End of another month, time is on the run. Tonight is trick or treat night here in the Heartland. Still reeling from last years Halloween. Last year, when we invested all our money in a pumpkin farm, then the govt. called off Halloween! Right now, I kind of figure, it is more prudent to just stayed holed up.
So here you are, all of you senior Trick or Treaters in the spirit of David Letterman:
“How you know you are too old to Trick or Treat.”
10. You get winded from knocking on the door. 9. You have to have another kid chew the candy for you. 8. You ask for high fiber candy only. 7. When someone drops a candy bar in your bag, you lose your balance and fall over. 6. People say: ‘Great Boris Karloff Mask. And you’re not wearing a mask. 5. When the door opens you yell, ‘Trick or… And can’t remember the rest. 4. By the end of the night, you have a bag full of restraining orders. 3. You have to carefully choose a costume that won’t dislodge your hairpiece. 2. You’re the only Power Ranger in the neighborhood with a walker.
And the number one reason Seniors should not go Trick Or Treating…
This past week was a pretty good week, all in all. Most of it was pleasant and positive in nature, and that always helps. Did get some pretty negative stuff over a couple days about mid-week, but it wasn’t anything that could not be handled. Especially if you are a kind, generous, and the wonderfully sensitive guy like I is.
A few detractors, I call them “non-fans” but that is no big deal either. If you chum the waters, you have to expect to find some sharks showing up from time to time. A long week, some of it good and some of it, not so good.
On the downside (there is always a downside), I hate answering negative emails, and they drive me up the proverbial wall.
Two in particular really have been weighing heavily on my mind. They addressed the loss of a long time friend, and another was a spouse, these are the types of emails I just cannot bear to answer.
Interesting week … Life is not measured by the numbers of breath we take … but rather … By the moments that take our breath away. I guess it would all be rather boring, slow and mundane, if everything went the way WE wanted it to.
It would be nice to receive something uplifting and positive in nature every now and then, something like: No two snowflakes are exactly alike. All snowflakes start out the same: as a hexagonal crystal formed on a single particle of dust. As it falls through a cloud, the flake begins to change shape dramatically from the cold and moisture inside the cloud, building on itself in a complex pattern. The only way you could have two identical snowflakes would be if they followed the exact same pattern as they fell through the sky … which they don’t.
It is the same with people.
No two people are exactly the same. You are totally unique and different from all those folks who surround you each day. What makes you special is: “When I am around you, I feel more intellectually challenged. Thank you for that. When I am around you I come alive, feel inspired, and have fun. You have that uncanny characteristic that just naturally seems to bring about the best in people; those who you come in contact with definitely are rewarded by your presence. Thanks for having such a great impact on me.”
Next time you get a “downer email” send something positive and uplifting back …. Something simple and to the point … Just tell ‘em …. “Thank You for being so dog-gone special” ….. Yeah that would be okay, that would be just fine.
As the week moves slowly towards the weekend, I am once again, thankful. If there was no such thing as a weekend, I do believe, I would have to invent it. It has been just that kind of week for me, and I am ready for some rest.
Today was a bad day, medicine that the doctor has ordered for me makes me ill, sometimes the cure is worse than the disease it seems. It makes me nauseous, dizzy and one of the ill side effects is explosive diarrhea … which translates to slick, slicker and get the hell out of my way!
Today was as I said, a bad day for all of it. I guess this is why they refer to it as “practicing medicine.”
They are going to get it right one way or the other.
On another health related issue, I am reading where if you sleep with your pets, that this could be a bad move on your part. They have discovered that people who sleep with their pets in bed are generally speaking, less healthy than those who do not.
Your pet will bring other parasites to bed, fleas, ticks, other small creepy things that crawl in the night and they in turn bite you and transfer the illness to you. (And here I sat, thinking I would not have anything appropriate or scary for Halloween this year)
So Lassie or Fluffy could be (unwillingly) passing onto you bad health in their nocturnal visits to your last sanctuary of rest. It would seem that Man ‘s Best Friend, could be just a tad less than that, if you sleep with him. Taking this all one step further (as I often prone to do) I guess long wet kisses directly on the mouth are out of question too.
Cat Lovers unfortunately are not much better off.
All of you internet folks who have cats are not immune or safe. Now you have something else to worry about other than the occasional hairball. Funny how things work out isn’t it? All those times, when my Daddy admonished me, “Son, if you lie down and sleep with a dog, you are going to get up smelling like one.” Turns out he was ahead of his time (in dog years I suppose) and right as rain. Been one of those weeks, like I said, “Glad it is almost the weekend.”
I went to the barbershop yesterday and they had a sign in the window and it read: “You can have sexy hair, for $13.99.” So the girl said, “What will it be today?” and I mentioned the sign in the window and she smiled and said, “Yeah, that is funny isn’t it?” So I told her, “Take it off the ears, block it in back and leave the top alone.” (Don’t want anyone messing with the two hairs that I have left up there).
I don’t care what she says, “There is something deep in my DNA that tells me I that am too sexy for my height … some of us have it and some of us don’t” Friday in the country, I am now $13.99 ahead of the game … like a sheep ready for the slaughter, freshly shorn and ready for the weekend, I eagerly await my fate with great anticipation.
