Blog # 1

“What the Heck is this?” I hear you cry.  You probably said “What the Hell is this?” but I didn’t want use a bad word and offend your tender sensibilities in the first sentence, so I waited until the second sentence.  Consider yourself warned.  So what is this?  It’s just me talking to you.  They call it a Blog, and by “they”, I mean the entire 90% of the world that is younger than me.  Ok, I am a 71-year-old guy with a wife, three daughters and eight grandchildren.  That’s all you get to know right now.  As we wander through this blogging thing together (if we wander through this blogging thing together) we’ll get to know each other better.

Did I mention I have three daughters?  You know how dads are with their little girls, and when they were young, Valentine’s day was my special thing.  Candy and sweets and cookies for my girls.  We all ignored the “They don’t need that crap” from their mother and everybody was happy.  Then they grew up and went to college and I had to mail all the sweeties to their dorms or apartments.  When my youngest was a sophomore at Indiana, my wife told me that they all had secretly begged her to make Dad stop sending them that fattening stuff every February.  So I stopped.  On February 15^th I got three phone calls.  “Where’s my candy, you disloyal old coot?  Don’t you love me anymore?”  So I wrote a letter of apology and sent a copy to each daughter begging forgiveness.  I kind of liked writing the letter, so I wrote another the next week and now have done so every week for twenty years.  Twenty years – a thousand letters.  They must like them because now they, and mostly my dear wife, have been pushing me to write a blog.  So this is it.

I live in Missouri, but I write you today from North Carolina where my oldest lives with her husband and three kids (15, 14 and 11).  My daughter, Jennifer, eats kale.  She loves kale.  She makes salads of it and fries it in olive oil for a snack and tries to sneak it into my food.  That’s why I like to go out for dinner.  My position is that if mankind has not discovered a food in its first 10,000 years, I’m not interested.  I’m not excited about reinventing the wheel, or the salad for that matter.  Any bowl filled with something that looks like a divot is not for me.  Maybe for Trigger, but not for me.  They tried kale once before a couple of hundred years ago during the French Revolution and it didn’t work.  You know, of course, that Marie Antoinette actually said, “Let ‘em eat kale!”

                        The peasants were starving for bread

                        When Marie Antoinette rudely said,

                        “I hate when they wail

                        “Just let ‘em eat kale.”

                        And that’s when they chopped off her head.

That was a limerick.  I am not famous for much, but I do kind of write funny songs and poems for friends’ anniversaries and 75^th birthday parties.  Remember those thousand letters I mentioned?  (If you don’t, stop right here.  Your attention span is that of a shitszu.)  For every one of those thousand or so letters, I wrote a limerick.  Did you notice the name of this blog?  Limerick Oyster?  Pay attention – you had to be expecting something.

When I finally submitted to this blogging thing, I of course had no idea how, what or where?  So I asked my 14-year-old granddaughter, Zoey, and she helped.  Isn’t that how it always is when one of the following happens?

·        My printer won’t work

·        I lost my emails

·        The ringer won’t ring

·        Why don’t I have emojis?

·        What is an emoji?

·        It won’t let me delete my notes

·        I lost my notes

Just call the grandchild that actually talks to you and promise something very expensive or fattening in exchange for information that every 6-year-old knows.  Thank you, Zoey and thank you Abby (my youngest daughter) for polishing it up.  All this technology is daunting and depressing.  I know nothing.  I mean I have a smart phone and can text and take a picture (and even emoji), but other than that – nada!  I guess now I can blog.  Who knew?  One of the new techy trends is Echo.  That’s Amazon’s little tubular machine that answers your questions and follows your orders.  “Alexa, what time is it?  Alexa, play James Taylor?”  Abby has one and my sister-in-law has one and even some of my friends. Now Amazon has a new version called Apesta which talks to you whether you like it or not.  Here’s a few of its programmed messages:

·        When you open the bedroom door in the morning:  Are you really going to wear that?  The mirror is to your left.

·        Every hour on the hour:  Stand up straight.

·        When opening the front door to leave:  The temperature is 58 degrees.  Put on another layer.

·        Apesta, where is the nearest Dairy Queen?  Don’t mumble.

·        Apesta, where is the nearest Dairy Queen?  I’m not telling you.  Have a carrot.

·        Apesta, call Bill.  He’s no good for you.  I found this number for a dating service.

·        Goodnight, Apesta; wake me at seven.  You only have 9,612 steps.  Walk to the kitchen and back three times.

I don’t think I’m going to buy one.  I don’t need it; I have my wife.  I’m leaving you a bad impression of my wife.  She is glorious, beautiful and sweet.  (“Did you get that, Honey?”)  But she can be pushy and controlling as well.  (“I love you, Cupcake.”)  I’ll tell you more about her next week; you’ll love her.  I do.

So that’s it.  We talked for a while; I wrote you a limerick; and, who knows, maybe you’ll come back and read next week’s version.  Hey, you’ve only got 999 more to go to catch up with my kids.  And no, I’m not sending you candy on Valentine’s Day.

As I was writing, my daughter just announced (I am not making this up) that she was giving the leftover broccoli quiche to the chickens.  Sure, they won’t eat the kale.

See you next week (I hope)

Michael