Blog #133

Trader Joe’s Mandarin Orange Chicken.   It’s the best.  It’s rice and chicken pieces with a perfect consistency.  Here’s what you do: take the frozen bag out of the freezer, knead it around in your hands until the consistency is fairly even.  Then place it on your wounded hip.  They recommended bags of frozen peas, but I don’t like peas.  This stuff is perfect.  And it tastes great too.

Recovering from an illness or operation is a full-time job.  I don’t know how young people, with all their family and work obligations, manage it.  Of course, they’re young, and I guess that allows them to recover faster, but for me, a member of the not-so-young generation, my recovery schedule keeps me busier than Joe Biden’s damage-control team.  There are pills I have to take and exercises I have to do and breathing out of some see-through spider contraption and – oops – it’s time for the frozen Mandarin Chicken bag on my leg.  Don’t bend this way, don’t lift that way, take a walk!  Raise your toes above your nose, practice the stairs, take a walk!  Take the Tylenol, take some Benefiber, take a walk!  It barely gives me enough time to talk to you.

And then there’s the food.  Carol, in her unstoppable effort to minister to my every desire, wants to make me lunch.  I won’t put up with that.  Men and women have a different approach to food.  Take the peanut butter and jelly classic.  A woman takes an artisan, whole wheat slice, centers it on a small plate, spreads a thin layer of peanut butter over it, whispers the essence of jelly on top and covers it with a matching slice of bread.  Then she cuts the crust off and places two baby carrots on the plate.

A man takes bread – any kind of damn bread, Ritz cracker or leftover hotdog bun – something that will hold the glops of peanut butter and globules of jelly he dumps on it, then throws it on a big plate with some BBQ potato chips.  Does anybody see a difference here?  And what is the thing about cutting off the crust?  Was Eve scared by a crust of bread?  Does every woman carry a genetic imperative to slice off the crust of her man’s PB&J as if it were his foreskin?  Girls, if you want to make the guy happy, let him make his own PB&J, clean up the big mess he’ll make doing it and lose the baby carrots.

Fall has somehow crept upon us while we weren’t watching.  I’m looking forward to it.  Fall is my favorite season -- mid 70s, low humidity, wisps of clouds punctuating an otherwise blue sky.  Hi there, and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling good and appropriately Autumnal. 

I have more hospital stuff to talk about.  I seem to have an unlimited supply of things to talk about.  Have you read Catch-22?  There’s a scene in a hospital ward where one of the patients is lying in a full-body cast with only one hole, where the mouth is.  He never speaks or moves.  There is a bag of fluids dripping into him and a bag of urine dripping out.  Twice a day, the nurse comes and exchanges the bags for one another.  That’s kind of how I felt in the hospital.  Fluids were dripping in and I was playing Tinkle-Tinkle Little Star at the other end.

Thankfully, I was only there one night.  And thankfully, I did not have a roommate.  Being the misanthropic introvert that I am, I don’t play well with other children.  Even when I fly on airplanes, I hate having someone other than Carol next to me.  I mean, they might want to do unspeakable things to me – like talk!

Whenever I travel I find

I don’t like the talkative kind

I’d much rather ride

In comfort beside

A person who’s deaf, dumb and blind.

So now I’m at home recovering, and my wife has devised a system so that I can call her when I need help.  Under normal circumstances, it would be her summoning me.  Order me a library book, I need something from eBay, my pills are ready at the pharmacy, how many ounces in a half-cup.  And even though I am three rooms away, I can always discern her voice from among the continuous milieu of other voices she is surrounded with – Joy Behar, Terry Crews, Alex Trebek.  She is never without her blasting television.  I hear her speak my name and dutifully humble myself to her wishes.  Such a good boy!

But now it’s my turn.  She couldn’t possibly hear my voice over her CNN anchor, so she has given me a bell.  A bell!  I have a bell!  It’s the kind those Swiss people used to ring on the Ed Sullivan Show.  Grab it by the handle and shake it and – OMG, here comes Hurricane Carol whooshing down the hall to satisfy my beck and my call.  Such a good girl! This, my friends, is power!  This is the power of a Sultan to call his harem, the power of a shepherd to gather his flock, the power of a dictator to summon a crowd.  I love it!  I use my bell at least twice a day to summon my speedy Florence Nightingale even though I don’t need her.  Please don’t tell her how good I’m feeling.  I want to milk this for a couple of more days.

