybe making a run-on sentence that is becoming way too long, well then I suppose I could be retired NOW; (whew, I thought there’d never be a place for a semicolon)but I’m not, because as this run-on sentence reaches epic proportions, it would be economically stinky for me to retire earlier than the ripe old age of 66.
So I won’t.
But I sure do wanna.
Especially after having a fun day like today.
You see, I do computer support for a factory, OK? And sometimes these computers, well, they begin to do really stupid things that cause me to barf on the ground. Fortunately I wear safety shoes, so when the barf explodes into red, fiery puke flavored vomit nodules that scatter everywhere as I’m turning the air blue with my annoyance filled utterances, my toes are safe and warm in a stinky sock but barf free environment.
Yes my friends, I said bad words today while working on computers. A “fix” that should have taken minutes turned into hours; and all the while my hair was vibrating both vertically and horizontally as my frustration with all things technical manifested itself as large fluffy (but prickly) steel wool creepily crawling demons that entered my nostrils and filled my brain with caustic stress annoyance surprises.
Some of the things I may (or may not) have said are:
“I am totally sick up and fed with these skunk cabbage eating electronic pus buckets.”
And: “I believe these devices lick the posterior areas of dead jellyfish.”
And not to forget: “These computers are total pig sniffing, possum smooching, booger eating bark biters with little or no respect for composted root beer, much less a poor IT flunky like me.”
Oh, and I really must proclaim now that Microsoft will never be invited to my house for dinner; and Windows 10 can please feel free to go jump into an active volcano directly after I toss slimy gobs of ant manure into its tangled, rotten, dead snake labyrinth of smelly old (yet supposedly new) bits and bytes. You see, Windows 10 is really just Windows 7 with a fancy new look; coupled with all the tools and doodads Windows 7 had but hidden in all kinds of weird places so IT flunkies like me have a heck of a time finding them (at least in the beginning). To use an automotive analogy, what used to be easily fixed by looking under the hood is now hiding under the virtual windshield wiper motor that is only visible if you shake your legs vigorously while operating a cotton candy making machine that doubles as a very annoying audio amplifier with “It’s A Small World After All” loudly looping into your brain.
Or something.
So yes, I am very much looking forward to my retirement; which will commence in 1 year, 11 months, and 6 days.
But who’s counting??
Well for stress relief, there’s nothing quite like the Marx Brothers. At least, that’s my professional opinion…
Weird…