Blog #410                                January 16, 2025

 

Our Saturday night plans were cancelled last weekend, so we decided to do something wild and crazy.  “Live, live, live!” said Auntie Mame.  “Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.”   So we decided to go wild.  Did we fly to Tibet?  Did we ride the Ferris Wheel?  Rob a liquor store?  Nope, we had a tête-à-tête and decided to embark on a high-risk venture appropriate only for the young and fearless.  We went to the nearest casino and shared a nickel poker-machine for two hours, rooting and hooray-ing like a crowd watching James Bond beating the arch-villain at baccarat.  And we didn’t lose too much.

 

We played the machine, then departed

But we didn’t leave broken-hearted

‘Cause me and my Queen

We left the machine

With five dollars less than we started.

 

Plus, I got a free Diet-Coke -- shaken, not stirred.

 

Weekly Word.  A tête-à-tête is a private conversation. Head-to-head in French.

 

Larry McMurtry says that the chief paradox of life is that the thing you most want is the thing you are least likely to get.  I cannot agree.  It seems to me that the thing I most wanted in life, at least when I was seventeen, was a small, cute, dark-haired girl I spotted in the High School cafeteria.  And I got her!  I’m still not sure how.  Yes, maybe I was a little smart and a little humorous.  Mostly I was completely devoted and easily trained.  But I certainly wasn’t remotely Rock Hudson-ish.  Of course, in retrospect, neither was Rock.   Did I tell you that my wife could multitask?

 

There is, in the Guinness World Records, a record for Multitasking.  They report it like this: Multitasking has taken on an entirely new meaning for one UT student who can recite the first 100 digits of the mathematical constant pi while solving a Rubik’s Cube and balancing 15 books on her head.  Pshaw!  You call that multitasking?  That’s only three things, not one of which is remotely useful.  My wife would not be caught dead solving a Rubik’s Cube -- I might break a nail.  Or placing books on her head -- my hair!  Or memorizing the digits of pi – what a waste!  But Carol is the undisputed Queen of Multitasking.  This morning, for instance, I walked into the bedroom and found her simultaneously performing four tasks using four different electronic devices and four separate parts of her body:

 

·        Her feet were walking on the treadmill

·        Her eyes were watching the television

·        Her fingers were playing bridge on her iPad

·        Her ears were listening to a Podcast on her phone

 

And she still managed to use her mouth to tell me to change my shirt.  Five tasks at once.  I was so proud!   The woman just has a surfeit of internal energy.  She even has a sign hanging in the kitchen:  Don’t Just Sit There – Nag Your Husband.

 

Look, I’m not trying to make fun of people who multitask.  In fact, I’m jealous.  I cannot read and listen to music at the same time.  I cannot talk and drive.  It amazes me that I can, at the same time, breathe and write things like “Hi there, and welcome back.”

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and staying warm.  Next Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a day which celebrates his birthday five days after it really was.  His actual 96^th birthday was yesterday.  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.

 

Carol will be upset that this blog mentions her so much, but I’ve been with her 24 hours a day for over 57 years – who else would I write about, a three-legged cat?

 

Message from Shakespeare:  It is not enough to speak, but to speak true (A Midsummer Night’s Dream).  Whoa!  I am not just some run-of-the-mill (maybe that should be limp-of-the-mill) cat.  I am Shakespeare, the most famous three-legged cat in the world.  So there, Big Mouth.  Purr!

 

Last week, Blog #409 included a poem.  After the poem I asked if you had made it all the way through, and I received many comments saying, “Yes, I read it.”  But not one of you told me that you “got it”.  You see, there was a trick.  The poem was my confession that I am a compulsive rhymer and also my attempt at breaking that compulsion by making the last two lines not rhyme.  Which they didn’t.  Or did they?  Here is the ending of the poem.

 

To think that I can’t write without a rhyme is just pathetic.

The next two lines I promise won’t at all appear poetic.

It’s surely just as trivial as putting on your socks.

I told you I could do it and I’ve done it.

 

Michael Fox                           

 

Now, you’ll see that by including my signature as part of the last line completes the poem and that I failed at avoiding my compulsive rhyming.  Do you get it now?  Good.  Sorry to take up your time.

 

And speaking of time, there are many ways of measuring time.  Sand in an hourglass, atomic vibrations, the movement of a pendulum, the progress of the sun.  I was at the doctor’s office last week, and he decided that the cough I have is just a lingering vestige of the pneumonia I had in August.  He suggested I get a CAT scan.  I said, “Fine, I’ll have Shakespeare do it.  Here, kitty, kitty.”  He decided a radiologist might do better, so off I went to the hospital.  I arrived early (punctuality is the politeness of kings).  I brought a book (The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett).  When I got home, Carol asked me how long they made me wait.  “About 35 pages,” I replied.  As I said, there are many ways of measuring time.

 

And now, the old sun-dial on my wrist tells me it’s time to go.  Stay well and count your blessings.  See you next week.  Trump will be your President then.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com