Blog #431                                June 12, 2025

 

You’re Special!  That’s what the little pamphlet that was hidden in my library book said.  It went on with some religious stuff, and that’s ok, but it was just nice to be told that I was special.  So, listen up – you also are special.  You take the time each week to read my silly ramblings and that makes you special to me.  So, hi there, and welcome back.  I hope you’re doing well.

 

Yesterday was my anniversary.  Carol’s too.  Fifty-eight years of, as they say, wedded bliss.  I actually don’t think Carol and I have much in common at all besides our mutual social and educational background.  I like animals; she likes clothes.  I like the outdoors; she’s an indoor girl.  I like quiet; she likes television.  I like collecting; she likes clothes.  But in one crucial respect we agree.  We have the same goal in life -- to keep her happy.  It works for us.

 

Seriously, sometimes our differences actually work to our advantage.  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.

 

I pick on my wife a lot in my blogs, but this week I promise I’m not going to pick on her.  Carol is a beautiful and special partner who has given me a spectacular family and a glorious 58 years.  She is the sunshine of my life! So, Honey, in honor of our anniversary, I won’t pick on you this week.

 

There, that was easier than buying a bunch of flowers, wasn’t it?  Seriously, Carol and I have had a wonderful marriage, although sometimes I feel like we have failed to share things equitably.  For instance, we have, between us, two holes-in-one.  She has them both.  And we have, between us, 112 wrinkles.  I have them all.

 

Do you remember last fall when I had that long-lasting, annoying cough for two months?  Well, my wife has it now.  So she tries not to talk.  No, I won’t make some gratuitous joke about that.  I sympathize with her frustration.  So I got out the bell – the little ringy-dingy thing that she has given me every time I have had to recover from some surgery.  Now she has it next to her, and she can ring whenever she needs me.

 

My Honey cannot talk or sing

So I gave her a bell she can ring

One ring of the bell

And I run just like hell

She calls me her Big Ding-a-Ling

 

Speaking of ringy-dingy.  Who used to say “One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy”?

 

Do you recycle?  I mean I love the planet and I hate to waste, but today you need an engineering degree to know how to recycle.  My sweet daughter Stephanie in California has four containers in the kitchen (well, it’s California!).  I can’t remember what each one is for, but when we visit, I always bring an empty suitcase just to put my trash in.  I can’t risk putting a compost item into a landfill bucket.  Heaven knows what havoc that would create in the state economy, so I just bring it all home. 

 

My Jennifer in North Carolina has an even more complicated system.  She has chickens, so you have to decide between compost (she makes her own), 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 down to the coop, she saw me and asked if I wanted some.  I declined, but 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 where I stand.  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”), but the last time we showed a Bible to the chickens, they ate it.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  And of the cannibals that eat each other (Othello).  The chickens eat chicken?  Well, what did you expect from a bird.  A cat wouldn’t eat a cat.  That’s cat-ibalism.  And I don’t get eggplant parmesan either.  Yuck!  And also purr.

 

A friend of mine had a little episode the other day.  He wound up at the hospital where the doctor told him . . .  Well, let’s start by saying what the doctor should have told him.  The doctor should have said, “Your heart started beating too fast; could have been caused by a lot of things.  We’ll keep an eye on it.”  Plain, non-threatening English.  What the doctor actually said was, “You have Paroxysmal Atrial Tachycardia.”  I’ve picked on you doctors before and now I’m going to do it again.  Remember your oath?  “Do no harm” it says.  First of all, scaring the crap out of your patient is harmful.  Second, using a bunch of indigestible words that only doctors can understand is insulting.  Don’t tell me my temperature is 39 and don’t tell me I have mumbo-jumbo-itis.  Speak English!  I think if doctors didn’t have to learn all that gobbledygook, they could graduate medical school in eighteen months.

 

The first time I visited Dr. Blood, he told me I had Monoclonal B-Cell Lymphocytosis.  I turned to him and calmly replied, “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”  Aha!  Now we both understood each other that neither one of us understood each other, and we proceeded to speak English.  Try it sometime.  Your doctor will get the message.  By the way, the monoclonal stuff is just some heebie-jeebie thing in my blood that nobody has to worry about.  Is heebie-jeebie a medical term?  I bet it is.

 

And speaking of mumbo jumbo, it’s time for the Weekly Word.  Gratuitous means unwarranted, lacking good reason.

 

What else?  Oh, one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy?  That was Lily Tomlin as Ernestine, the phone operator.  So turn off the oven, Mama, ‘cause we’re done here.  Stay well and count your blessings.  See you in a week

 

Big Ding-a-Ling                       Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com