Speaking of milk, I haven’t been to my McDonald’s in a long, long while.  Yes, it’s my McDonald’s!  I’ve gone there every morning for years and it’s mine.  My daughter went there to get me a Diet Coke, and she bought herself a carton of milk.  My picture was on it.

Carol has just informed me that this taking-care-of-me crap is getting old.  She has repossessed my bell (she calls it busting my bells) and informed me that we are now getting back to our usual routine – keeping her happy.  Maybe I can use my bell to summon you back here next week.  Until then, stay well and count your blessings and read Catch-22.  Can you remember all that?  See you next week.  I miss my bell.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #132

St. Louis is getting a professional soccer team.  The city is excited, but in a quandary.  What should we name the new team?  In 2017, the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, decided a group could not be penalized on the grounds that its name was offensive.  The case involved an Asian-American band who called themselves The Slants.  I did not make that up.

But, even so, today’s PC mania makes it almost impossible to find an acceptable name, and most existing teams are under pressure to change theirs.  The Angels, the Saints and the Cardinals are too religious.  The Redskins, the Indians and the Chiefs are offensive to Native Americans.  (Do we still have Native Americans?)  And some team names are just too scary, like the Lions and Tigers and Bears. Oh my!  The Seahawks are an endangered species, and the Pistons?  Do we even need to talk about carbon pollution?  I think we have reached the sad circumstance where any conceivable name is objectionable to someone.

We must have a name to play ball

But we seem to have hit a brick wall

Each name we select

Is so incorrect

We’ll call ourselves NOTHING AT ALL.

I like it, the St. Louis Nothing-At-All.  It’s catchy.  Hi there, and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling catchy today as well as healthy, wealthy and wise.  I bet you can’t wait to hear all about my surgery.  Not yet.  Be patient.  A few news items first.

·        Item:  Local schools were closed today, following a report of a cow fart in the area.  What a world!

·        Item:  Your memory’s going.

·         Item:  Google Maps has completed a planet-wide study and have determined that almost everything is somewhere else.

·         Item:  Your memory’s going.

Oh, and I have to tell you about a restaurant I went to a few weeks ago.  I like fish.  Tilapia, sea bass, halibut, salmon – I like all of those.  But under the heading of Seafood, was “Fillet of John Dory with peppered grapes”.  First of all, peppered grapes?  That just sounded nasty.  And who is, or should I say was, John Dory?  Are they actually serving people on the menu?  Is this Bernie’s way of reducing the population?  Am I going to find Rack of Rush and Trump Tartare?  I’ve heard there’s an Italian place in Chicago that serves the remains of Mafia gangsters.  It’s called Red Mobster.

I was just trying to make you chuckle a bit before getting to the horror, bleeding, gore and suffering that is about to come.  Are you ready?  Wait, I haven’t told you about the dessert.  It was a chocolate something with tobacco.  Now I’m totally serious here about the John Dory and the peppered grapes and the chocolate something with tobacco.  Tobacco?  In my dessert?  It was a tough decision – the Tobacco Chip Cookies, the Carcinogenic Custard or the Roundup Sorbet.

I ordered a piece of cake, which is exactly what my operation was – a piece of cake. Doctor Hip was wonderful.  Well, he was in the top 49% of his class!  I say that in jest because I read some snide comment that said, “49 % of doctors were in the bottom half of their class.”  Now, what manner of mathematical moron, what nature of numerical numbskull, what denizen of the depths of digital dumbness thinks that the bottom half is 49%?  If the bottom half is 49%, then the top half is 49% and that adds up to 98%.  Where are the other 2% of the class, in Congress?

