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