Blog #120

Get ready, world!  Next week is Carol’s Birthday, an extended celebratory fête lasting the length of a hockey season, during which she is taken to lunches, dinners, brunches and snacks by every woman, it seems, in North America.  There are so many cakes and candles that I believe it affects the global temperature. 

Each day if it’s sunny or storming

You can’t stop the long lines from forming

The candles and cakes

Why the heat that it makes

Explains why we have global warming.

I usually don’t comment on my limericks, but this one needs a discussion.  The limerick rhymes when I say it, but were my wife to read it aloud, it would sound different.  You see, she has a Midwestern accent which causes forming and farming to be pronounced the same.  And makes horse rhyme with farce and 40 sound like farty.  I know -- you say potato and I say potato, but it matters to the limerick scheme, so I’m attaching an alternate version for those of you who say, “Nobody puts Baby in a carner.”  Here it is:

I know that my dear wife is charming

But these parties are getting alarming

The candles and cakes

Why the heat that it makes

Explains why we have global warming.

Hi there and welcome back.  I have just realized that to people with St. Louis accents, the above makes no sense because, to them, storming, forming, charming and alarming all rhyme.  I give up. 

Earlier this evening, I had dinner with two of my grandkids at Qdoba.  I saw something new on the menu and decided to try it.  I had an Impossible Burrito.  That’s right, me, Mr. Beans Never, Spinach Seldom and Kale, Feh!  I had an Impossible Burrito.  As you know, the Impossible part is fake meat.  It’s totally vegetable matter that looks like hamburger (almost) and tastes like hamburger (nah).  But it was fine, mixed in with the rest of the stuff.  The biggest adjustment was mental.  I mean it looked like meat and tasted kind of like meat, but it was all plant.  What was I to think?  It was like eating Audrey Two.

Carol, the almost-birthday girl, is at this moment in the other room doing the Sudoku, reading a book and watching a talent show.  She watches them all – The X Factor, The Voice, Idol, Little Big Shots.  She doesn’t miss any of them, and now the library of talent shows is expanding rapidly.  She’s already started to tape two new ones.  The first pits licensed plumbers against each other to see how quickly they can diagnose and repair water leaks.  It’s called America’s Got Toilets.  I think it’s hosted by Elon Flush.  The other features a bunch of young Vietnamese women competing against each other and is called So You Think You Can Polish.

Last week, the Valedictorian of a San Diego high school included the following in her speech to the assembled class, faculty and administration:

To the teacher that was regularly intoxicated this year, thank you for using yourself to teach these students about the dangers of alcoholism. To my counselor, thank you for letting me fend for myself – you were always unavailable.

Ok, good for her, they deserved it, you go girl and all that other bullshit.  I know that you love and agree with everything I write (or maybe not), but this time, I expect you will not like what I’m about to say.  When did we decide to tolerate this kind of sanctimonious and arrogant rudeness from teenagers?  It was earlier this year that a group of pre-teens challenged Senator Dianne Feinstein to support the Green New Deal.  They were loud, disruptive and completely rude.  Twelve-year-olds!

I know all your grandchildren are geniuses.  Mine too.  It’s like Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average.  And maybe they’re smarter than you.  And maybe they’re smarter than me.  And maybe they’re even smarter than a United States Senator with thirty years’ experience in public service.  Even so, who taught them that rudeness plus disrespect is the recipe for future success?  So okay, Smarter-than-Me teenager, have you ever had a job?  Have you ever lost a job?  Have you ever raised a family?  Have you ever sat in a hospital room with your sick child?  Have you ever worried about paying a mortgage?  Your parents have!  Maybe there’s still something out there for you to learn. 

