Blog #368                                         March 28^th, 2024

 

Are you ready for Easter?  It’s this 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 hating everybody who doesn’t vote like they do. What a world!  If it didn’t have all of you in it, I’d move somewhere else.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well.  I hope I am feeling well too.  You see, although you are reading this on Thursday morning, I am writing it several days before, and although you, on Thursday, know whether my parathyroid surgery went well, I don’t know any such thing as yet.   Am I worried?  Yes.  I know everybody says it’s an easy operation, but I’m as nervous as a caterpillar at an elephant square-dance and as miserable as the winner of the Moms Mabley Look Alike Contest.

 

Besides, I had to spend a lot of time coordinating which medicines I should take, what soap to use, where to be, when to be there.  It seems like most of my busy schedule is monopolized by health-care.  Seeing doctors, ordering pills, picking pills up, putting pills in the weekly organizer, arguing with the insurance company.  Well, it’s something to do. 

 

As children our job was to play

Then for decades we worked for our pay

Now we’re all up in years

And we’ve found new careers

Just dealing with doctors all day.

 

In preparation for being laid up for a few days, I went out and did whatever errands I needed – grocery, Walmart, bank, get Shakespeare’s nails clipped – all that important stuff.  I don’t mind doing errands, but this time of year, as the weather improves, the streets are full of construction trucks and utility trucks.  You can’t drive anywhere without being stopped or rerouted by rows and rows of orange traffic cones.  I haven’t seen that many cones since Yom Kippur.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Pops spends all that time dealing with doctors and pills.  I spend most of my time sleeping and sitting 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).  Purr.

 

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, Carol 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 as annoying as a Jardiance commercial.

 

Speaking of commercials, I am so tired of that Liberty Bibberty guy.  I think he’s on television more than Hoda Kotb.  Actually, do you know who holds the official Guinness World Record for “most hours on television”?  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 magnificent missive just to get to the answer.

 

The Olympics are coming this summer, and my clever bride has used her ingenuity to create a bunch of new Olympic Events.   There’s Synchronized Talking – Carol and her friends are the favorites and practice every day on the phone.  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 guess who) 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.

 

It’s getting closer to Surgery Day and I’m still as terror-stricken as a rabbi in Minnesota.  But I shall screw up my courage and remain intrepid.  And that has to be our Weekly Word.  Intrepid means fearless and adventurous.

 

Ok, now it’s Wednesday and I’m home.  The surgery is over.  Everything went perfectly and I feel fine.  We arrived at 5:30 on Tuesday morning.  The hospital complex is the size of the pentagon and harder to navigate, but we found the operating theater.  Everyone there was personable, professional and gentle during pre-op, op and post-op.  Sounds like a Coasters’ song from 1960, doesn’t it.   I love my baby, op, bop and pre-op.

 

We started surgery at 7:30. Now, when I say “we”, I mean two surgeons, two attending surgeons, a nurse anesthetist, four operating nurses, a guy from Medtronic to monitor my pacemaker and little, old me.  The room had more smart people than the entire United States Congress.  I was asleep, of course.  The surgery was over at 10:00; I woke up at 10:30 and hung around until 4:00 when they sent me home.  I was extremely happy that I didn’t have to spend the night.  You know how nights in the hospital are.  The nurse comes in at 9:30 and says, “I hope you have a restful night.  I’ll be back every 30 minutes to take your vitals and draw blood.  Sleep well.”  Thank you all for your good wishes and prayers.  It all went swimmingly, as the British say, and I feel fine.  Thank you, again.

 

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.  So stay well, count your blessings and come back next Thursday.  I’ll still be boring, silly and as imbalanced as a three-legged cat.  Oops! 

 

Michael                                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #367                                         March 21, 2024

 

Last Thursday morning, a week ago, I was awakened at 7:30 by a siren.  When I say “awakened”, I’m really not so sure I was even asleep.  Half the night there’s a cat draped upon my feet or my legs or under the covers.  And my wife, of course is right next to me, although she is not as affectionate as Shakespeare at three in the morning.  Anyway, it was 7:30 when I heard the distant wailing of a siren.  The first thing that crossed my sleepy mind was that I had to get under my desk because the Russians were dropping atomic bombs on our school.

 

Do you remember that?  I do.  Blackberry Lane School, third grade, Mrs. Nevins.  She was blonde; I was eight.  Crawl under your desks, children.  That’s the safest place.  They actually made us believe that crawling under those crappy wooden desks would save us from a nuclear detonation.  And we were dumb enough to believe it.  It’s clear now that they were trying not to frighten us with the actual truth, which was that there was nothing that could keep the Russians from blasting us into little roasted marshmallows.  Still, it was the biggest lie our government told us.  That is until “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

 

Ok, back to 7:30 am.  I cleared my head of thoughts of nuclear incineration and Mrs. Nevins and realized that the siren was a tornado warning.  And what was the first thing I did?  Did I wake my precious wife, wrap her in a warm blanket and carry her to safety in the garage?  No.  Did I find a frightened Shakespeare, cuddle him to my chest and assure him everything would be all right?  No again.

