Blog #30
See you next week. Stay well.
Wait, that’s what I say at the end
of the blog, not the beginning. I’m so
confused. I’m turned upside down, and
it’s all because of my grocery store. I
always go in the entrance on the right, near the produce. I start at bananas and end with bread and
that’s the way it’s been for thousands of years. It all started because that’s the way King
Tut shopped 3,350 years ago at the local Yummy Mummy. Well, Mrs. Tut probably did the shopping. Her name was Ankhesenamun.
He called her Cupcake. Anyway,
Ankhe would start with bananas and work her way right to left and we’ve all
been doing that for millennia. But today
they were doing some construction and the right-side entrance was closed. I had to enter on the left side. Well, you can imagine my disorientation. I felt like an American trying to drive in
London. I felt like a breech baby. I felt like the world was a tuxedo and I was
a pair of brown shoes. (Thank you,
George Gobel.) So, did I adapt? Did I improvise? Did I overcome? No, I walked like an Egyptian down the length
of the store and started at bananas. You
would have done the same.
Hi there and welcome back. I hope you’re happy and well. Let’s get started. What is all this hullaballoo about
Russia? Who cares what they hacked
into? And who cares if X, Y and Z colluded with Й, Щ and Э? I don’t get
it. I’ve been to Russia and they have
nothing to offer but a bunch of palaces built by cruel and horrible despots who
killed their own people and stole all their money. As I left Russia, I turned around, looked at
their sterile, ugly and decrepit apartment blocks and their sullen, overdressed
and impolite border officials and told them how I felt.
I’ve
read about all of your Czars
I’ve
tasted your strange caviars
I’ve
taken your tours
And
I’ve seen what is yours
And
I really prefer what is ours.
Take that, Vladimir!
Yesterday I woke up feeling crummy (or is it crumby?). The only reason I didn’t go to a doctor is
that I didn’t know which one to go to.
Everything hurt – my back, my stomach, my side, my heart, my lungs, my
ankle, my fingernails. I was going to go
to Dr. Primary and tell him I had dizziness, weakness, shortness of breath,
chest pains, back pains, side pains and I needed a haircut – but the man is
only a doctor, not a prophet. So I
figured I’d wait until my variety of symptoms localized itself a bit, but today
I woke up feeling better. How about
that? Because I was patient, I wasn’t a
patient.
I get a physical exam every year with Dr. Primary, and
of course they take my blood pressure. Wouldn’t it be great if Carol and I
could just average our blood pressure? Can
you guess which one of us has high versus low pressure? Isn’t it obvious? Carol runs on so much energy, we used to call
her Ethel, and I am so passive that last week I was reading at the library and
somebody put lilies in my lap. After the
blood pressure, the nurse always gives me some kind of cognitive test. What day is it? Who’s the President? Who’s your Daddy? Who’s the leader of the club that’s made for
you and me? Then she asks me to
write any sentence, and I always write, “I hate needles!” Then she asks me to memorize three words. The first time she did that, the words were –
apple, penny, table. Ok, I passed. A year later I was back and she was back and
the questions were the same. When she
said, “I have three words for you to memorize, I immediately said, “You
mean apple, penny, table?” She
looked at me, then looked at her paper and said, “I guess you pass.” I’ve been wondering a little about your cognitive ability, so I
want you to remember Apple-Penny-Table. Can you do it? I’ll ask you again next week.
And speaking of cognitive tests, can you say 60 words in 60 seconds without ever repeating a
word twice or using a word that has the letter “a”? Ready? Go!
Hurricane Irma was
disastrous, and I hope you and all the people you know came through it unharmed. It was horrible, treacherous and exhausting –
and so was the CNN coverage. For days we
heard every news-anchor screaming: “Leave
Florida, get away, don’t play games – this is the worst storm ever in the
history of the Earth and you will die.
Do not go outside, you will die.
Do not open a window, you will die.
Anyone who goes outside is stupid, crazy and suicidal. Now to Chris Cuomo who is standing in the
middle of the street with 200 mph winds hurling tree trunks at his face. Chris, how’s it going out there?”
The Zoo has a new attraction that is exotic,
attractive, harmless-looking and instantly poisonous. No, it’s not a venomous desert scorpion from
the Insectarium or an African black mamba from the Herpetarium. It’s much more sinister and deadly: a Deep-Fried Twinkie Sundae. Why don’t they just have a booth with a sign
that says: For $4.95, we will shoot you. A lady came in today with a child in a
wheelchair. She asked me, “Is
there a particular day that the Zoo has for special-needs children.” “Every day,” I replied. “We have many special-needs people every day,
and everyone is accommodating. I’m sure
there will not be a problem.” We
do have many, many special-needs of all ages every day at the Zoo. I have never seen a problem or any response
that was anything other than helpful.
It’s kind of a nice place.
We have two sinks in our bathroom, and when we moved
in, after some weeks of intensive study and energetic debate, we decided that Carol
should have one and I should have one.
Each is of pearly white porcelain.
I have noticed however that mine is sometimes marked with little black
pieces of something or other. Here’s
what I think is the cause. Carol likes
her sink to be clean, so whenever she has to use eye-liner or eye-shadow or
whatever eye-schmutz she uses, she moves over to my sink and gets it dirty instead of hers. Her sink is as white and brilliant as Beyoncé’s
teeth, whereas mine looks like the nesting place of a family of Canadian
geese. It’s fine; her eyes look great.
Ok, the sixty words in sixty
seconds – just count from one to sixty.
Each word is different and none contains an “a”. That’s about it for this
week. Stay well and stay away from the Deep-Fried
Twinkie Sundae. And keep your sink
clean. See you next week.
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