Blog #105

Be it ever so humble.  Be it ever so cold and snowy and blustery, there’s no place like home.  We drove home straight from Florida.  Well, I couldn’t miss Senior Day at Walgreens, could I?  Eighteen and a half hours in the car during which the odometer went up 1,000 miles while the thermometer went down 75^o.  I was wiped out, as tired as a centipede’s pedicurist.  Is there such a thing as Highway Lag?  I wish I could have just clicked my little ruby slippers, but I had forgotten to pack them.  I like my ruby slippers.  They go with my Carmen Miranda fruit turban. 

Tomorrow is the Ides of March. “Beware the Ides of March,” Shakespeare wrote in his play Julius Caesar as a warning of impending doom.  And sure enough, Caesar was killed on March 15^th, the Ides.  Boy that Shakespeare sure knew what was what.  The Ides, according to the ancient Roman Calendar, was a day (either the 15^th or 13^th) which marked the middle of the month around which all events were calculated.  And that, my friends, is why we don’t meet a lot of Romans.  They’re too busy figuring out what day it is.

Can you believe the news?  The story is about Hollywood actresses (among others) spending huge sums of money to bribe admissions officials at Yale University (and others) to accept their otherwise undeserving children or grandchildren.  They’re in big trouble now.

In school you did nothing but fail                                  

So your folks bribed your way into Yale

But they say that was naughty

And now your Cum Laude

Is getting you nowhere but jail.

So I guess the kid’s Master’s Degree will be in Prison Management.  And you thought  that those rich Hollywood types all believed in leveling the playing field!  Yah, right!

I was trying, the other day, to watch a cable news program where a young woman was espousing a cogent and well-thought argument about something.  I cannot tell you what she was talking about because Carol and her friends were all talking heatedly on the subject of whether the woman’s lips were too plumped up.  Well, some things are important.

Why do we all instantly criticize everyone’s looks?  The President’s hair, the First Lady’s jacket, Charlize Theron’s hair, Emma Stone’s dress, the color of the Governor of Virginia’s makeup!  I don’t know how many times I have seen my wife watch a stunning athletic or musical performance by a woman and only have one comment – Didn’t she look in a mirror before she went out?  Or, if it’s a man – He must not be married.  As if her own husband cannot properly dress himself.  I hate it when she’s right.

We just spent a few days with a couple who bickered, but never fought.  He would criticize something she did, but then he’d say, “But I love you, my Sweetheart.”  Then she’d call him names more scandalous than John McEnroe ever called an umpire, but then she’d coo, “But you’re my precious husband?”  It seems to work for them.  I was determined to try it.

Now, my wife is not only super critical, she’s controlling.  She came home the other day, opened the refrigerator and said, “You ate a hard-boiled egg.”  She has a firm and up-to-date inventory of every edible morsel in the house, and I had no response but, “Call my attorney.  But Sweetie-Pie, you’re my own special Princess and the love of my life.”  I don’t think that worked.  Now she’s hidden the hard-boiled eggs.  She is, of course, the love of my life, and what keeps our relationship balanced and ordered is that she’s also the love of her life.

Congratulate me, my student loan was approved.  Do you get those phone calls?  My student loan was approved, my credit card is working fine, hearing aids are on sale and there’s a 90-year-old woman in Nigerian who wants to send me 3.5 million dollars.  How do they find me?  I must have an IGNORANT PATSY sign pasted to my forehead. 

I know the Ignorant Patsy sign must have been prominently displayed when we went to get new iPhones.  Two for the price of one!  How could you pass that up?  The catch (there’s always a catch) was that one of us had to change his number.  Notice I didn’t say “his or her” number.  Initially, I suggested that my wife should change her number.  She looked at me like Nurse Ratched looked at Jack Nicholson!  The likelihood of Carol volunteering to change her number was the same as Donald Trump and Maxine Waters doing the tango or R. Kelly guest-hosting Sesame Street.  So, there I was, the poor dumb schmuck with the Ignorant Patsy sign pasted firmly on his skull, agreeing to change his number.  I opened my list of contacts, prepared to go through them one by one, and then it hit me.  This is my Salman Rushdie moment, my chance to disconnect from the world and all the people in it, to join the Witness Protection Program and disappear.  But no, I couldn’t do it.  I have too much fun blabbing to you every week.

Do you remember a phone called the Princess Phone?  Well Carol’s new phone is an updated version, the iPrincess.  First of all, it turns into a mirror when she picks it up and says Mirror, Mirror.  It predicts the weather and likelihood of precipitation on every square foot of her daily itinerary.  And, it tells her that her hair looks nice every two hours.  Her Siri calls her Precious and has been instructed not to respond to my voice.  I’m used to that.

To those of you who are Irish; to those of you who are somehow green; to those of you who will gladly get plastered at the drop of a shamrock – Happy St. Patrick’s Day.  I myself have never liked green popcorn, green bagels, green beer, avocados or kale.

I have a box with cut-out newspaper headlines I thought were interesting.  This one (and it’s real) is from last August:  FOUR DEAD WHEN SKYDIVING PLANE CRASHES AT GEORGIA AIRPORT.  Why didn’t they jump out?  I guess they were too busy reading my blog.  Stay well, count your blessings and come back next week – unless you are skydiving.  If you are, stay away from the Space Needle and the Empire State Building.  Ouch!

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com