 

My first reaction to the tornado warning was to run – of course “running” at my age is really a mixture of walking, limping and groaning – into my study to send out my blog before the electricity went out.  That’s right, my first thought was to make sure you had your copy of Limerick Oyster so you could read it while my entire family was being pummeled and mangled about the skies like Dorothy and Toto.  I hope you liked it. 

 

Actually, the electricity did not go out and the wife and the cat slept through the brief rain shower that followed.  About four years ago, my three local grandchildren were at our house.  Tyler was 14, Austin was 10 and Charley Rose was 12 and a total princess-in-training:  boys, makeup, shopping, clothes, a budding apparition of her Nonnie.  We were all playing a little soccer in the hallways when a warning siren went off.  Charley was frightened and wanted to go into the garage, so we did.  The boys immediately ran outside to watch the skies and play in the rain, but my little princess climbed into the back seat of my car and curled up in fear.  I sat with her, consoling her, when she looked up at me and said, “Poppy, I can’t believe I’m going to die in these ugly shoes.”  She is sixteen now and a Four-Star Princess and still has that wonderful sense of humor.  After I had sent my blog to you, I checked my phone and there was a message from Charley: Oh no, I hope I don’t die with my hair looking like this.

 

Good morning, hi there and welcome to the start of Limerick Oyster’s eighth year.    It is officially Spring, and I am officially happy.  The cold weather of winter bothers me so much that my favorite day all winter has been Monday.  That’s the day I get my ultra-violet treatment in a vertical tanning booth at Dr. Skin’s office.   Mmmm, toasty!

 

I need the hot light on my form

To keep all my skin up to norm

Plus, to tell you the truth

In that nice tanning booth

Is the only place I can be warm.

 

The above mention of the famous Bill Clinton miss-information – yes, I know the word is misinformation with one “s”, but he was talking about a young girl and so the word “miss” is appropriate and damn, why do you put up with me at all?  Anyway, as long as you’re here, the quote made me think of an old news clipping I had somewhere.  I found it.  It read “Former President Clinton will get an advance of more than $10 million to write his memoirs.  That beats the previous record for nonfiction, held by the pope.”

 

The Pope had a book deal?  I wonder what the title was.  Here are a few possibilities:

 

          Genuflection for Dummies

          Chicken Soup for Catholics

          The Days of Wine and Rosaries

          The St. Peter Principle

 

There I go again, getting in trouble with the Catholics.  Well, it was a slow day and I was feeling as bored as Venus De Milo’s manicurist.   Even Shakespeare gets bored sometimes.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Life is as tedious as twice-told tale (King John). When I’m bored, I like to watch TV.  I watch Pet-Flix.  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.   Purr.

 

It's pretty much four years now since we were all hiding in our homes in fear of catching Covid.  I don’t need to remind you of all that we went through.  What Carol missed most was her Happy Hours where she and a few other “goils” would go for appetizers and alcohol.  During Covid, they tried to create their own Happy Hour on FaceTime.  The problem was that the alcohol, in conjunction with the lack of knowledge of how FaceTime worked, made it a challenge to get all four women’s faces on the screen.  Every time they figured out how to include one more, they laughed and giggled like a group of 12-year-old girls who had just seen their first penis.

 

I’ll leave you now with that salacious image and the hope that you stay well and count your blessings.  See you next week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

Oh, and the Weekly Word, of course, is salacious, which means arousing or appealing to sexual desire or imagination.  Now I know you’ll be back next week.

 

 

Blog #366                                         March 14, 2024

 

I have watched quite a few State of the Union Addresses in my 78 years.  They all have pretty much the same theme and probably have all been written by Alan Jay Lerner.  He wrote, “It’s true, it’s true, the Crown has made it clear, the climate must be perfect all the year.”  Every year, the President, be he an R or a D, tells us what a spectacular job he has done against stubborn and ignorant opposition.  Then he promises everything:  a chicken in every pot, an electric car in every garage, better climate, lower prices, more jobs, tax the rich, yadda yadda.  It all sounds great.  President Biden, last week, even promised us more potato chips in the bag.  I’ve never heard that one before.  One thing they never talk about is how they intend to pay for all this noble largesse.

