Ohhh retirement!! Such a joy!! My stress level is much lower these days, although for some strange reason my calendar seems to fill up all too fast. Thought I’d be able to kick back and do whatever I want but no…. And it’s very OK. Certainly better than the before times while I was working. One fond memory: there I was, at work, in the industrial manufacturing stress pile that seemed to grow smellier with each passing hour, no plane, no parachute, and thinking about writing a run-on sentence, with no semi-colons but only commas, and probably grammatically incorrect; but that doesn’t bother me one little bit; oh wait, there are a couple of semi-colons back there.
One day at work, I was heating up my lunch in the nuking machine. My friend Jenise saw the vegetation in my Pyrex bowl and said, “what are you cooking today? Smells really good. ” I smiled and said, “yes, and today I have leaves, roots, and the flesh of a dead chicken.” I explained that I intended to consume asparagus, onions, Swiss chard, and some dead rotisserie chicken meat from Meijer, little sploosh of soy sauce, little floof of thyme. Mmmm-mmm yummy. After I finished the list of goodies, she said, “Oh, I would never eat that.”
At this point she ran screaming through the top floor window while her ’65 Mustang was in flames and all the propane tanks that were strapped to my safety shoes burst into an explosive conflagration causing the air to become very brightly orange but then black with smoke as the rest of the cars in the parking lot exploded one by one and the military came in full force to let the cat into the shower so she could drink off the floor while the Happy Friday Ken Guy wrote yet another run-on sentence with nary a comma or semi-colon to be found within the whole darned thing.
Our Beautiful Kitty, Nevvie (God rest her soul)… she loved to drink off the shower floor! We believe she was addicted to shower water. She lived to be 21 ½ years young and would broop and mee-roouu until one of us turned the shower on for just a bit. Then of course we had to let her know we were OK with her going in there to drink. It was a ritual you see. Shortly after she got her drink, the earth’s crust split open and large steel structures vaulted toward the sky while people were screaming and running for cover and toasters were flying sideways through the violent winds that were generated (of course) by the huge bats that arose from the bowels of the planet and OH MY GOD HERE COMES ANOTHER ONE get down and hide behind this big rock OH NO THE TREE MONSTERS ARE STEALING ALL THE ROCKS those dirty selfish stinkers they wish to protect themselves and who gives a flying mahookey about us, right, we should be grateful the trees are safe and there’s yet another run-on sentence with questionable (at best) grammatical structure.
OK. So, what have we learned from this week’s installment of “Goats On Parade?” Well boys and girls, we’ve learned that some guy who once worked at an explosion factory likes to eat leaves, roots, and dead rotisserie plastic button meat from Sneeb’s grocery in Moopah, Michigan. We could also possibly infer that the author of this week’s installment of “Radio Sandwich Dust Lanterns” is prone to writing run-on sentences. Also, a very likely possibility is that I, the author of this week’s “Happy Burger Filled Sock Drawer” very much enjoys nonsensical rants that have absolutely nothing to do with Stone Age Birthday Parties.
Therefore, I implore all of you: Please, if your job is stressful and ouchy, PLEASE remember that work is what you do for a living; but it does not necessarily have to define who you ARE. In my case, four egg sample, I was very grateful to have a job, but if I allowed the stress consume me I was no good to anyone at all (including myself). Hence, I would remind myself often of how blessed I am. And I still do that regularly. And I would find ways to help others smile at work. I was often known as the person who sent instant messages and / or e-mails to his peers with the following content as an example:
My dustflute sings much better than our dog’s frozen trumpet.
At times, back in the good old days (ha!) I would receive audio from someone’s mouth parts as they asked, “Hey Ken, did you have a stressful week at work?” And of course I would reply, “Does a chicken have lips? Is a frog watertight??” The answer to both of these questions was, of course, 37.
When I got home, I relieved some stress by pulling a few weeds and (unintentionally) eating a few bugs. It was truly constabulatory!!
Actually I still pull bugs and eat weeds. But hey, I actually grow nice veggies for eating too!! Gardening is my work now. And it’s very good for my soles!
Retirement has given me a bit more time to observe wildlife. I listen to the trees singing, and I love the sound of the wind rustling through the leaves of the birds. The following video shows the exact methods our friends in the forest work hard during autumn to prepare for winter. Please enlighten your friends after learning these amazing rituals.