I got to the hospital last Friday at 5:15 in the morning. I did not get a general anesthetic, just an epidural, so when I awoke, I was not groggy or nauseous or constipated.  Within a few hours I was walking the halls with a walker and very little pain.  But here’s the best news – they had a Special Jewish Recovery Dinner, Chicken Soup and Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches.  Now that was yummy.

Carol was at the hospital when they explained all the steps included in my recovery, so we all had to pay attention.  But learning how to take care of me wasn’t challenging enough to occupy all the tentacles of her multi-faceted anatomy.  So, in between learning how to make Michael comfortable and learning about Michael’s exercises – she bought some tops on-line from Nordstrom’s.  One was a Donna Intensive Karan and one an Anesthesia Klein.  She still managed to memorize everything I needed to “render Hell more tolerable” when I got home.  That quote was from Paradise Lost.  It’s amazing how much you think of Hell, Satan and torture when a doctor is slicing into your body.

Maybe Carol missed a little of the instructions because the first time she handed me my walker, she gave it to me backwards.  When she turned it around, she rammed it into my knee.  Other than that, she waits on me hip and foot and is the best caregiver -- and the fastest, and the cutest.  In summary, the doctor was great, the food was great and I’m recovering like a champ.  No complaints.  Well, maybe a couple of little ones:

• ·        Cold.  If you’re worried about the glaciers melting, take them to an operating room.
• ·        I’m not a big fan of hospital gowns.  I really do not like when my rear is clear, my butt isn’t shut, my derriere is in the air and my caboose is loose.  You get the picture.  Sorry!
• ·       And catheters, God?  Seriously?   Please, the next time You’re in a creative mood, try making a world without catheters, mosquitoes, kale and Presidential Debates.  You’ll thank me for that.  But keep the Cherry Jell-O.  One of Your best things.

I received so many messages from you wishing me good luck on my operation. Thank you.  Aren’t you special! You are a loyal, if easily pleased, group, and I have truly appreciated your warmth and concern.  I guess if you’re going to be that nice to me, I’ll have to keep doing this, so stay well and count your blessings.  One of my blessings has been the opportunity to visit with you every week.  Thanks, and come back next Thursday.  I’ll think of something to say.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #131

Well, the Democrats are steadily sliding down the slippery slope of silliness.  In recent days, they have vowed, if elected, to eliminate cows, straws and carbon.  They want to eliminate cows because, well, cows fart and besides it’s cruel to eat them.  They want to eliminate straws because, well, just because.  I’m not sure they know.  The Zoo does not allow straws because we have lost a couple of animals who have choked on straws that have blown into their habitat.  I agree with them on that one.  And now, Bernie Sanders wants to eliminate people.  The world is overpopulated, he says, and we have to reduce the population because, well, people eat cows and the more people we have, the more cows we have and cows fart.  I wonder which people Bernie plans to eliminate.

In order to save me and you

There are several things we must do

We need to make vows

To kill all the cows

And all the Republicans too.

And what are they going to do with all the straws they make illegal?  I have a suggestion.  Send them all to Washington, D.C.  Most of the people there suck anyway. 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling bouncy and happy.  I’m feeling a little nervous actually.  Tomorrow, 5:15 am, is my hip operation.  Oh, my God!  Tomorrow is my hip operation!  I feel like a turkey in November.  I’m sure it will be all right and I’ll have lots of stories to tell you.  But it’s Friday, the 13^th, and I must admit I’m as nervous as Sean Spicer on the first night of Dancing with the Stars.  I’m sure it will be all right.  Did I say that already?  Let’s talk about something else.  I’m a little nervous.

I’ve got my bag packed for the hospital – jammies, a book, reading glasses, a Teddy Bear, pens and paper so I can make notes for writing to you.  I’ve done all my exercises, washed my skin so it’s cleaner than a Joel Osteen Sermon, and I’m as ready as I could be.  But I’m a little nervous.

And a little depressed.  Did you know that you really don’t sound like you think you sound?  That’s right!  The melodious voice that you thought was yours is actually the result of your reedy, thin voice bouncing around inside your own skull.  In truth, I probably sound like Pee Wee Herman to all of you.  And I guess I don’t look like I think I look.  And most people don’t have the high opinion of me that I think they should.  And most people wouldn’t vote for me and I’d probably be the first to get booted off America’s Got Talent.  Ok, this is not cheering me up.  