 

I’ll raise all the rich folks’ taxation

Raise wages and lower inflation

I’ll honor our flag

Put more chips in the bag

And bankrupt the whole friggin’ nation.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and remembered to change your clocks last Saturday.  If not, you’ll have to wait another hour before reading this.  Or, perhaps, you live in a place that does not change its clocks like Arizona, Hawaii, Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands, all of which have such lovely weather that residents never want anything to change. 

 

Last week, I promised you I would tell you the story of when I lied to my father.  But not yet; I have so many other things to talk about first.  Are you ready for Spring?  It’s March already and Spring is only a week away.  March is Irish-American Heritage Month.  It is also Women’s History Month.  Plus, I believe it’s Jeffrey Dahmer Recipe Month.  His favorite was Leg of Sam.

 

I received a text this morning from the hospital informing me that the estimated cost of my gland operation will be $28,458, but I will only have to pay $250.  This is worse than a furniture store going-out-of-business sale:

 

St. Patrick’s Day sale – get any gland removed and receive a FREE sectional.

 

 

Or a late-night television ad:  Buy a Popeil Pasta Maker for $39.99 (plus shipping and handling) and get your gland removed F-R-E-E!

 

Time for a joke.  Two senior golfers met in the 19^th Hole:

 

Hi, Bill.  What’s new?

Well, I got new dentures last week.

Oh, my, do they hurt?

Yesterday I played golf and some crazy person behind me hit a ball that hit me in the crotch.

What does that have to do with your dentures?

Well, that’s the only time they didn’t hurt.

 

I guess I have to talk about the Academy Awards.  The Red Carpet started at 3:00 on Sunday afternoon.  Who are you wearing? Who are you screwing?  Who does your hair?  Who does your toes?  Who’s your Daddy?  Who gives a flying Fitz’s Root Beer?  Did you know that one of the nominees is the first Indigenous American to be nominated?  And did you know that I am the first 78-year-old Jewish limerick writer to turn his clocks ahead 7 hours so I could pretend it was all over and I could go to sleep?   

 

I really have no interest in this cinematic folderol, but I watched it because I know all of you did.  It’s a bunch of ultra-ultra-rich people who dress in hundred-thousand-dollar clown suits, drive $300,000 cars, live in $10 million houses, fly in their private jets to Cannes for the Film Festival and believe this qualifies them to tell the rest of America how to live our lives.  It’s preposterous and embarrassing.  Why do we watch?  Because movie stars have always been the royalty that we created to replace the English royalty that we fought to get rid of.  The British have Kings and Queens and Dukes and Princesses.  We had John Wayne and Elvis -- The Duke and The King.

 

 Shakespeare wants to say hello.  Shakespeare The Cat – eleven letters, nine lives and three legs.  He’s a pistol!  Saturday will be the 4^th anniversary of Shakespeare and me adopting each other.  I got him an Anniversary cake with a frosting cat on top. Four candles and three paws.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us paws (Hamlet).  I only have three paws, but that’s enough to wave hi.  Come back next week.  My Pops likes to talk to you and I’ll have another quote.  Purr.

 

Ok, the Dad story.  My father liked to drink vodka, which he ordered by phone from a local liquor store.  He knew their number and would call every few weeks.  Remember, he was blind and living in a senior place.  His vodka order was always personally delivered by the store’s manager, a 30-year-old who apparently liked my dad.  Everybody liked my dad.  The manager would bring the order, then sit and talk for about 30 minutes.  Mostly, my dad talked about getting a lower price on the booze, but the manager stayed anyway.  What a nice young man.

 

Three or four days a week, late in the afternoon, I would visit.  I’d pour each of us a drink -- vodka on the rocks for him, chilled chardonnay for me -- and we would sit and chat.  He would never have his drink before I arrived.  And then, one day, I stopped drinking completely.  I just did.  I knew my dad wouldn’t have his drink if I wasn’t joining him, and I didn’t want to start a kerfuffle over it, so I never told him I had quit.  I just poured him his vodka and poured myself a wineglass full of water.  So I guess, in a way, I did lie to him then.

 

Weekly Word:  A Kerfuffle is a fuss or commotion.

 

Saturday, besides Shakespeare’s Anniversary, will mark the passage of seven years of Limerick Oyster.  Seven years – wow!  Will you stay with me for another seven years?  I hope you do.  For now, it’s time to find an ending to this jumbled and busy issue.  Stay well, count your blessings and may your home always be too small to hold all your friends.  See you next week to start our eighth year.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog # 365                                         March 7, 2024

 

This week I took Shakespeare, my three-legged feline, to Dr. Cat for his annual checkup, which I call a Cat Scan.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  How does your patient, doctor? (Macbeth).  I don’t like going to the doctor, but she said I was fine.  No CAT-aracts, no problems with my PURR-a-thyroid, no triple by-PUSS surgery.  I’m totally PURR-fect.  They gave me two shots and Pops took me home.  I threw up twice on the carpet and slept the rest of the day.  Purr.

