Blog #164

One afternoon this week, my daughter, three kids and a dog came to visit us.  They came into the entry lobby of our condo building and stood on one side of the glass partition while Carol and I were on the other side.  We hugged through the glass.  We got to talking about their new dog and our new cat and somehow the subject of a previous cat came up.  When my daughter had to put the cat down, she told the kids the cat went to live on a farm.  My granddaughter Charley said she didn’t find out the truth for several years.  I said, “Charley, if your Mom ever tells you that Poppy went to live on a farm, she’s lying.”  The kids were horrified I said that, but smiled anyway.

I often get asked how I come up with things to talk to you about.  It’s easy really.  I just keep my eyes and ears open for, as St. Louis TV sports reporter Zip Rzeppa used to say, the best, the worst and the weirdest.  This week I’m on a rant against some of the things I’ve observed.  Bear with me.

ITEM:  Washington University in St. Louis announced last week that it was going to furlough 1,300 workers at its hospitals because of losses.  Let’s do the math: 1,300 employees for three months at an average of $50,000 a year is a little over $16 million.  Wash. U. has an endowment of $8 billion, 500 times the $16 million amount.  When asked by a reporter why they couldn’t use some of that endowment to pay their workers, a spokesperson started talking about earmarks and special funds.  How many lawyers did it take to come up with that Happy Horseshit excuse?  Pay your damn employees.  What is the matter with you?  And, by the way, if you showed even a scintilla* of compassion for your employees, your alums would donate more money.

ITEM:  Disney is laying off 100,000 theme park employees.  More math: wait, I know you don’t do math.  But you’re not alone.  Four out of three people struggle with math.  Just carry the two and count your toes and trust me.  It’s a billion dollars to pay these 100,000 people for three months.  But Disney made over $12 billion in profits last year.  Pay your damn employees.  I’m beginning to sound like my Socialist grandson – pretty scary.

And who is Disney going to lay off from their theme parks?  The Seven Dwarfs?  I can hear them singing:

          Heave Ho, Heave Ho – it’s out of work we go!

And there’s more:

They’re going to layoff Snow White

I tell you it just isn’t right

They’re going to can

Our Poor Peter Pan

And repossess Tinkerbell’s light.

Message from Shakespeare:  I am ill at these numbers. (Hamlet).  That’s right, I’m not good at math either.  I’m still trying to figure out how a cat with three feet and a man with two feet can stay six feet apart.

Hi there and welcome back.  I trust you are feeling well and fighting your boredom.  I hope this virus doesn’t last until September because I’m pretty sure you can’t wear a white mask after Labor Day.  Carol was practicing starting a Zoom session, so she invited me to join.  I did and immediately saw my wife big and beautiful on my screen.  It was the closest I’ve been to her face in six weeks.  Now back to being angry. Sorry.

ITEM:  Two cats in New York tested positive for Covid.  The news channels are overcrowded with reporters crying and screaming that we don’t have enough tests in this country.  But we have enough for cats?  My oldest, wonderful daughter in North Carolina had a bout of fevers and lethargy this week.  We all thought she had Covid.  She went to get tested and they refused to give her the test, saying she didn’t show the right symptoms.  But they tested the friggin’ cats?  Who’s running this planet, Tony the Tiger?  Actually, Donald Trump reminds me of Tony.  He’s big and he’s orange and he claims that everything he does is Grrrrrrrreat! 

I had an appointment with Dr. Rhythm.  He takes care of my pacemaker.  I called to cancel because of you-know-what, but they talked me into having a virtual appointment online.  I have a monitor under my bed.  It’s the size of a challah and routinely monitors my heart activity via radio transmissions from my pacemaker.  So, I manually sent a transmission to Dr. Rhythm the day before the appointment and signed up online by filling out a questionnaire.  I got to the question about gender and there were these choices:  Choose Not to Disclose, Female, Genderqueer, Male, Other.  I swear that’s the truth.  I have three questions:

First – What?

Second – What’s this Choose Not to Disclose category?  It’s your doctor.  You don’t want to tell your doctor what gender you are?  If I had a doctor who didn’t know what gender I was, I’d get a new doctor.

Third – Did you notice that Male was 4^th on the list?  Male is now the 4^th most popular gender?  Beam me up, Scotty.