Carol and I went to a party over the Labor Day weekend.  Forty people, my age, big room, buffet.  I looked around and noticed that all the men – bald or grey, sitting down – were talking about cars, sports and the stock market.  All the girls were on the other side of the room – mostly blond, short, standing, talking about whatever girls talk about.  It reminded me of a junior-high-school dance.

At every party there are two kinds of people – those who want to go home and those who don’t.  The trouble is, they are usually married to each other.  Ann Landers

And what do all these girls talk about when they gather in their noisy little flock?   Michelangelo?  No, they Gossip!  I recently read a scientific article that claims gossiping is an essential element of our social fabric.  Chimpanzees gossip, the article claims, in order to learn which members of the troop are trustworthy, friendly or social-climbing.  Isn’t that what you women are doing?  So keep it up, all you little monkeys, and try not to leave banana skins on the floor.  Yes, I know chimpanzees are not monkeys, but if I called my wife an ape. I’d need both hips and my tongue replaced.

I hate sitting around with the guys talking about cars.  My car is nine years old.  It runs great and never gives me problems.  I’m comfortable in it and know how to work most of it.  But many of my friends must not like their cars.  They get a new one every time Barbra Streisand goes on a Farewell Tour.  Every year or two they show up in a shiny new number that has dozens of new features that they will never learn how to work before they trade it in for a new one.  I was in one the other day with my friend, and he didn’t know how to shift from Drive to Reverse, couldn’t get the Blue Tooth to work and could not manage to get the temperature of the right side of the car within 30 degrees of the left side of the car.  And, the only thing he could get on the radio was C’mon A My House by Rosemary Clooney.  But the console screen is so advanced, it can warn you in a loud and imperious manner whenever you get within a hundred yards of another vehicle, a plastic straw or a MAGA hat.  I hope my car and I last forever, but if it goes before me, I’m getting another nine-year-old model.

I’m running out of time here.  I have to swab my nose until it has fewer germs than Daddy Warbucks has hair.  Then I have to wash my skin with anti-bacterial soap until I’m cleaner than Kirstie Alley’s dessert plate.  Did I tell you I was a little nervous? 

I often get a bit maudlin on Wednesday nights when I say goodbye to you.  I work on the blog, off and on, for an entire week – time, energy, emotions, self-censorship, self-doubt.  And then all of it becomes scrap paper on Thursday morning and I have to start all over.  But I won’t let that stop me from telling you to stay well and count your blessings.  I’ll have plenty of time to write to you next week as I convalesce.  I’m pretty sure #132 will be filled with large helpings of moaning, crying and self-pity.  I wouldn’t even bother to read it if I were you.  See you then.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #130

Do you belong to Costco?  What do you buy there?  We just joined last week and today Carol and I went shopping.  I needed Cheerios, but the smallest box they had would feed the Turkish Army for a month.  Then I went for some Jif peanut butter, but each jar was the size of my spare tire and I had to buy two of them.   Dr. Heart warned me long ago not to lift luggage, grandchildren or the occasional goat.  He failed to mention shopping at Costco.

And, by the way, I didn’t think the prices were so great.  Plus, I had to pay $60 just for the privilege of shopping for the oversized, overpriced stuff that you’ll never finish and which they won’t put in a bag for you.  What am I missing?  I guess if you have a family of 90 and you bring them all with you to schlep the hippo-sized packages out to your pickup – well, I guess it makes sense.  But if you’re just two old people who do not want to buy an apple pie the size of the Hindenburg, I don’t get it.

But we did get some free samples of bread and candy.  My daughter used to belong to Costco and I would go with her on Saturdays.  She would shop while I packed the three little kids (aged 4,6 and 8) into one shopping cart and pushed them from one sample food vendor to another.  They would taste everything, then direct me back for seconds and thirds to the stuff they liked.  Great fun, lots of laughs, lots of free food and Mom got to shop alone.

