So… my Beautiful Girlfriend left for The Great Beyond a week ago. OK a week and one day to be precise. Lots of people figured I’d be a complete mess without her… and I admit that my heart aches terribly. Lots of people have said “I’m sorry.” Lots of people have sent their love. And one friend in particular said, “I’m so sad for you.” Well I’m pretty sad too folks, but as I told my friend, I’m immeasurably grateful for the life we built together. Yes, I’ve cried my eyes out several times. One time in particular I cried very loudly and hard. My throat is still a bit sore. And yes, I was home alone so the only people who were affected by my outburst were Ivy Anne and Luna, our two kitties.

It’s OK, they still love me.

Grief mixed with gratitude has brought me a pretty decent helping of peace that surprises even me. I’ve even been able to be a bit silly and make friends laugh. I’m convinced my Honey Pie would want this for me. I know if the situation was reversed, I would be doing everything I could from The Other Side to lift as much sadness from her as I could.

Before she left, we actually focused on gratitude somewhat regularly. It’s a tool we acquired during our recovery from addiction that enabled us to enjoy each day, and especially the last of our time together. As her mobility waned, a successful evening often meant watching our favorite TV shows while stuffing our faces with chocolate goodies. As the end approached, one of my important jobs was to ensure there was a box of Good N Plenty available at all times. And when evening came, I’d prepare a dish of miniature chocolate bars, some peanut M&Ms and maybe some whoppers or some other chocolate remarkableness. I sometimes silently scolded myself for chocolating (Not a word? I don’t care!!) along with her, knowing that my britches would probably tighten a bit. But that never stopped me. I made the mistake of getting on the scale a few times during the many weeks of chocolate holy mackerel; but it was a small price to pay for keeping My Sweet Love’s sweet tooth satisfied.

“We are blessed,” was a common refrain. Because we are.

“Can you imagine trying to do all this horrible disease stuff while being homeless?” I asked her some months ago. I’m guessing the length of suffering might have been much shorter, as our ability to get medical care would have been challenging at best. I cannot bear to think about how homeless people suffer each and every day. I mean, my Lovely Bride and I had no debt, a nice home, plenty to eat, cars that work, and an amazing collection of family and friends with whom we share the joy of living. What more can you ask for?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

What came to mind for this week’s video was the song by Barenaked Ladies. My Beautiful Girlfriend and I loved their music when it first came around, even though the members of the group are neither bare, nor naked, nor ladies.

So here ya go.

So there I was, 650 feet above sea level (I looked it up), getting ready to head off to a meeting and see some friends, and I took my phone out of my pocket because it needed to charge a bit so I was gonna plug it in to the car charger thingy and off I went but when I got a few miles down the road I didn’t see my phone but I thought I heard it ring and then I realized that HOLY COW this sentences is way too long; I better stop it right now!!

So I did.

I stopped the sentence I mean.

Because it was too long.

The sentence.

So now I’m making sentence fragments.

Oh wait, that was a sentence…

Anyway so yeah, I hear my phone ring. But I’m looking around the car and it’s nowhere. Between the seats?? Nope. Under the seats?? Nope. HEY LOOK OUT FOR THAT CAR!! OK.. quit hunting and resume driving. But what the heck?? Anyhow?? “I know,” I says to myself, “I’ll use the bluetooth to make a call to see if it’s OK.” And yes, the bluetooth worked fine, so the phone should be fine. But I’d really like to know where it is though, ya know??

“I hate computers.” That’s my refrain when anything goes awry in my universe. Why do I use this encrypted phrase for everything? Well during my many years as a technology guy, it became a kind of vocal therapy on the fly. For example: a software update is applied to some important software everybody uses. Then the system goes kerblooey, and nobody can do their job. I am the service guy. My phone rings off the hook. So I tell them, “Not to worry, we are working on it. And just so you know, I hate computers.” My friends would then tell me, “Well maybe you[‘re in the wrong job!!” And I’d reply, “It’s a good living, but the computers are not my friends; unless they play nice.” So now it’s almost automatic for me to blurt out “I hate computers,” even when I drop an egg on the floor.