Weekly Word:  Scintilla means a trace or very small amount, as in: “This blog has only a scintilla of humor”.  Sorry, I had some things to get off my chest, and now that I’ve had that chest reduction, I’ll be back next week with some humor.  In the interim, work on your math by counting your toes. If you come up with ten, you’re fine.  If you come up with 15, you’re my cat.  Actually, that’s not true.  Cats only have four toes on the back feet, so Shakespeare has 13 toes. 

Looks like it’s time to go.  As I always say, stay well and count your blessings.  As Mr. Spock says, live long and prosper.  As Lester Holt says each night, take care of yourself and each other.  As the Army recruiter says, be all that you can be.  And as my wife often says, if the Queen had balls she’d be the King.  Words to live by.  See you next week.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #163

Let’s see.  We’ve all cleaned every square inch of our homes six times.  We’ve watched 892 movies on Netflix.  We’ve Zoomed every person we know or thought we knew.  We’ve sanitized our mail, our fingernails, our food, our doorknobs, our pets.   And you know what else we’re all doing?  Drinking.  The country is having more Internet Happy Hours than there are hours and we’re turning into a society of oenophiles*.

Weekly Word:  an oenophile is a drunk with a dictionary.  I, of course, wouldn’t know.  The last time I had a Happy Hour was in 2007.  Then, of course, it was a Happy Week.  And now that we’re all clean, sanitary and happy, we only have one problem – looking in the mirror:

I don’t like sequesters a bit

My looks are just going to shit

My body is round

‘Cause I’ve gained twenty pounds

And my hair’s looking like Cousin Itt.

Do you remember when your mother warned you not to go swimming after eating.  She should have warned you not to look in the mirror after eating.  Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re all feeling well, staying safe and looking as marrrrvelous as always.  Listen, I know I use some strange references from time to time, like Cousin Itt.  Most of my readers remember Cousin Itt, but some of you younger folks may not, and by “younger” I mean anyone who didn’t vote for Garfield.  Well, I’m not changing.  I write what I write, so keep your Google handy.

Carol and I had our first argument of the sequester.  She said it was Tuesday and I insisted it was Monday.  She was right, of course.  I haven’t been right since I told her O.J. was guilty.  What should we talk about?  I’m tired of talking about Viruses, Quarantines and Sequesters, so let’s catch up on other stuff I haven’t had time to tell you. 

You know that I like to share bizarre menu items with you.  Here’s one from when we ate at a restaurant in Florida, before going to a restaurant became as popular as dating Bill Cosby.  It was not a large restaurant, about the size to hold all the people who voted for Kamala Harris, but it was one of those fancy-schmancy places, the kind that conceals the reality of its menu items under a confusing shroud of ridiculous words.  Here’s one of the entrées:

Pacific Ocean Maldivian yellow fin tuna

      Hand-glazed with a Japanese tamari

and manuka honey reduction,

 hand in hand with a delightful

 English courgette flower beignet.

I promise you, I did not make that up.  Twenty-six words, not all of which I understood.  And that was just one entrée.  One of my Rules of Life is that the menu item with the least amount of words is usually the best.  I had the chicken.

My oldest daughter has pet chickens and she is an advocate for Chicken Rights – The Declaration of Hen-dependence and all that.  But she needn’t worry; this restaurant used only free-range chickens.  That means these high-class birds enjoyed air-conditioning, soft beds and smart TVs with NetChicks and the Chickelodeon Network.  Then they chopped their heads off and cooked them in marsala sauce.  Delicious.

Back to the Quarantine.  I know the country is still closed, but I guarantee it would open up in a second if, somehow, we stopped getting mail.  People are very protective of their mail even though almost nothing of importance arrives in your mailbox any more.  Checks go directly into your account.  Bills come by email.  Nobody writes you a letter.  Even my humble blog comes to you through the Internet universe.  Still, mail is very important to us.  If, one day, we stopped getting our coupons for 20% off on hearing aids and our invitations to tour the “elderly facility”, we would take to the streets.  See you there.

Message from Shakespeare:  Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears (Julius Caesar).  And if you have an extra leg, I could use that too.