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling chipper today and not gloomy.  It’s so much easier to be gloomy than it is to be cheerful, isn’t in?  I mean, just look around.  The world out there is full of semi-automatic weapons, opioids, car-jackers, hurricanes, politicians.  But, hey, get over that gloominess.  Count your blessings.  (I’ve heard that somewhere.)  Look what you’ve got!  You live in America*, you’ve got people who love you and you get Limerick Oyster every week to lift your spirits and tickle your brain.  I always knew you liked to have your brain tickled.  So cheer up, let’s see what we can tickle you with today.

*Technically, not all of you live in the United States.  Kitty lives in Mexico and there may be others.  Hi, Kitty.

Ok, back to brain-tickling.  Are you triskaidekaphobic?  That’s the over-educated Harvard word for a person who is afraid of the number thirteen.  My grandfather would not sit at a table of 13 people.  He would make someone move.  Seriously!  I bring that up because I just realized my hip surgery is on Friday, the 13^th.  But I’m not triskaidekaphobic.  Am I?  I don’t think I am.  Do you think it will be all right?  Maybe I should postpone it.

I am weird, and I know it.  But that’s me.  Learn it and love it.  And I must have a weirdness detector in my brain, because I hear voices that tell me strange things.  For instance, the World Wildlife Fund has reported that one quarter of the salmon swimming in Norwegian waters are not wild, but escaped from salmon farms.  As soon as I heard that, one of those weird voices popped up in my head.  It was the voice of an escaped Norwegian Salmon. What, you don’t think we’re wild?  We’re swimming in the ocean!  How much more wild can you get?  When you raise bald eagles and put them back into the wild, they’re wild.  If you think we’re not wild, come try to catch us if you can.  And eat more tuna.

Or eat synthetic meat.  What, I hear your mouth-watering slobber!  Synthetic meat?  That’s right:

"Several Israeli start-ups have joined a handful of companies around the globe trying to develop lab-grown meat, something they see as a solution to the needs of the world’s ever-growing population."

The meat is made by using stem cells to grow animal muscle tissue in the lab, a process that eliminates animal cruelty and cow farts.  Have you been thinking of cow farts lately?  What kind of person sits around thinking about cow farts?  I wonder if vegetarians will try this new stuff.  It’s not actually from animals.

I think I should try these new dishes

They might even be quite delicious

With chicken and lamb

That’s bogus and sham

And steak that’s completely fictitious.

Yummy!  They already have brand names ready to go.  Look for these in your supermarket:

          Sham Lamb          Fake Steak

          Bogus Burgers     Fictitious Dishes

          Phony Baloney     Pseudo Food-O

Did I mention I was weird?  Did I mention it was Labor Day this week?  Labor Day is the day all my friends (who do not work) get together and gorge on hotdogs and hamburgers, causing the people who do work to work even harder to raise and slaughter animals and prepare and package the meats we shouldn’t eat at our age.  I hope you had a good one.  Maybe next year we’ll be eating Shamburgers and Not-Dogs.

And speaking of hurricanes.  (I know that was a few paragraphs ago.  You haven’t forgotten already, have you?)   Hurricane Dorian is, as I write, bearing down on Florida.  What kind of name is Dorian?  Is that a hurricane or a himicane?  Maybe we should just call them all themicanes.  Anyway, we just got a call from my Brother-in-law and Sister-in-law, the ones we visit in West Palm Beach every February.  They were planning to visit us on Thursday this week, but they’ve decided to come four days early to avoid the themicane.  It’s fine.  They are lovely people and we enjoy their company.  No problem, but we have to reschedule a few things.  Maybe I’ll move my Emu-Riding session back a few days and reschedule my Aztec Poetry Class.  I’m very busy. 

Wait, Dorian has moved north and now my in-laws are not coming four days early.  I guess we can return the 92-lb jar of cashews we bought at Costco.  Oops, I’d better go.  My Underwater Pottery Class starts in fifteen minutes.  Stay well, count your blessings and be careful.  See you next week, the day before my surgery.  Did I mention it was Friday, the 13^th?  Maybe I should postpone it?

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com