You still there?  Well I’m not.  I’m in South Carolina, stopped for the night at a Red Roof.  Nothing under it, just the roof.  I drove about eleven hours in Abby’s van with three grandkids watching videos in the back, my son-in law in the middle row working on his computer, Carol next to him reading a book and Abby (Daughter #3) in the shot-gun.  Abby reads the crossword clues and between us, we killed three NY Times Sunday puzzles.  Plus, she’s the navigator.  She uses “Ways” or something and she sometimes changes the navigating voice.  She had Buzz Lightyear for a while, but he kept calling me Cowboy and that was annoying.  Take a right turn, Cowboy.  Annoying.  Then she switched to Cookie Monster.  Really.  But twice he told me, “Take next exit, buy me cookie at Quik Shop.”  I asked her if she could get Carol’s voice giving me directions on the phone.  She somehow got it to work, but the first thing the Carol-Voice said was, “Are you lost yet, Putz?  It’s a good thing I’m here or you’d wind up in Ethiopia.  Get into the other lane.  And put your foot on it.  I don’t have all day.  And no, you cannot take a potty stop.  I’ll let you know when you need to pee.  And turn the fan off. I’m cold.” 

Amazing.  It sounded just like her.  Oops, there’s that voice again:  That’s enough.  I’m bored.  Tell these people who think you’re funny to stay well and count their blessings and get this over with.  And tell them if they want some real fun, go to youtube.com and search for carol fox limerick.  Amazing.  It sounds just like her. Now tell them who you are and go to your room.

Yes Dear                        Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #119

Well, it's finally happened!  I knew it would come to this eventually.  Carol has become jealous of my blogging fame and, in a sad effort at piggy-backing on my verbal skills, has begun her own YouTube channel where she reads my latest blog, adding her own snarky little comments.  So, if you want to see the woman I’ve been married to for 52 years and her pitiful display of female self-aggrandizement, go to Limerick Oyster 117 on YouTube and subscribe or sign up or whatever.  She looks cute.

I have four grandsons, so I know what a bris is.  A bris is a Jewish religious male circumcision ceremony performed by a circumciser called a mohel (pronounced moil) on the eighth day of the infant’s life.  Got that right out of Google.  And what, I hear you cry, does Google have to do with circumcisions?   Well, I believe google is the exact sound that comes from a weak-stomached Grandfather during the grandson’s bris.

You see, I had a bris when I was eight days old.  Luckily, I don’t remember most of it, but what I do remember are my exact thoughts upon seeing a strange person approaching me with a razor in his hand.  I was only a baby, but even then my thoughts rhymed.

I think I should go back inside

Where I never spit-up or cried

My God, there’s a mohel

I hope I’m a goil

Cause if I’m a boy I should hide.

I have no sons, only three wonderful daughters.  The first bris I witnessed close up was eighteen years ago when Zachary (Grandchild #1) was born.  There were about twenty family and friends in attendance, and, of course, the mohel.  I was assigned the duty of carrying the clueless little baby to the table.  Poor kid, he knew as little about what he was getting into as people who voted for Trump.  I held him down – me, the poster boy for Vasovagal Reaction -- trying to keep my eyes averted from my boy’s soon-to-be-reduced weenie and the instrument-wielding religious maniac bent on doing the deed.  And then it was over.  I survived, Zach survived, his mother survived, and everybody ate bagels.

Hi there and welcome back.  Now where else, I ask you, can you find someone willing to share such personal and lurid details with you.  Maybe the Jerry Springer Show.  I hope all you Dads had a Happy Father’s Day.  Almost 400 years ago, George Herbert wrote, “One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.”  One of my favorite sayings!

We had a lovely dinner at my daughter Abby’s house.  The Thursday before that, my wife asked me, “What would you like to eat for Father’s Day.”   As all you married men know, this was not a simple question.  In fact, it wasn’t a question at all, but an exercise in spousal manipulation.  You see, Carol had no interest in knowing what I wanted to eat for Father’s Day.  The purpose of her question was to maneuver me into choosing the food she wanted.  Here’s how it works:

C:  Honey, what do you want to eat for Father’s Day?  You get whatever you want.

M:  Well, I really don’t care.

C:  How about Chinese or barbecued hot dogs or a tossed salad with garlic bread?

See what she did there?  She narrowed my choices to three, one of which was hers.  Now she had a 33% chance of having me pick her favorite.  Then she could look like a loving heroine by saying, “Ok, that’s what we’ll have.  Just for you.”   I usually pick wrong.

M:  I like Chinese.

C:  You know, we just had Chinese two months ago, and I actually didn’t like mine.

