Blog #203

 

Did you watch the Inauguration?  The songs and the flags and the poetry and the speeches!  It was all very grand.  The only things that bothered me were all the repetitions about healing and coming together and mending the nation.  I’m not sure how convincing the calls for healing are when your party is impeaching the guy that 75 million Americans voted for.  It’s like signing a peace treaty with Canada while your planes are bombing Montreal.  It’s like throwing a wedding for your daughter and seating the groom’s mother in the kitchen.  It does not presage a warm and peaceful relationship.  I should know, because I am the expert on successful relationships.  After all, my wife and I have had a wonderful marriage for 53 years.  That’s because we have the same goal in life – to keep her happy. 

 

I’m glad, at least, that we finally have a President who is older than me.  The last four were not.  In fact, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Donald Trump and I were all born in 1946.  We make a wonderful quartet, don’t we?  Three Presidents and a clown who writes limericks.  Sounds like one of those cognitive tests where they ask you which bird doesn’t belong in a picture of three eagles and a duck.  Well, somebody has to be the duck.  I have never kept score of my life by the great things I have or have not accomplished.  Most people never accomplish anything great.  But to live an ordinary life that’s fairly decent and fairly honest and to see your contributions to the next generation and even the one after that; well, I’m not sure there is more most of us ducks can wish for.

 

The last President older than me was Bush 41, and I respect my elders.  It just keeps getting harder to find any.  I never liked being governed by some young whipper-snapper.  I guess Trump was the Snapper and Clinton was the Whipper.

 

I got all dressed for the Inauguration in my favorite item.  I know my fashion faults and limitations and so does my wife.  I trust her judgment, but there’s one article of garb that I will let no-one disparage or talk me out of – a gray sweatshirt that has comfort written all over it.  Actually, it has “Sports Illustrated” written all over it and is as warm and as soft as a poodle.  I got it years ago for renewing my daughter Jennifer’s subscription to the magazine.  She’s a bigtime sports fan.  In fact, she was the first girl to win a varsity letter from an all-boys’ school we have here called Country Day.  She attended the girls’ school next door, saw them practicing football, walked over and talked herself onto the team as a manager.  Won two state championships.  Then she went to Duke University and became a manager on the men’s basketball team -- Christian Laettner, Grant Hill and all that.  Won a national championship there.

 

Back to the sweatshirt.  It was one of those insulting promotions available only to new subscribers.  I bitched about that and begged and pleaded that my little girl (she was about 35 then) was a loyal reader and wanted to cuddle up with a warm sweatshirt.  That worked, and when the shirt arrived, I stole it and never let her know.  And that’s what I wore for the Inauguration.  Don’t tell Jennifer.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  “The cat will mew and dog will have his day” (Hamlet).  What was that crap about soft as a poodle?  What does he think I am, Brillo?  Where is he?  I’m going to bite him.  Purr.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and staying safe.  I must apologize to the State of Missouri and the Federal Government.  After complaining for weeks about the vaccination process and being as grumpy as a guy whose cat ate his winning lottery ticket, I finally got my shot. It was very organized and painless and I already have an appointment for the second dose.  The whole event, including waiting, registration, the shot and the recovery period took a total of one hour.  I was as happy as a pagan in an idol factory.  Does this mean I’m free?  Is this horrible disaster about to be over?  Am I going to be able to hug my grandchildren and see people smile?  Well, I don’t know, but it’s a start.  I hope you all are getting yours soon.

 

Do you have face-recognition on your phone?  Does it recognize you with your mask on?  I’m not sure how anyone can recognize me.  This morning I dropped some McDonald’s off for my grandchildren.  They came out to see me but I’m not sure they actually saw me.  I had a mask on and those big wrap-around shades to protect my eyes from the sun plus a golf hat.  I could have been anybody under that disguise.

 

With an old golfer’s hat on my head

And a mask that was yellow and red

Plus those shades on my eyes

Under all that disguise

I could have been Big Bird instead.