This week, we celebrated the 10^th birthday of my grandson, Austin.  We celebrated by sending him a present by Amazon and pulling into his driveway to wave at him and hold up Happy Birthday signs.  We shared as much love as we could from six feet away.  It was my job to buy the present. You should always send a man to buy stuff for a little boy’s birthday, because a man is just a little boy who shaves.  As Ogden Nash said, “You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely,” and I am living proof.  I got him a cool Lego set, and he was so happy, you’d thought I’d got him the Taj Mahal with a Maserati in the driveway.  Wait, does the Taj Mahal have a driveway?  Ok, lose the Maserati and substitute an elephant in the backyard. 

Which makes me think of Oscar Brown, Jr., a singer-songwriter who appeared on the Jack Paar Tonight Show back in the late 1950s.  He sang a song called Dat Dere about a little boy and his Dad.  And Daddy can I have dat big elephant over dere?  Oscar Brown was married to Jean Pace, a singer, who also appeared on the Tonight Show, and when she did, she wore a dress designed and custom-made by my brother.  True.  Sorry about the inconsequential and uninteresting rambling, but you shouldn’t complain.  You have nothing else to do anyway.  Have another drink.

With Austin’s 10^th birthday, my eight grandchildren have now reached the cumulative age of 100.  A century of grandchildren!  I am blessed.

Carol and I just had our second fight of the Sequester.  She wouldn’t let me go out.  She said my mask didn’t match my belt.  How was I supposed to know that?  I’d better go now.  I have to see if I have paisley hospital gloves.  But don’t worry, I’ll be back in only a week, even though it will seem like six months.  Until then, stay well, social distance and count your blessings.  Or, as Oscar Wilde said, “If you don’t get everything you want, think of the things you don’t get that you don’t want.”  See you soon.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #162

Day 31 of being quarantined with a beautiful, clever and devoted woman.  Well, someone has to do it.  Sorry if I am a bit uxorious*.  Now there’s a Weekly Word if ever I heard one.  Uxorious means showing an excessive fondness for one’s wife.  Guilty as charged.  Actually, Carol had that added to our marriage vows.  To Love, Honor and be Uxorious.  ‘Til wearing golf shorts with long black socks do us part.

Hi there and welcome back.  I’m still here.  Well, of course I’m here.  There’s nowhere else I could be.  I couldn’t be there, because if I were there, then that there would be my here.   Now you could be there, but I couldn’t be there, even if we were together, because I am always here and you are always there.  Got it, Mr. Einstein?  It’s all relative.  So, when you look at a map that says “You Are Here”, just say:

That sign doesn’t make sense to me

It says “You Are Here”, but you see

It’s perfectly clear

Of course I am here

Just where the hell else could I be?

I may have gone a little stir crazy.  Have you noticed?  It’s because I have been here for 31 days.  Hollywood has certainly recognized our cooped-upedness and has responded with some quarantine-inspired product.  The first movie to arrive is a tragedy about women forced to stay home by the virus, unable to get their hair done.  It’s called ROOTS and stars Jennifer Gray, Betty White and Ron Silver.

Next is the story of a man who sits on the toilet juggling his last three rolls of toilet paper.  It’s called Game of Thrones and stars Sonny and Charmin.  Who could have imagined that this year, Passover Rolls would mean toilet paper?  I know, I have too much time.  But, now that I think of it, when the quarantine is over, I don’t really have any place to go anyway.

I can’t wait for those movies to come out.  Anything would be better than watching a twelve-year-old golf tournament.  Or Andrew Cuomo.  That man has been on television more than Hoda Kotb.  Actually, do you know who holds the official Guinness World Record for “most hours on camera”?  I’ll give you a hint – it is not Johnny Carson or Walter Cronkite or Big Bird.  Answer to follow.  See, isn’t that clever?  Now you have to read the rest of this crap just to get to the answer.

I just heard Carol tell Alexa to set a timer, and, as Alexa responded, I saw Shakespeare lounging on the couch.  Wouldn’t it be great if my cat would behave like Alexa?  Shakespeare, tell me the capital of Bangladesh.  Shakespeare, play some Beatles.  Nothing.  But then I don’t have much better luck with Alexa.  Yesterday, I told her to play James Taylor music.  She said, Sorry, your wife told me not to listen to you.  So there I am, with a cat who thinks I am his own personal slave, a wife who knows whose personal slave I am and an Alexa who thinks I am an annoyance.