So where the heck is my stinkin’ phone?? I hate computers!! It really is a computer you know. OK… I drive the 11 miles and arrive at the meeting place. I look again. On the seat… under my book maybe?? Nope. Between the seats?? Nope. Under the seats?? Nope. I see a friend in the parking lot. “Hey man, will you call my phone?? I can’t find the damn thing.” “Sure,” he says. I hear my ring tone. I follow the sound… and… HOLY CARP!! IT’S ON TOP OF THE CAR!! SHEESH!!! Let’s hear it for the old Otterbox Defender phone case with the rubber jacket that apparently likes to grab the roof of my car when it’s going 60 MPH!! Did I mention that I hate computers?? Oy yoy yoy!! But I’m glad I found my phone. I mean hey, it wasn’t the phone’s fault, so we can still be friends.

For now.

Hope all of you had a splendid Christmas, or whatever you may celebrate during this time of year. I say that because, of course, not everyone celebrates Christmas. Reminds me of a nice conversation I had a few years ago with a very good friend of mine who happens to be a Muslim. We were together during one of those Holiday Dinners our employer set up for us each year. I was fortunate to be able to sit next to him, which was great because he lives in Canada; and although we talked on the phone regularly we rarely saw each other live and in color.

“Does Santa come to your house?” I asked whimsically.

He chuckled and said, “I’ll be getting a few gifts while I’m here.”

Hey, last I checked, Santa was nondenominational! I’m grateful for the tolerance I was given when I was very young. My parents were very adamant that we treat people of all colors and creeds with respect. This attitude later brought me into contact with a beautiful, like-minded young woman when each of us were the ripe old age of 17. She allowed me to marry her two years later!! As we look back on our 50 years of wedded bliss, we find ourselves grateful that we raised “colorblind” kids who are keenly aware that we have absolutely no right to judge a person based on what color their skin is, who they choose to love, or how (or whether) they pray.

We’re grateful for a lot of things, and believe it or not we verbalize it pretty much every day. Sometimes we say it mockingly by uttering, “we are spoiled Americans.” But it’s true you know. Most of the time we’ll say “we are so fortunate,” or “thank you God for everything.” I dare say that anyone who is reading this is also spoiled to some degree. God bless those who are suffering from poverty, hunger, war, etc. Our family has been pretty much insulated from all these. We are blessed.

So here comes 2024, for cryin’ out loud!! Where did the time go?? Over the past few weeks my beautiful girlfriend and I have been reminiscing about days past…

“Honey, do you realize that this Christmas is our 50^th?” I mentioned recently. “Oh my!!” she replied. “Well, you know what frogs say… time’s fun when you’re having flies!!” I quipped. And fly it does; and the older we get the faster it seems to zip along. That’s why we’re both trying to make as many pleasant memories as we can these days. Negativity often plagued in our early years… that’s just not the case with us anymore. In spite of some rather significant health challenges, negativity rarely rears its ugly head now. And I can’t remember the last time we pissed each other off!! We pretty much literally grew up together; and we’ve learned that negativity is rather poisonous for the spirit.

We don’t like poison.

Do we get sad sometimes? Maybe even annoyed? Of course!! But we do our best not to wallow in the muck. Compared to oh so many, we are immeasurably blessed. However, it also takes conscious effort to “accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative,” as the old song goes. As we stumble along on this journey we call life; we try to replace negative thoughts with positive or at least neutral ones. We try to seek out activities that feed the spirit. We go to therapy. And we have a host of like-minded friends whom we can contact for support. All these tools give us a better chance or connecting to The Great Spirit and receiving some peace; and sometimes we even get some guidance!