 

Maybe not.  Big Bird is a little taller than me.  Miss Piggy is a little taller than me.  So I went home and took a picture of myself, undisguised, and sent it to them.  I think I look better covered up.

 

I got very few comments last week because people who clicked on my email address at the bottom right were not sent to my email as usual.  I don’t know why.  I love your comments.  It’s the only way I can see what you like and don’t like.  Try something new this week.  Don’t click on the address at the bottom.  Just type in my address (mfox1746@gmail.com) in your email and send me a note.  Please, please, please try that for me.  I miss hearing from you.

 

Our Weekly Word is presage which means signaling that something, usually bad, will happen.  But it can also mean something good will happen, like you coming back for next week’s blog.  Stay well until then and count those blessings.  And please follow the above instructions about comments.  I have to go now and grab a Band-Aid.  Shakespeare just bit me.  See you later. 

 

Daffy                                       Sent comments to mfox1746@gmail.com.

 

 

 

Blog #202

 

I have nothing to talk about.  My eye is fine, so we can’t talk about that.  It’s not my birthday.  The election is over and we have a new President.  Congratulations and good luck to President Biden.  So that’s old news.  Now, what are we going to talk about?  How about trash.  Each day I take the small amount of trash generated by two old folks and a cat, bag it up and throw it down the trash chute, where it descends to the nether reaches of Hell or the local landfill – I’m not sure which.  I recycle paper (mostly junk mail) and cardboard (mostly Amazon boxes) by throwing them in a separate container.  Pretty simple, actually.  Not in California!  Steph, my California daughter, has seven containers – paper, plastic, glass, metal, organic, batteries and mixed.  The last time we visited, Carol was so afraid of putting something in the wrong container that she packed up her trash and brought it home in our suitcase.  Totally true.

 

Jennifer, my North Carolina daughter, has an even more complicated system.  She has chickens, so you have to decide between compost, trash, recycle and chickens.  One afternoon she decided to give last night’s leftover eggplant parmesan to the chickens.  Who feeds their chickens eggplant parmesan?  But before she carried it out to the coop, she saw me and asked if I wanted some.  I don’t eat eggplant when it’s the main course, let alone the garbage, but I told her I was grateful that I was mentioned in the same category as the poultry.  I guess that puts me just above compost.  Hey, as long as I know my place.  They also serve who only stand and cluck.  And yes, the chickens will eat leftover chicken.  I think there’s some biblical injunction against that (“You shall not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk” Exodus 23:19), but the last time we showed a Bible to the chickens, they ate it.

 

Hi there and welcome back to Limerick Oyster where you can get Milton quotes and Bible quotes while talking about chicken food.  I hope you’re feeling well.   Have you gotten your vaccination yet?  Not here in Missouri.  Now they’ve decided that obese people and people who smoke should come before old people.  So here’s the message – Take up smoking, eat some Twinkies and rob a bank.  All three of these activities will make you eligible for the vaccine long before the law-abiding seniors who have given up smoking and watched their weight.  It doesn’t pay to be a good citizen.

 

They should have contracted the whole vaccine process to the most efficient and reliable organization in the country – Chick-fil-A.  Have you ever been there for the lunchtime rush?  They have their act together.  Let them do the vaccine.  Pull up, grab some nuggets, stick your arm out the window and – Wham Bam Hot Damn – you get the vaccine and a good lunch at the same time.  And let Medicare pay for the lunch!  Right on!

 

Back to the prisons.  When the prisons start giving shots, it will surely be the Death Row prisoners who get the vaccine first.  The nation’s correctional system is extremely cautious about the health of its Death Row inmates.  Their motto is: We don’t want y’all to die until we want y’all to die.  They also have a sign:

 

Don’t smoke while you’re lying in bed

Don’t fall – you might injure your head

Stay safe and be well

‘Til you’re pulled from your cell

And hanged by the neck until dead.

 

Hey, I warned you I was a couple of bulbs short of a chandelier.  I am also, as you may have noticed, a diligent collector of the impractical and totally useless.  Here’s some,

 

Why do YouTube videos that are made to be watched only by cats contain commercials?

