Blog #286                                September 1, 2022

 

In case you think my life’s a bore

I took a nap from three to four

Woke up and put on comfy shoes

Then had a bite and watched the news

I read a little, fed the cat

Then brushed my teeth and that was that

My goodness, how the day just flew

Tomorrow will be busy too.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  We’d best get started; I know you also have a busy day.  I hope you all are feeling well and have some time left over to spend with me.  This thing is called Limerick Oyster, and I know the above poem is not a limerick, but you’ll have to adapt.  It’s just a little something I came up with.  Here are some other little somethings.

 

Do you read the obituaries every morning?  Most of my friends do.  Not me.  I’ll learn the bad news soon enough.  My good friend Deb in North Carolina says the obituaries are beginning to look like her address book.  That’s the price we pay for aging, so we’re all working hard to stay healthy.  Laughter is good for your health, they say, so I’ll try to make you laugh.

 

Donald Trump was flying on his private jet.  He gazed out the window at the wide expanse of America.  “You know,” he said, “I could drop a yuuuge bunch of hundred-dollar bills out the window and make a thousand people happy.  At which point the pilot turned his head and said, “Sure, but I could drop you out the window and make half the world ecstatic.”

 

There, I made you laugh!

 

Carol, once again, went out to dinner with a group of her girlfriends.  I think she’s practicing for being a widow.  It’s beginning to unnerve me.  Maybe I should read those obituaries.  Since she was going out, I decided to go to the grocery store and buy some stuff for dinner.  Nothing appealed to me, and I thought that if nothing turned me on, I might as well eat something healthy, so I bought a package of zero fat, zero cholesterol veggie hot dogs.  I got home and put them on broil, and while they were so engaged, I sliced up a pickle and splashed a dollop of mustard on a plate.  My faux frankfurters began to sizzle and I turned them over.  I poured some tea and set up my dish and silverware all ready for a delicious hotdog dinner.  Then I let my little gardenwurst burn a bit and accumulate a black crust.  I have learned an important lesson in life and this is something you should remember.  A burnt carrot tastes the same as a burnt pig.  So I ate my overcooked veggie wieners with pickles and mustard and they were just fine.

 

Speaking of obituaries, I was at a funeral some months ago.  Dozens of cars were guided into the cemetery grounds by the funeral home employees and efficiently lined up in a tight parking queue.  As I turned my engine off, one of these employees walked up to the car and I lowered the window whereupon the funeral person asked me what I considered to be a patently unnecessary question.  He said, “Are you here for the funeral?”  There I was, with fifty other cars parked in an immovable line in the middle of a cemetery.  “No,” I calmly replied, “I was wondering when the Annette Funicello movie started.  And hold the butter on the popcorn.”

 

As I stood at the service, I glanced at the headstones around me.  I noticed one that memorialized Dr. Joe Schmo.  Not Joe Schmo, but Dr. Joe Schmo. Seriously?  I thought death was the Grand Equalizer.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  I guess now it’s dust to Dr. Dust.  If doctors can be that arrogant, why can’t I?  I want a limerick on my headstone.  I already have it written -- you probably guessed that – but I’m not going to share it with you.  You’ll just have to visit.  I’ll be next to Dr. Schmo.

 

My favorite doctor is Dr. David, my son-in-law in North Carolina.  Not only is he a radiologist, but he has his own rock n’ roll band.  He’s got some goofy name for the band that I don’t like, so I gave him a list of names I felt were appropriate for a radiologist’s band.  Here they are:

 

·        The Rolling Bones

·         X-Ray Charles

·         Cat Scan Stevens

·         The Mammograms and the Papagrams

·         Donnie & MRI

·         Pelvis Presley.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Music oft hath such a charm to make bad good (Measure for Measure).  I’m going a get a few of my three-legged friends and start a band.  We’ll call it Three Cat Leg, or maybe The Limping Stones.  Purr.

 

I am reading a Larry McMurtry book in which one of the characters says, “Old age is a worthless damn thing.”  I can’t agree.  I believe my senior years are filled with great opportunities to add and contribute.  And I don’t mean reading more books or going to classes or visiting places I’ve never seen.  Whatever I might gain from those things will be gone when I’m gone.  No, I mean the opportunities to leave behind some of yourself in the things you teach, in the care you take of others, even in the entertainment you might provide.  “It’s not what you gather, but what you scatter that tells what kind of life you have lived.”  Helen Walton said that, and Helen should know.  Being the wife of Sam Walton, and the richest woman in America at one time, she gathered and scattered more than most.  Helen is also famous for another quote:  Marriage is a relationship where one is always right and the other is always the husband.

 

If a man speaks in a forest and there’s no-one there, is he still wrong?  I usually am, but I can’t be wrong in wishing you a Happy Labor Day and hoping you stay well.

 

The Weekly Word is faux, which rhymes with Joe, or should I say Dr. Joe, and means fake or false, not genuine.  I am none of those.  I am the real thing.  What you see is what you get, and if you want more of it, come back next week.  I’ll be waiting.  Oh, and count your blessings.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com