So I think that’s my New Years’ resolution for 2024. For several years, I’ve stuck to the same resolution: “Try to do better.” I’ll still keep that in the mix, but I really want to ring in the new year (and subsequent new years) on a positive note. I need to do my best to keep the negative nasties out of my head. Negativity is painful, and I don’t like pain. As the famous philosopher, Henny Youngman said, “I went to the doctor, (lifts up his arm) and I said, ‘Doctor, it hurts when I do this!!’ So the doctor says, ‘Don’t do that!!’” I love using that as a funny analogy, but It really has become that simple for me. When my serenity alarm goes off, I try to quickly figure out what’s wrong and do my best to moderate my reaction so I can stay on an even keel. Didn’t happen over night, believe me.

If I can succeed at all this mood management; I’m pretty sure I’ll really have a Happy New Year. Well pretty much anyway. Friends and family who know the health challenges we face often ask us, “How are you doing?” I usually respond tersely with “Doing OK.” Lately I’ve been adding, “Well let’s put it this way: most of the time we are content.” And we are.

My hope for all of you is that you are at least as blessed as we are. And May Our Creators (whoever they may be) bless all of you, and please; have a Happy New Year.

I’m sure gonna try.

Speaking of Henny Youngman…

So… we’ll be getting visitors soon. Friends and relatives will be in town, and many will want to come visit our little piece of Heaven in Beautiful Bear Swamp. We’ve had several months to prepare for their arrival, but there are still some last minute things to do of course. Things like painting the shed. Weeding the garden. Getting the carpets cleaned. Making sentence fragments. You know, all that cool stuff that should have been done months or at least weeks ago, but we have lives and important things to do like enjoy time with grandchildren and visit with friends that live nearby oh and cooking and cleaning and all the other life stuff that, if enumerated completely and in great detail, would make for a much longer run-on sentence; so maybe I’ll just stop pretty soon but maybe not right now, oh well yes I think that’s enough.

Don’t you agree?

We’re putting on a bit of a shindig to celebrate our 50^th wedding anniversary. Fifty years!! How did that happen?? Well it happened just like they say in those recovery places: one day at a time. Sure doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. On the other hand, it really does feel like my Beautiful Girlfriend and I have been sweethearts / best friends / lovers for basically all our lives. Childhood memories are but a flash in the pan these days. Of course, we became best friends when we were children (we were both 17), so practically speaking we really have been together all our lives.

We grew up together!

Thankfully, the chores we’d like to get done before our visitors arrive will not even remotely resemble the absolute chaos that often ensued while preparing for something like our kids’ high school graduation open houses. Those were The Before Times. One of my “favorite” memories was the last minute disposal of a very large pile of lumber. Well, OK, it sat outside and exposed to the elements so long that much of it became a very large pile of rotten wood. They’d toss boards and planks into the dumpster at work, and Kenny would go pick “the nice ones” out and take them home. Into the carefully stacked lumber pile they’d go; waiting for that Kenny guy to do something with them. Surprisingly, some of it actually got used! And of course much of the pile was ignited a few days before graduation as a hefty onslaught of carbon molecules ejected into the atmosphere.

Ya, we burned it up. Holy Carbon Footprint, Batman!

Then we looked inside the garage where the food tables were to be placed. “OH HOLY CARP!!” we exclaimed in unison. “HOW ARE WE GONNA CLEAN THIS MESS UP IN TIME?!?!?!” Not sure who did it (it was me), but some noodle-headed wombat very gradually touched off a clutter bomb in my garage. Shelves somehow got (very gradually but effectively) filled with boxes of nails, tools, extension cords, drain snake thingies, air filters, spray paint… the list could go on and on. Not in any special order mind you. Well let’s hear it for my brother-in-law. He gave us a marvelous solution: “Run a rope between the studs and hang a big new tarp across!!” It’s a truly amazing way to make a mess invisible. Those were very stressful events, those graduation open houses from 1996 and 2001.

Is the mess from the aforementioned clutter bomb still there? Yes. Yes it is.