 

Why, when the number on your bathroom scale is a little higher than you’d like, do you move the scale a few feet over?  You know you do.

 

Why do we turn the volume down on the car radio when we want to see better? 

 

Or why, at a live play, do the actors sometimes smoke a cigar and stink up the whole theater?  If a character dies in the play, he only acts like he’s dead.  We can handle it.  We know it’s a play for goodness sake.  It says so on the ticket.  So let him act like he’s smoking.  We’ll figure it out without getting lung cancer.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players (As You Like It).  I’ve never been to a play, but I’d like to act sometime.  That Shakespeare person wrote a lot of parts for cats.  Maybe I could play Romeow or Cleocatra or even Richard the Purred.  Purr.

 

This week we observed Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a day which celebrates his birthday three days after it really was.  There are no longer very many holidays named after people.  Washington’s Birthday is gone, Lincoln’s Birthday is gone and Columbus Day is gone, shredded and burned to a crisp.  The only eponymous holidays left are Christmas, named after Christ, and Easter, named after Eostre, a pre-Christian goddess in England, probably the goddess of bunnies and colored eggs and Judy Garland.

 

Yesterday I was reading some stuff I had written years ago.  It was about my 40^th High School Reunion.  My goodness, it made me realize that my 60^th reunion is in a couple of years.  That’s pretty sobering, isn’t it?  It’s interesting how the perception changes as the reunions march along.  At my 25^th, a girl came up to me and said, “I remember you.”  At my 40^th, the same girl said, “I think I remember you.  You were taller.”  At my 50^th, that very same girl said, “I thought you were dead.” 

 

Ok, I wasted enough of your time with another otiose edition of rambling nothingness.  Otiose, the Weekly Word, means serving no practical purpose, unnecessary.  Fits perfectly, right?  I’ll never understand why you come back every week.  But you’d better.  Who else will tell you to stay well and count your blessings?  See you in a week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #201

 

A couple of years ago, a plumber came by to fix some things, among which was a broken handle in my shower.  He only replaced the COLD but they come in a set, so I had an extra handle.  He said save it for when the HOT breaks.  It did last night.  So this morning I got out the handle, read the instructions and immediately had a panic attack.  I can’t do this; I can never do things like this.  I will flood the condo and blow up the entire block and break a nail.  Oscar Wilde said, “Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes”, and I have a universe of experience in that regard.  I was terrified.

 

Here were the instructions:  unscrew the screw, pull off the old handle, put on the new handle, screw it in.  Shakespeare, with one paw, could do that.  But the killer was -- First, turn off the water, so I went to the laundry room.  There were two valves – one said hot water, one said all water.  Very clearly marked.  Nonetheless, I felt like the scene in every James Bond movie where the bomb is ticking down to explosion and James has to cut one of a dozen colored wires and if he chooses the wrong one, he will be fatally shaken, not stirred.  But he always does it right and the countdown always stops at 007.  I chose the one marked all water and turned.  Nothing catastrophic happened.  Then I went back to the shower to do steps 1,2 and 3.  It took 12 seconds.  Then back to turn the water valve, where I discovered I had forgotten which way I had turned it to shut it off.  Well, it would only turn one way, so that must be right.  Then back to the shower to turn the new handle.  It worked.  I could not have been more pleased if I had discovered fire.  I walked, smiling, back into my study where I noticed my clock had stopped at 007. 

 

Could have blown up the world with one slip

Or fallen and shattered my hip

But I fixed that old faucet

And smiled because it

Now makes me the home’s only drip.

 

Hi there.  Are you back?  You bet your blue blazer you’re back.  Where else could you get such silly stories?  Welcome.  I am recovering well from eye surgery, and thank you for all your prayers and wishes.  They worked.  And thank you for all the birthday greetings.  You are very nice.  I’m so excited to be 75, because that puts me in the high-risk category for getting my vaccination, if they ever figure out how to do it.  Right now, Missouri tells me I’m in Group 1-B, right after healthcare workers, prisoners, puppies and anyone named Jean.

