Blog #216

 

During the Covid months, my wife and I stayed in our condo pretty much all day, and although I flourish in a quiet atmosphere, Carol needs constant noise – the television, some music playing, phone calls with her friends.  It is fortunate, therefore, that our place is big enough for me to escape to a quiet room away from her cacophonous milieu.  Our ability to be apart all these years has kept us together all these years.  Still, on occasion, I overhear some of her conversations, and I have noticed a change.  The gossip used to consist of, Did you hear what A said to B and then B told C all about it and now C is mad at A?  Or, Did you know that E did not invite F to her birthday lunch and F found out about it from G?  Well, since Covid has limited the number of live conversations to be overheard, my wife and her friends have turned to a different strategy -- reading people’s minds.  I know what A thinks about B and B probably thinks the same about her.  So now, if you don’t want to be gossiped about, it’s not good enough just to keep your mouth shut.  You have to keep your mind shut as well.  Some of you may be better at that than others.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  Please don’t keep your mind shut for the next few minutes while you read this.  You might miss something amusing.  Spring has been tardy in arriving and St. Louis has been cold and ugly.  I hope you are enjoying better weather and feeling well.  My St. Louis daughter has three children, two cats and a dog, and it is to her house that we moved last weekend so that she and my son-in-law could enjoy a weekend trip.

 

Their dog is a sweet hybrid puppy.  You know, money will buy a fine dog, but only kindness will make her wag her tail.  She is a mixture of basset, boxer, probably some poodle.  Everything has some poodle nowadays.  Labradoodle, Goldendoodle, everything has a doodle.  I think in the future, dogs will be named for the religions of their owners.  There will be Methodoodles, Buddhadoodles, Hindoodles, Muslimdoodles and even Jewdledoodles.  See, that’s what you get when you give a keyboard to an old man with a disturbed mind.  Sorry.

 

Where were we?  The dog!  The dog and the two cats have not as yet come to an understanding, so the dog is not allowed upstairs where the cats hang out.  There is a gate at the bottom of the stairs which is very efficient at keeping dogs and old men from going up the stairs, and I need help from my grandchildren to operate it.  Once upstairs and in bed, there are the cats, two large, beautiful creatures who believe they own the master bedroom.  They have obviously not met my wife.  It took an hour of scratching and screeching and hissing and spitting – and that was just Carol -- before the cats recognized her dominance and reluctantly ceded control of the bedroom.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed (Romeo and Juliet).  I don’t know about those cats at Aunt Abby’s house.  They must be low-class peons.  I, on the other hand, am a genteel and well-mannered pet and Carol likes me on her bed.  I’m such a good boy!  At least until I start biting her toes.  Purr. 

 

One of the evenings, my 11-year-old grandson and I climbed into bed with a bowl of popcorn to watch the movie Troy with Brad Pitt, a great action movie I knew he would love because he has recently read The Iliad.  He is, after all, my grandson.  He loved the movie, until Achilles (Brad) lured a Trojan princess into his bed.  They started to kiss and fondle, whereupon my grandson put a pillow over his face and said, Poppy, tell me when it’s over.  I smiled and wondered if I was the same when I was eleven.  Then I realized that I could not have been.  There were no steamy, seductive scenes on television back then.  The only two characters I ever saw in bed together were Timmy and Lassie.

 

Carol and I, with another couple, are making plans to visit some of our Western National Parks – Zion and Bryce and Grand Canyon – in September.  We chose September because, by then, the parks will not be crowded with school children.  As Phyllis Diller said, We spend the first twelve months of our children’s lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve years telling them to sit down and shut up.  I adore my eight grandchildren but am reluctant to tolerate anyone else’s.  We started our planning by making a list of all the things four old people were unwilling to do. 

                            

We do not ride horses or hike

Go hot-air ballooning or bike

No kayaking please

And no ATVs

‘Cause eating is all that we like.

 

We will not climb mountains nor rappel down them.  No white-water rafts or helicopters.  And we do not camp.  To me, camping is just spending a small fortune to live like a homeless person.  In addition, we do not function well in the rain, and abhor cold weather or hot weather.  It sounds like a lot of fun. 

 

Our Weekly Word is milieu.  It means the environment in which something occurs.  And the environment in which I write you each week is becoming curiouser and curiouser.  For example, Google news reports that Mauro Morandi, the Italian Hermit, who lives as the only resident of a small island off the coast of Sardinia, has recently announced that he will be leaving the island after living completely alone for more than 30 years.  He made the announcement on his Facebook page.  What has this world come to when even the hermits have Facebook pages?

 

A true hermit does not communicate with others, so I suppose I cannot be considered a hermit because I send you this blog, if that can be called communication.  Some people call it gibberish.  Perhaps so, but stick with me and I’ll send you some more gibberish next week.  Stay well and count your blessings.

 

Michaeldoodle                         Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com