We’ll need to rent a refrigerator to house all the leftovers from the shindig. And yes, you really can rent a refrigerator!! So it’s gonna go in the garage… in front of a new tarp. There will be “restricted areas” where visitors are not welcome to tread. They won’t know it, but we sure will. Thankfully, there’s no pile of rotten lumber. The house is pretty presentable inside. The shed needs some paint, and there are other jobs to be done; but we’ll be OK. We’ve gotten better at just realizing that this is just part of who we are. We’re not slobs, we’re Americans, and we have too doggone much stuff. We are better at not shaming ourselves for any woulda – shoulda – coulda nonsense. All that does is spoil an otherwise great day. So we’ll tidy up where we can, and hide the rest (hee hee).

I’d really love to work on this procrastination disease I’ve worked so hard to acquire over the years. But that will have to wait till tomorrow or the next day.

Oh, and if any of you visitors are reading this, please erase the preceding text from your brains.

Thank you.

Maybe we could get Grampy to come help!!

I am really enjoying retirement.  I am so comfortable, I can wear my “Sunday Go To Meetin'” garden grubs to the grocery store and not give a flying mahookey who sees me running around in dirty rags.  In fact, just yesterday I had to make a quick grocery run after I got done crawling around in the garden.  While I was grabbing a few necessities, I had something of a fashion flashback that happened back in the old days when I was still working.

So there I was, in a Hard Day’s Night, working like a dog, with no barking, walking around the factory after walking between the Work Buildings and having enjoyed the cool air of West Michigan spring while in my denim jacket, when suddenly I stopped to talk to some fellow associates; but not all that suddenly because I left no skid marks on the concrete floor or nothing, and long before I wrote this run-on sentence (because I was at work, not writing like I am now) a friend walked up to me with a large grin on his face and said, “Hey Ken, don’t you know that denim jackets have been out of style for 20 years?”

Being the good natured fellow I am, I smiled while shaking his hand and quickly replied, “I really don’t give a ship (or something like that…)!!” Then one of the other associates said, “You’re one of the good guys, you can wear whatever you want and it would be just fine.”  Well being thought of as a “good guy” was nice to hear, but being the silly fellow I am, I smiled again and said, “How about I put on a pink tutu and some OSHA approved safety ballet slippers?? Would that be OK??” One of the associates eyebrows kinda came together as he looked at the ground; but the one who called me “one of the good guys” chuckled and said, “Yeah sure!!”

Again at work, I had yet another instance of fashion consciousness. A friend of mine came up to me and said, “Nice shirt!!” Took a little pointing on his part for me to notice that he and I were wearing shirts with nearly identical fabric. “Oh!!” I said, finally getting the point. “Yeah, I’m guessing mine is a thrift store special.” He gave me a puzzled look. I thought about that much later, wondering if I insulted him. But we are good friends so I’m pretty sure he didn’t take it too seriously. Besides, he found it amusing when I said, “Yeah my wife buys all my shirts at the thrift stores. This one was probably 99 cents. Well OK it’s kinda nice, maybe she paid $2 for this one.”

As you may have gathered by now, I’m not exactly in tune with GQ or whatever that hoidy toidy men’s magazine is called. I just don’t give a hoot about fashion. Some proof of that is:

1) I just had to google “GQ” to make sure it still was what I thought it was; and

R) I still like having very long hair, even though it’s only growing well on the sides of my head (I plan to till the top under and try to grow a new crop); so that’s like 40 years out of style, and finally

&) I rarely paid attention to what the work shirt looked like in the morning. My fashion combo consisted of a pair of blue jeans and a “business casual” shirt.

And yes, Virginia (or Vern), I stuffed my shirt pocket with my smell phone, my eye glasses case, a pen, and maybe a small screwdriver. Oh and not to forget that’s where my badge hung.

People see me from miles away and say, “NERD ALERT!! OLD HIPPIE NERD ALERT!!!”

Guilty as charged.

I did, however, try to make sure all the buttons were buttoned, my fly was zipped up, and my “gig line” was straight. For those who were never in the military, a “gig line” is correct when the seam of your shirt, your belt buckle, and your fly are all in a straight line from top to bottom. If you didn’t have that just so in basic training, you got gigged. Nobody likes to get gigged. Funny how old habits stick with you.