 

I have been researching the actress Helen Hunt.  She is 57, went to UCLA, is married to Hank Azaria and won an Academy Award for As Good as it Gets.  I’m doing this because I called some nabob at the Public Health Department and asked what I had to do to get the vaccine and the nice man told me I could go to Helen Hunt for it.  I hope she answers the phone.

 

Message from Shakespeare – Hell is empty and all the devils are here (The Tempest).  It sure seems like all the devils are here if you watch the news, but I’m neither a Republi-cat nor a Demo-cat, so I don’t know.  But if Pops wants to go to Hell and hunt for something, maybe he could find an extra leg for me.  Purr.

 

I have some hospital observations to share with you.  Pull up a chair.  First of all, why do they keep it so cold in the operating room?  At first, I thought they had put me in the Covid vaccine storage room.  It was so frozen in there, I started calling my surgeon Dr. Birds-Eye.  They brought me some warm blankets and Dr. Sleep put me under MAC (Monitored Anesthesia Care), so I was fortunate enough to be completely awake – TOTALLY FREAKING AWAKE -- as they sliced, diced and thoroughly chopped up my eye.  The surgeon and I talked throughout the 90-minute operation and there was actually no discomfort at all.  We joked and talked about what he was doing.  When he was finished, I even asked him if I could stitch up my own eye.  He said, “Suture self.”

 

The pre-op included all the vitals and an EKG.  They attached the 12 sticky patches, hooked up the wires, did the EKG, unplugged the wires and tore off the 12 patches.  Ouch!  After dinner that night, I was scratching my chest a little, when I felt something.  I unbuttoned my shirt, and there were two little white patches stuck to my chest.  Where had they come from?  Did they multiply like measles splotches?  Do they have little patch parties while the juice is flowing and spawn more little patches?  I began to feel like a victim in one of those old Sci-Fi horror flicks.  It Came from Beneath the EKG or Invasion of the Body Patchers.

 

About five days after surgery, I looked in the mirror and noticed my eye was bloody, so I consulted the nearest and most comely medical expert I could find – Dr. Wife.  She did her examination and told me she wasn’t worried.  I wanted a second opinion, so I called Dr. Eyeball.  I described the situation and he told me to send him a picture, so I texted him a nice one of me and Carol holding hands on the beach.  I like that picture.  He called back to clarify his instructions and I took a picture of my red eye and sent that.  His conclusion – he wasn’t worried.  Carol is always, always right about medical diagnoses.    

 

Our Weekly Word this week is Nabob, a person of conspicuous wealth or high status.  I, personally, have no wealth or status whatsoever, but I like to think of myself as your Nabob of News and Humor.  I also like to think of myself as George Clooney, but that doesn’t work either.  Stay well out there, count your blessings and come visit me next week.  You have no idea what I’ve got planned for you.  Neither do I.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #200

 

Holy shit!  I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that, but today is my 75^th birthday.  Seventy-five years old.  Don’t send me any presents; you’re already too late.  But if you want to send me a Mercedes, I’ll overlook that.  If I had spent all 75 years counting one person a second, I would have counted about one-third of the people on Earth.  And, if I had spent the last four years writing silly, wordy letters to you, I would be up to 200 blogs.  Two hundred blogs?  Holy shit!  Sorry, I’m beginning to sound like a doctor examining the Pope’s stool specimen.

 

Ok, I’m over it.  I’m 75.  It is what it is.  I am what I am.  I’m Popeye the Sailor Man.  I’m rambling here, but just let me go on; it usually works out well.  I know you think there is method to my madness, but, mostly, there is just madness.  Let’s see where this takes us.  Actually, I do resemble Popeye in one aspect.  Can you guess?  No, I do not like spinach.  No, I don’t smoke a pipe.  So what do we have in common?  Popeye and I each have a closed eye.  His is the right eye; mine is the left.