M:  Chinese people eat it every day and there are a billion of them. Ok, hot dogs.

C:  Honey, I hate to see you eat something that’s bad for your heart.

Mission accomplished.  She controlled me like an astronaut docking a space module.  She gets what she wants for dinner and makes me believe she was doing it out of love for me.

A praying mantis is a thoughtful creature.  After copulation, the female mantis immediately eats her mate, saving him from decades of mental punishment.  Not being as fortunate as a male mantis, I have been through 52 years of this Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown routine, and this year, I refused to play.  So when she asked what I wanted for dinner, I just said, “I have no input and I’m not answering any questions.”  And anyway, who cares?  It’s only one meal.  It all comes out the same color in the morning.  Oops, that was some more Jerry Springer stuff.  Sorry.

I have to tell you this little story.  My local grandchildren got a hamster.  I love animals, but hamsters are not my favorite.  They bite.  Last night, Tyler, my 13-year-old Grandchild #4, was playing with the hamster when the little beast bit into his fingertip and hung on.  The cage is on the upstairs landing, and Tyler was playing with the miniature Godzilla on the carpet.  The bite hurt and Tyler shook his hand to get rid of the monster.  It didn’t work.  The hamster held on tighter than Kim Kardashian holding on to a spotlight.  Tyler flicked his wrist harder, and the hamster let go on the upswing.  The little furball flew into the air, over the railing and down all the way to the first floor.  Tyler was hysterical, inconsolable.  He had just caused the calamitous death of the poor little pet that he loved.  A hamster falling one story is the same as you falling off a 65-story building.  Except the hamster is built like a Twinkie.  It’s round and compact and covered with softness.  It hit the floor, looked around and crawled away.  He was easily retrieved and put back, unharmed, into his cage.  Tyler felt better.  I told him to throw the little Gremlin down the stairs again the next time it bit him.  It might teach him a lesson.

Ok, enough!  I mean, how much can you take?  But I’ll be back.  Remember now, if you want the truth, come back to me next week.  If you want to watch a bunch of bitter, feminine lies go to Limerick Oyster 117 on YouTube.  Did I tell you she looked cute?   Stay well, count your blessings.  I’m sure counting mine.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #118

I pick on my wife a lot in my blogs, especially last week, but this week I promise I’m not going to pick on her.  Last Tuesday was our 52^nd Anniversary.  Carol is a beautiful and special partner who has given me a spectacular family and a glorious 52 years.  She is the sunshine of my life! So, Honey, in honor of our anniversary, I won’t pick on you this week.

There, that was easier than buying a bunch of flowers, wasn’t it?  Seriously, Carol and I have had a wonderful marriage, although sometimes I feel like we have failed to share things equably.  For instance, we have, between us, two holes-in-one.  She has both.  And we have, between us, 112 wrinkles.  I have them all.

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well.  Let’s see what’s shakin’, bakin’ and quakin’ around here.  Last night, I settled into bed and put on a movie I had taped – The Miracle Worker about Helen Keller.  Ten minutes before the end, Carol reached for a box of tissues and I grabbed a handkerchief.  We knew what was coming, and we knew we couldn’t watch the last scene without crying.  We sobbed and bawled and carried on like babies.  It was great!

ITEM:  Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, received a salary from Amazon in 2018 of $86,000.  That seems low, doesn’t it?  He must have gotten some stock options or something in addition.

ITEM:  Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, just purchased a condo on Fifth Avenue in New York for $80 million.  See, I told you.

ITEM:  James Holzhauer, the Jeopardy guy, finally lost, and the ratings for the show have plummeted.  On his last day, the viewership was 13 million.  On the next day, the show was watched by a drunk sleeping at a bar in Scranton and two of the contestants’ mothers.

ITEM:  Last week the country celebrated the anniversary of D-Day, and I was thinking that I bet less than 10% of Americans know what the D in D-Day stands for.  I’ll tell you later.

ITEM:  In a public relations gesture, a resort in the Dominican Republic has offered special rates to anyone surviving the disastrous climbing season on Mt. Everest.  The offer includes free drinks from the mini-bar.