So the oldest habit of mine that sticks with me is I just don’t care about fashion. Fortunately my Beautiful Girlfriend keeps my garments acceptably coordinated when we have to play dress up for a wedding or whatever. Fun to see the new fashion stuff sometimes though, kind of like going to the carnival!!

I’m just not hip, folks. I’m an old hippie who doesn’t care about hip. Not even sure what the current expression for “hip” might be!! And I don’t give a flying mahookey!! So there!!

As the folks from the Tower of Power said so eloquently all those years ago (1973 in the video that follows), “what is hip? Tell me, tell me if you think you know.” Then later in the song is my favorite line: “What’s hip today might become passe.”

So I’m just not in style and that’s very OK with me. My Beautiful Girlfriend, on the other hand, is “Just My Style.”

So kids, two videos today. Tower of Power with “What Is Hip?” is first but isn’t displayed like other videos I’ve linked to in the past.  That’s because I usually embed them here, but this time Youtube said “embedding disabled by request.”  So just click the link to get the Tower of Power.  Nice performance by them on Soul Train.

The second one is in honor of my Beautiful Girlfriend, who will always be “Just My Style” like this song from Gary Lewis and the Playboys.

Peace!! (Now that’s ALWAYS in style!!)

Click below for “Just My Style.”

Well it happened. I just had my 69^th birthday, and I’m rather astonished that I’ll soon be the same age as old people. Maybe I already am!! This reminds me of a poem that I never wrote before, so I will attempt to plop it in front of your reading eyeballs at this time.

I Feel Fine

by Me, A Name I Call Myself

I’m sixty nine and I feel pretty fine, if I must say so myself.

I’m grateful to be alive and well and not in an urn on a shelf.

No more angries, or ickies, no orneries or pickies,

All those nasty emotions just gave me the sickies.

I’ve worked hard to grow up… not much raises my hackles.

But when trying to move, something inside me crackles.

“Oh ouchy! Oh crap!” I’ve been heard to exclaim.

But I’d rather have ouch than be totally lame.

So I’ll just keep on truckin’, as the freaks used to say.

And look forward to what comes with the following day.

Thank you.

Yes, I guess maybe someday I’ll have to face the possibility that I’m getting old. How can this be, though?? My brain still thinks I’m in my 30s… maybe younger. Oh but I’m starkly reminded of change when looking in the mirror for example. I bring my young brain around with me and then I step into the bathroom to pee (again), and I catch the image of some old fart looking back at me. “What the heck happened to you??” I think… sometimes out loud. Yeah, I’m starting to get old.

I had hair once, right on top my head and everything!! I’m convinced that there is some sort of follicle migration occurring while I sleep. I mean, I have more hair on my belly than I’ve ever had. And it grows well in my ears too!! And my chest!! Never had hair on my chest before. And as all these hair villages pop up on previously bald parts of my body, the hair on top of me head diminishes. Not sure this is fair treatment for a gentle person like me.

And remember the crackles I mentioned in the poem from earlier up there above these other words where there’s a poem that I never wrote before but I did just a few minutes ago that was not part of this run-on sentence but it is now?? Well sheesh, I can hardly move any part of my body without some sort of Snap, Crackle, or Pop Rice Crispies, part of this nutritious breakfast!! Actually I don’t know how anyone can fool themselves into thinking that Rice Crispies have ever really provided much nutrition. But the commercials were fun now weren’t they?

I can’t complain really, even though I do. That’s a privilege of getting older, right? Old people complain about everything. Jeez I don’t wanna get old like that. But seriously folks, life is very good and I’m truly grateful. You’ve probably heard the old saying, or some version of it: “Getting old is not for cowards.” Well even though I’m a wuss I’ll do my best to age gracefully. I really am lucky… I can do most anything I could do when I was younger. Just takes longer sometimes… and sometimes it hurts.

But really… I feel fine!!