 

Hi there and welcome to Blog #200.  Have you read them all?  If you have, then you have read more of my words than there are in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy combined!  I’m not trying to make a point here, only that I’m a bigger blabbermouth than Moses.  Anyway, thank you for reading.  I hope you are feeling well.  Did you have a nice New Year’s Eve?  We stayed at home, naturally, caring less about ringing the new year in than about making sure the old one left.  I remember one New Year’s Eve going to the opening of a local art museum dedicated to modern art.  Carol and I were all dolled up and looked great, but I must admit that I felt uncomfortable.  I don’t understand or like modern art.  But I tried. 

 

This piece with the colors and curves

I grant it the praise it deserves

Who is the creator?

I asked the Curator

He said, “That’s a plate of hors d’oeuvres.”

 

 

 

I’m feeling ok, very little pain, doing well.  You see, this week has included the eerie juxtaposition of three personally momentous and numerical events.  My 200^th Blog, my 75^th birthday and my 6^th eye operation.  The operation was a bit exotic, or perhaps ex-optic, and Dr. Eye is one of only two doctors in the state licensed to perform it. The procedure is difficult to describe, so I won’t, but I’m doing great.  When we arrived home from surgery, Carol got out her little Convalescent Bell and put it by the bed.  When I need her, all I have to do is tinkle (the bell, of course) and the Princess of Lickety Split will speed into the room before the second tintinnabulation hits the airwaves.   It’s good to be the King.  Just don’t tell the Queen.

 

Our Weekly Word is tintinnabulation, a word invented by Edgar Allan Poe for his poem, The Bells.  It means a ringing or tinkling sound.  There’s that tinkle thing again.

 

My last eye operation, six years ago, was performed by Dr. Blinder.  That’s his real name; I’m not making it up.  It was a little unsettling to have a man with that name chopping around my eyeball, but I was assured by some friends that there are plenty of doctors with strangely inappropriate names.  Let’s see if I can remember some.  There’s a dentist named Dr. Payne, a surgeon named Dr. Butcher and a Dr. Fingers who is either a proctologist or a gynecologist.  I forget which, although I suppose if he had been my doctor, I would have recognized the distinction.

 

Have I made you laugh yet?  My New Year’s Resolution was to make you laugh at least once.  Let’s try this:

 

Frank and Kevin, best friends, are having a beer.

Frank:  Kev, you look depressed.

Kevin:  You know, I’m pushing 30 and I want to settle down, but every time I find a nice girl and bring her home, my Mom hates her.

Frank:  Take my advice, find a girl that’s exactly like your Mom.

Kevin:  I tried that.  I found a girl who looks like my Mom, talks like my Mom, even cooks like her.

Frank:  Did your Mom like her?

Kevin:  Of course, but my Dad hated her.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Under the greenwood tree, who loves to lie with me and turn his merry note unto the sweet bird’s throat (As You Like It).  While Pops has been recovering, I’ve been watching my bird videos, but there’s something I don’t understand.  These videos are hours long, and they’re only for cats.  So why, every once in a while, is the video interrupted by a commercial?  Do they actually believe that a three-legged cat is going to buy motorcycle insurance?  Maybe they believe that some crazy human is sitting there watching birds and squirrels eat nuts.  Well, sometimes, Pops does sit and watch with me and scratch my head, but he’s pretty strange.  Purr.

 

Did I tell you it’s my 75^th birthday?  I don’t need a calendar to remind me I’m old.  Father Time reminds me every morning when my hands are a little more numb and my back is a little more sore and my joints are a little more creaky and my eye is a little worse.  As I stand, looking in the mirror and orienting myself to another day, there’s old Father Time looking over my shoulder.  “Hey, Michael, remember me,” he asks?  “I’m still the same old guy I used to be and you’re not.  Have a nice day.”  And the day will move along and I’ll do my thing and enjoy my wife and my family and my cat and all of you.  I’ll go to bed and wake up the next morning. “Good morning, Father Time,” I’ll say.  Just a couple of old friends starting a new day.

 

And you and I are old friends by now, aren’t we?  After 200 damned blogs, we ought to be.  So good morning, old friend.  Have a nice day.  I’ll see you next week, at least out of one eye, so stay well and count your blessings.

 

Popeye                                     Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com