And no Olympics!  Since there will be no Olympics this year, my wife's Bridge Group has used their ingenuity to create a bunch of new Olympic Events.   There’s Synchronized Talking – the Bridge Group are the reigning World Champions and practice every day Zooming with their glasses of wine.  Then there’s Women’s Floor Exercises – participants mill around a restaurant floor looking for a round table with a view.  The world record (held by my bride) is four rejected tables in less than 60 seconds.  She’s writing a new book now to help women find the best spot.  It’s called The Queen and her Nights at the Round Table.  And, of course, there’s Women’s Volleyball, where the players wear gloves so they shouldn’t break a nail.

Speaking of competitions, there was a nationwide vote taken lately to determine The Biggest Presidential Liar of all time.  Bill Clinton was voted First but claimed he was Second and Donald Trump was chosen Second but bragged he was First.

Message from Shakespeare:  ‘Cry “havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war’ (Julius Caesar)  Dogs?  What dogs?  Dogs are sloppy, messy and stupid.  Even with three legs, I could destroy any old dog.  And dogs do tricks.  How low class!  Yesterday my Pops tried to teach me a trick.  Who does he think he is?  He can’t even make Alexa listen to him.  

Yesterday, I put on my mask, made from a yarmulke, and my hospital gloves.  It looked like I was about to do an appendectomy on a Rabbi.   But no, I just needed some groceries.  And it wasn’t the sanitary paraphernalia that I had to wear that aggravated me.  It was the people:

First, the selfish, lazy ignoramus who clogs up an entire lane in the parking lot, with 12 cars behind him, waiting for a space to open so he can save himself 15 feet of walking.  Second, the disrespectful, crass, but perfectly healthy person who parks in a handicapped space. Third, the inconsiderate, egocentric doofus who monopolizes the “12 or Fewer” lane with 42 items.  And fourth, the one who is not wearing a mask.  Do you see any of these people in the mirror?  Aren’t you ashamed, Elizabeth? 

From 1952 to 1955, Betty White starred in a sitcom called Life with Elizabeth, and when she would do something naughty, the announcer would say, Elizabeth, aren’t you ashamed?  She would nod her head and then giggle.  She was so cute!

Okay, the person who holds the Guinness Record for Most TV Airtime is Regis Philbin with more than 16,000 hours.  If you guessed Hugh Downs, you were close.  He was second.  And that brings us to the end of this week’s adventure into boredom, silliness and madness.  We’ll do some more next week.  I’ll still be boring, silly and as imbalanced as a three-legged cat.  Oops!  Until then, wash those hands, don’t touch that nice face and count your blessings.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #161

I know we’re all feeling as miserable as the winner of the Moms Mabley look-alike contest, but just imagine what this would be like if we didn’t have phones or the Internet or Netflix or Zoom.  And now Bernie is gone.  Did you even remember that we are in an election year?  I think we’ve all forgotten the election amidst this terrifying and confusing period.  Do we even know what’s happening?  Wear masks.  Don’t wear masks.  200,000 deaths.  50,000 deaths.  To me, it’s disturbing and alarming.  But move on we must.

Hi there and welcome back. Are you ready for Easter?  It’s next Sunday.  Easter is the day when every chick is fuzzy and yellow, every little bunny is cute and cuddly and every turkey is laughing because it’s not Thanksgiving.  It’s the day when 90% of Americans will celebrate the re-birth of Jesus in the spirit of goodness and cooperation and salvation to all.  The next day, they will go back to hoarding toilet paper and stealing hand sanitizer.  What a world!  If it didn’t have all of you in it, I’d move somewhere else.

Soon after Easter comes April 15^th, the day you need to pay your taxes to the IRS (Income Redistribution Service).  But not this year.  The tax deadline has been postponed, along with the Olympics, the baseball season, weddings, bar mitzvahs and your facelift.

And the world is still sequestered:

·        With nothing else to do, Americans have been sanitizing every square inch of their homes.  The country is more immaculate than a Joel Osteen sermon and Mr. Clean now has higher approval ratings than Trump or Biden.

·        Gatherings of ten or more people are prohibited, so the Elizabeth Warren Fan Club can still meet.

·        Still social distancing.  Better six feet away than six feet under.