I just took a break to read my e-mails.  Each week I get a lot of e-mails from you, mostly complimentary.  Things like you’re very funny and I never knew you were that funny.  Dave Barry said, “Being funny, when it’s your job, is work.”  I suppose it is, but it’s fun.

Among my other e-mails, I get ads from all the places I shop.  Today I got one from eBay.  ANTI-AGING PRODUCTS, it said.  GET THEM WHILE THEY’RE HOT.   I think it should have said, GET THEM WHILE YOU’RE STILL WARM.

Are you manic-depressive?  😊 ☹  I am, a bit, but I notice the depressive side seems to win most days.  I don’t ever recall waking up and feeling so happy that I run around stuffing roses up my nose and helping some old ladies cross the street.  Take this morning, for instance.  I woke up and lay in bed taking inventory, making sure all my moving parts were still moving.  I finally got all my organ-systems working in a semi-coordinated fashion and was reasonably confident I could get out of bed and impersonate a functional human being.  At least long enough to find some old ladies to help me cross the street.

I’m like everybody else – on those days when my Moon is not in the Seventh House, I tend to bitch.  That’s really why I have you, you know.  I mean, who else can I complain to?  My wife?  It’s unsatisfying to complain to a woman who is reading a book, watching Jeopardy, playing Words With Friends and cooking all at the same time.  Oops, I promised not to pick on her.  My bad. Sorry, Honey!  And yes, she cooks.  And very well, I might add.

Anyway, I started this blog so I would have somebody to complain to.  Aren’t you lucky?  Suck it up!  Here goes:  

I’m limping around like a clown

I struggle to just get around

I’m getting so feeble

If I were a Weeble

I’d be the first one to fall down.

I am, however, not too feeble to drive 13½ hours for my grandson’s high-school graduation in North Carolina.  On the road, we stopped for lunch at – wait for it!  I know you all said McDonald’s, but you would all be wrong.  We stopped at Hardee’s.  What?  You’re a McDonald’s guy.  Yes, I know, but I just felt adventurous.  That’s sad, isn’t it.  The adventure in my life is eating at Hardee’s.  Not Sir Edmund Hillary climbing Mt. Everest, not Charles Darwin exploring the Galapagos, not Lewis and Clark reaching the Pacific Ocean.  Just Carol and Michael reaching a Hardee’s somewhere in Indiana.  Pathetic. 

And of course we listened to three hours of Dr. Laura, the radio psychologist.  Have you listened to her lately?  She has a new phone number:  1-800 BITCH.  I mean, she is the cruelest, most brutal woman on Earth.  These poor women call in wanting help with an emotional problem, and leave wanting an overdose of arsenic.  I think she’s caused more women to commit suicide than the Trump election.  She even has a catalog of Suicide Merchandise – guns, poisons, ropes.  They have a Family Special this week on nooses, two for the price of one, for when you and the spouse want to hang out together. 

Ok, the D in D-Day is the D in Day.  You see, in military-speak, D-Day means the day chosen for some major event.  They also use H-Hour to designate the time of the event.  I suppose they would use M-Minute as well.  Kind of disappointing, I know, but true.

Time to go.  But I’ll be back next week, so stay well, count your blessings and do something adventurous yourself.  Here’s a suggestion -- I just heard that a hole has been found in the wall of a nearby nudist camp.  I think you should look into it.  Don’t hurt yourself.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #117

Fifty-two years ago next week, the 11th of June, my wife and I were married and all our hopes, aspirations and dreams were combined into one – hers!  We made the normal vows – to love and to cherish (that was my vow), to honor and obey (I think that was mine too).  She must have made some vows, but I forget what they were.  I think she vowed to stay dry.  What I do remember vividly is the marriage bargain I insisted upon, that I would go with her to the Temple of her choice on the two highest Jewish holidays each year and that she would go with me once each year to the Circus.  Fifty-two years now, and the score is 104-0.  That’s right, she has never, not once, been to the circus with me.

They don’t do real circuses anymore with lion tamers and elephants, and I can’t argue with that.  The last circus I attended was in 2005.  I only had two grandchildren then, both in North Carolina, but when a friend said he was taking his grandkids to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus – The Greatest Show On Earth, I asked if I could join.  It was great!