 

Such a good boy!  People want to know why we named him Shakespeare.  I have a clever family and they came up with several possible names for a three-legged cat -- Teeter, Tipper, I-Lean, Tripod, IHOP – but his original name was Jake, and his pitiful little limp led someone to suggest Shakey Jake.  Carol immediately seized on that and came up with Shakespeare.  We are a literary family after all.  I realize that the main character in my favorite book was missing a leg and we should have named the cat Ahab, but Shakespeare has turned out to be the perfect name.  He’s Romeo-ing around all the time and behaves like a little ham-let.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  All of that was my attempt to make you smile during a very trying and frightening time.  What with the election and the wars and the crime and the weather --- well, I know you’re all as stressed out as a fat person’s pall bearer, and I hope Limerick Oyster can serve as a little oasis of cheer and humor.

 

Excuse me for using the words “fat person”.  That was insensitive and crass.  Maybe we should just call them easier to see.  It’s remarkable how many of them I see when I work at the Zoo!  You’d think some of these people were auditioning for a spot in the elephant exhibit.  You might suppose that everyone would respond to the problem of obesity in the same way, but that’s not necessarily true.  A Liberal responds by calling for new legislation requiring food producers to limit the calories in their products while simultaneously making sure that all retail establishments accommodate obese people under the Americans with Disabilities Act.  A Conservative responds by buying Baskin-Robbins stock. 

 

I talked about my brother last week.  You seem to like that kind of homey, personal stuff.  Let’s talk about my father today.  My dad lived to be 96, and was very mentally sharp up to the end.  At the age of 90 or so, he became blind and moved to an assisted living environment.  He memorized everybody’s phone number and bought a phone with huge pads for numbers, so he was comfortable calling me and his grandchildren.  I visited him often, and one time he told me he needed a favor.  It seems, when attempting to put the phone receiver back in its cradle, he mistakenly plopped it into his glass of vodka.  This was an old-style phone, not a cell phone.  He wanted me to buy him a new one.  I took it to Famous Barr (a department store that no longer exists) and said I wanted to buy a replacement.  The phone was white, but all they had was a black one.  When I brought the new one to my dad and plugged it in, we had this conversation:

 

Dad:  Is it the same one?

Me:   Yes.

Dad:  What color is it?

Me:   What difference does it make?  You can’t see it.

Dad:  But what color is it?  I want a white one.

 

You didn’t really think I was going to lie to my father, did you?  Especially since he was sure to ask the nurse as soon as I left.  I told him it was black.  He didn’t want it and insisted I take it back and get a white one.  No amount of cajoling could make him change his mind, so I took it back, found a white one at another store and brought the new one back.  And they call me stubborn.

 

I did lie to my dad once, but I’ll save that story for next week because I’m running out of space here, and we need to move on.  I haven’t done a limerick or a Word, and we’re running out of time.  All this folderol about fathers and cats and obesity – as silly as shoes and ships and sealing wax.

 

Weekly Word:  Cajole means to persuade by sustained coaxing or flattery.

 

When we were in Florida, I went to a grocery store for my morning Diet Coke, there being no nearby McDonald’s. This was Palm Beach County, after all, the home of Donald Trump and hanging chads, and too environmentally aware to tolerate something as bovine as McDonald’s.  The grocery store had an acceptable fountain Diet Coke, but there was a problem – the straw.  You know I am all for protecting the environment.  But this place had eschewed plastic straws in favor of paper ones.  I get it.  They’re bio-degradable.  But I was hoping mine would wait to bio-degrade until after I had finished drinking.  About half way through, the end of the straw turned into mush.  Horrible idea! 

 

The end of the straw started shrinking

It got mushy and started me thinking

Although it was made

To bio-degrade

It should wait until I finished drinking.

 

Don’t forget to change your clocks on Saturday night.  Is it Spring ahead or March forward or fall down sideways?  I can never remember.  I’ll just wait until the Academy Awards starts on Sunday, and then I’ll know what time it is -- time to go somewhere else.  But make sure you do it right.  I wouldn’t want you to be late for next week’s blog.  Or is it early?

 

A friend and loyal reader told me my blog was like a weekly dose of medicine for him.  I liked that, but if the Oyster is going to be your medicine, I’m obligated to give you the following warnings:  Do not read Limerick Oyster if you are allergic to giggles.  Reading may cause drowsiness.  But before you nod off, stay well and count your blessings.  One of my blessings is that I know you’ll all come back for another dose of my medicine next week.  Don’t let me down.

 

Michael                          Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com