·        I just finished my second book of the Quarantine.  The first was a 70-year-old novel called Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.  It’s a library book I was reading when the Library closed.  It’s about rich British people in the 1930s.  I liked it.  The next was a 30-year-old travel book about Yemen called Motoring with Mohammed by Eric Hansen.  I am weird!  I had purchased it earlier because no library carries it.  I am really weird.  I liked it a lot. 

·        Now they want us to wear bandanas.  I tied one on, looked in a mirror and decided I looked like an extra in a Hopalong Cassidy episode.

·        My distaff* companion has a plan for when we run out of toilet paper.  We’re going to use my wardrobe.  She never liked the way I dressed.

·        I took a 30-minute walk outside.  Everyone was out walking alone or with their dogs.  There were more people in the streets than there were in Tiananmen Square.  And every walker avoided every other walker as if they had the plague.  An apt metaphor. 

·        There is good news, however.  Your checks are in the mail.  The government will be sending out lots of checks to help people get through this crisis, and in a brilliant move, President Trump will be signing each check.  That will save a ton of money because if you love Trump, you will frame the check and if you hate him, you will burn it.

·        Nadia, the tiger at the Bronx Zoo, has tested positive for coronavirus.  Now, as if we didn’t have enough to worry about, we have to stay at least six feet away from tigers!

·        A study shows that wearing hospital gloves makes it 70% easier to open those thin grocery-store produce bags.  I hate those things.

·        Hallmark has asked me to write another card, this one for a Pandemic Wedding Night:

I’m excited and thrilled, I must say

To consummate our Wedding Day

But, Dear, I must ask

That you wear a mask

And stay at least six feet away.

Message from Shakespeare:  All you humans are whining about being stuck in your house.  I’m stuck in the house every day.  Sometimes, for entertainment, I sit by the window watching the birds and the insects.  You should try it.  Today I saw two bees, maybe it was three, or was it two?  Two bees or not two bees, that is the question. (Hamlet).

Weekly Word:  Distaff:  the female branch of the family.  No, Honey, the branch part does not mean I’m comparing you to a monkey.  Geesh, I can’t do anything right.

Last night was Passover, the celebration of Charlton Heston leading the Jews from slavery in Egypt.  I did some grocery shopping for our Passover dinner, called a Seder, but before I shopped, I put on my bandana mask and hospital gloves.  Can you picture that?  I looked like I was going out to rob a blood-bank.  During the Seder we traditionally talk about the ten plagues, but this year we have an 11^th plague, don’t we?  I’d trade this one for a bunch of frogs any day.  We also ceremoniously ask four questions.  This year we had a Fifth Question – How do you eat Brisket through a bandana?  But we did it; we celebrated and upheld the tradition.  No, we couldn’t be together with the whole family as in previous years, but, as Moses parted the Red Sea, we parted the distance between us with FaceTime and Zoom and love and longing and tears.  I’m proud of us all.  May the borsht be with you.

I have something sad to tell you.  A very close friend died this week from causes not related to coronavirus.  His initials were LK, and he was a kind, generous, loving and selfless man.  Our families were very close; we traveled together often.  I am his son’s godfather.  What makes it even sadder is that, in the middle of this pandemic, we cannot console his family with hugs or tears or stories.  The funeral was for the family only.  Carol and I went and stood outside the gates to the cemetery.  It is a hard time to live and a hard time to die, and there is much sadness afoot these days.

So stay well and count your blessings.  I know you have many and suggest you count them often.  And stay six feet away from coughing tigers.  I’ll see you next week.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #160

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.  No, don’t panic; it’s not Ms. Bowers’ 10^th Grade English class.  It’s just a little Dickens.  But oh, so true!  On Saturdays, we usually eat out.  But since we can’t now, we ordered carry-out from a nice restaurant.  I dressed in a tuxedo, bow-tie and all, and Carol got all fapitzed*.  When we opened the bag containing our meal, the restaurant had included a gift, thanking us for our business.  It was a roll of toilet paper.  Honest.  When I asked for rolls and butter, that’s not what I expected.  Seriously, there we were, all dressed up, laughing over the silliness and the thoughtfulness and the sadness of it all.

Weekly Word:  Fapitzed is a Yiddish word that means all dolled up and when I typed it above, my spellchecker changed it to the word baptized.  Which got me thinking, what if the bible actually said Jesus was fapitzed and an old guy named John the Spellchecker changed it to baptized and started dunking people in the river when all they needed to do was put on something nice?  You know there was an Eleventh Commandment -- Thou shalt not wear linen after Labor Day.