They had a dog act, a pony act and some trained goats performing in the three rings at one time.  There were clowns, a magician, trapeze acts and beautiful white horses prancing and cavorting.  And all the while the Ringmaster, in black tie and tails, was announcing the acts in his microphone like the Are you ready to RUMBLLLLL guy.

I was the only adult there without a child or grandchild -- well, maybe one of the goats didn’t have a kid – so I spent the intermission eating hotdogs and cotton candy and buying cheap garbage to send to my two little grandbabies.  I was having so much fun!

The second half was even more exciting than the first, with motorcycles whizzing inside a huge globe and jugglers and, of course, lion tamers and elephants.  Everybody ate, everybody cheered, the children laughed and the elephants avoided stepping on anyone.  I still have the ticket stub.  November 20, 2005.  I sat in Row N, Seat 1. 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling spunky today.  I’m sorry to bore you with that little bit of circus nostalgia.  Actually, I think all you men out there enjoyed my memories of the circus, and all you girls are mad that I picked on Carol.  (I don’t care what age you are, you’re still girls to me.)  Actually, you should thank me for picking on my wife every Thursday.  If your husband reads the blog, then he will realize that his wife (that’s you) isn’t the only one who won’t go to the circus.  I can hear you now – Don’t yell at me, Carol does the same thing.

Should I do a limerick now?  I guess I should, Limerick Oyster and all, but I don’t feel like it this week.  How about if I tell you how to do it and you can write your own?  It’s really not that hard.  All you have to do is follow the rules:

A limerick’s not hard to do

Just five little lines and you’re through.

Line 3 and Line 4

Must rhyme, and what’s more,

Line 5 rhymes with Lines 1 and 2.

There, now that I’ve taught you how to do it, go for it.  The ball’s in your court, the pen in your hand, the brush on your palette, the song in your throat and the Brussels sprout in your mouth.  Take it away!  Thank goodness I don’t have to write one this week.

My granddaughter had a soccer tournament over the weekend.  Mrs. Nevergotothecircus and I were both in attendance at the last game, where Charley played well and the team won. The weather was perfect until 60 seconds after the game ended, when the skies threatened to open up with a biblical deluge.  Carol said, give me the car keys, and hightailed it out to the Ark like an impala fleeing a cheetah, leaving her limping husband to drown on the concrete path.  She made it to the Ark, although she had to kick a couple of Unicorns out of the way.  By the time I got there, I was as wet as Lloyd Bridges and she was as dry as a matzo.  I can hear you girls now – Don’t yell at me, Carol does the same thing.

A friend of mine is retiring.  “I’m afraid,” he told me, “that I won’t be able to fill up all the hours.  What am I going to do all day?”  Well, you’ve come to the right old man, I told him.  Here’s what you do:

·        First of all, you’re going to need more doctors.  You used to be able to get by with a Dr. Doctor, a Dr. Tooth and maybe a Dr. Eye.  But now you’re going to need a Dr. Heart, a Dr. Skin, a Dr. Back, a Dr. Hand, a Dr. Pain and a Dr. Asshole.  That’s the technical term for a proctologist, but can, on occasion, be used for other individual doctors as well.  Much of your week will be taken up finding, making appointments with and waiting for your doctors.

·        Part of your time will be occupied with filling up your weekly pill dispenser, both A.M. and P.M. sections, and with ordering refills from Canadian or Indian pharmaceutical companies so that you can save $32 a year.

·        A large portion of your time will be determining how you can access NETFLIX for free by leeching off your children’s subscription and then determining which buttons on which of your three remote devices will actually let you watch something.

·        You will spend a significant number of hours going to your grandchildren’s gymnastics tournaments and oboe recitals.  You must do that or they won’t teach you how to get NETFLIX.

·        By the time you have dealt will all that, it will be time to watch Jeopardy, take a nap and get to the early-bird special.

·        And each Thursday, you have to read Limerick Oyster.

Don’t you dare miss it.  Till then, stay well, stay busy and count your blessings.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com