Hi there and welcome back to what looks to be a trying April.  You are all frightened, I know.  I am frightened as well, but you and I must stay calm and do our best.  I stay calm by trying to think of something to make you smile.  It’s harder now.  You’re not as easy a laugh as you used to be, so we’d better get started.  First, a little news of my family.  It’s my blog.

My oldest Granddaughter, Zoey (17), was spending her Junior year of High School in the Netherlands.  She was supposed to stay until July, but was forced to come home to North Carolina because of the pandemic, as were all the students on the program.  I am very happy that she made it home last week without incident.  I was never worried about her traveling alone from Europe, because Zoey could talk her way through anything.  I call her The Mouth from the South.  My youngest Granddaughter, Lucy, just celebrated her 7^th birthday in California.  Of course, with the virus and the lockdown in California, poor Lucy had to cancel her birthday party.

Staying at home sucks, doesn’t it?  I’m as bored as Venus De Milo’s manicurist.   But I always have Andrew Cuomo to watch.  My goodness, that man has had more airtime than the My Pillow guy.  I even saw the pillow guy interrupting one of Trump’s corona briefings to say he has stopped making pillows and is making face masks instead.  The only problem is that the masks make you sleepy.

I know you’re all getting a little stir-crazy.  In the 1850s, “stir” became a nickname for Newgate Prison in London, and people incarcerated there were said to be “in stir”.   So that’s how “stir crazy” came to mean the anxiety caused by being confined.  Aren’t you glad I explained that to you?  It gave me something to do while I had nothing to do.

Carol is doing everything she can to make our sequestered lives bearable.  My clever wife has made our humble abode into a cruise ship of sorts.

·        The food is magnificent, with a different theme restaurant every night.  Last night we ate at the American Restaurant (hotdogs and mac&cheese).  Yummy!  Tonight we’re eating at the Chinese Restaurant (chop suey).  Terrific. 

·        Online yoga classes every morning.

·        Outdoor walks in the afternoon.

·        Happy Hour every day at 5:00 where she and some friends get on Zoom  or FaceTime together and drink and giggle.  I just listened to one of her Happy Hours with four senior women trying to get all their faces on one screen at the same time.  Every time they figured out how to include one more, they laughed and giggled like a group of 10-year-old girls who had just seen their first penis.

·        Haircuts in the Salon.  That’s right, I cut Carol’s hair.  She looks Marrrrrrvelous!  Don’t call me.  I’m booked through April.

·        Crossword Puzzle Night every Sunday and Wednesday with our daughters.

·        Formal Night on Saturdays (see above story about the tuxedo).

·        And since my wife is doing it all, it’s truly a Princess Cruise.

We’re sequestered, but here’s the good news:

We’re booked on a Quarantine Cruise

There are no ports of call

And the Guest List is small,

Just a three-legged cat and two Jews.

One night at dinner, I got in the cruise spirit and decided to call our dinner table the Captain’s Table.  My wife instantly reminded me that on her ship, I was the Captain of precisely nothing.

Message from Shakespeare:  It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing (Macbeth).  I have a tail and it’s pretty furry, but that doesn’t make me an idiot.  I was smart enough to find a wonderful home.  And did you know that the person named Shakespeare wrote King Lear while he was quarantined for the plague?  I like to watch TV.  I watch Petflix.  There are shows for dogs like Barks and Recreation and Game of Bones.  And shows for cats like Paw and Order, Carol Purrnet and Downton Tabby.  There’s even a show for three-legged animals.  It’s called The Limpsons.

Funny cat!  He’s a regular Jack Purr.  Enough about him.  Back to me.  Other than the fact that there is no skin left on my hands and I smell like a bottle of Windex, everything is ok.  This sheltering-in-place routine hasn’t really been that horrible.  I do love my friends and I miss them, but when it comes to seeing other people, generally, I’m a hermit.  “Better to see no one than to see fools”, said Larry McMurtry.  I see enough fools on television.

But you’re not a fool, are you?  Of course not – you can’t be if you’re reading this.  So keep reading, stay well, wash your hands and count your blessings.  And your toilet paper!  See you next week.

Captain Nothing                                Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com