Your beauty haunts me standing there in front of the Christmas tree such a portrait of loveliness in your own special way.
In your endeavors Will you allow me the pleasure The moment to savor To treasure.
All the wonderful things you must be.
Permit me to reach down And wipe the tears from your eyes To lay your beautiful body Warmly against my side
Allow me the pleasure to experience your grace, beauty and charm If only to treasure The memory of all the good times We could have shared together
I guess on certain fall days Chilled by the winds of time A man’s heart just naturally strays As it is lifted up and carried away To lighter More pleasant things.
What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?
Jacques Lacan
Here you go, another public indictment against “public education.” Or as my old friend Brownie used to say …. “Edumaycashun.” Geographically speaking, you get the drift, dontcha?
This week I am reading where they are telling cab drivers in New York that they will fine them $350 for honking their horns unnecessarily. Which I agree with completely, we need far less noise in this world we all live in.
Now here is something that is not good news. The powers that be in New York City have decided that grading papers in public is not a good idea. They are telling teachers that they cannot grade papers in public and that sucks (for lack of a better word). Which I do NOT agree with at all.
My English teacher in high school was Mrs. McGee, a nice personable, kind woman of great patience. She deserved much more in life, than the white pasty faced kid who never seemed to get it or could pay attention. She taught me all the things that my parents didn’t have time to do, she did it cheerfully and often with great reserve.
We had our moments, Mrs. McGee and I.
I am sure if she were around today and could see and read Creative Endeavors she would be proud of where it is that I have come in life. (We might not be much in the world of publishing and all that … But baby, we are all we got.) Her influence and her steady hand can be found within the pages of this website just about anywhere you look. She helped to shape, mold and guide me thru my youth and most importantly … She taught me a thing or two.
New York City for lack of something “important to do” this week sic’ed (sp) cops on teachers grading papers in public and asked them to stop the practice. As cops are prone to do when called, they showed up and asked the teachers to move on. Which I find not only personally disturbing but outright disgusting. With a mountain of problems in this city, this is what they find important and harmful to the public good? How warped is this? (comments section is open take a shot at it, three guesses, the first two don’t count).
It appears that “public places in New York City” are no longer just that … public. No matter that they have signs of protest or whatever, we are being overloaded everyday with “so-called societal rules of behavior.” As quickly as a surgeon with a sharp knife, one more freedom is removed from the fabric of our lives. This is just another example of it. Each day in this country, our treasured freedoms seem to be falling by the wayside in the name of security or the common good. Where it will end is anyone’s guess.
What possible harm could come from a small group of people quietly sitting and grading papers in a public arena.
Grading papers in public isn’t that big of a deal to me, it should be allowed and there should not be a second thought about it. Now changing out a baby diaper in the booth next to me at Denny’s … That should be addressed quickly and firmly … but this? I say leave the teachers alone.
One of the things Mrs. McGee taught me was this: “The more you find out about the world, the more opportunities there are to laugh at it.“ But this, leaning on teachers for nothing more than grading papers in public is just not funny. If New York City is setting the stage for the rest of the country, then I say it is time to stop the bus … I need to get off.
“So tell me” the voice in my head asks, “are you living a life of meaning?”
“Oh please,” I thought, give me a break; I reach for my coffee, something to give me pause for contemplation, to relieve the moment.
Again the voice in my head says “If it should all end tomorrow, and you don’t wake up to face the day, will this have been a life that meant something? Have you made your mark in this world; have you left anything to score your passing?” Early morning meditations on questions great and small.
Quiet reflecting on the transitions in this life, and expectations of what is to come. What are my new core values, what exactly is the good life that I seek with complete abandon, and most importantly, “Will I discover it before the end of this year?”
Age old questions I suppose.
Tuesday morning, this is me, in the flesh. Waking up to a brand new day and finding that what had once given meaning to my life, was now as stale and as tasteless as a cup of three-minute, micro-waved coffee from yesterday’s pot. No matter how much sweetener you put in it, it just doesn’t quite measure up.
I would like to lay my head on the pillow some night and in my dream, take a pin and pitch it towards a map. And it would land on a town in California, in the San Joaquin Valley, maybe Manteca or Modesto. And I would sell this house here in the Extreme Weather Capitol of the United States and move to my little farm in the valley, not far from San Francisco.
Ideally, I would have a new house, a pond full of fish, some crappie a few wide mouth bass. A dozen or so chickens, maybe a few of those pasty-white faced Herefords, the cattle with the sad, angelic faces, on a couple of hundred acres under the California sun.
It would be so nice, to lay down in the dark, listen to the whirl of the fan beside the bed, and reach into the darkness for the answers. This is typical of me, my life, always searching in the most ridiculous place for the seemingly impracticable answers from an impossible source.
Reaching into the dark and pulling out an answer, not knowing what is coming next, can be a pleasant state if you trust it. The difficulty is that you have to keep trusting it even when there’s no evidence that it’s working. Unfortunately, much like last night, the end result is often what I call “nuisance dreaming” not quite a nightmare, perhaps an unfinished subconscious reflection of my current condition.
Today I will visit my hammock and for a short while sleep peacefully in the shank of the afternoon, my sweet release, when everything is supposed to disappear for a little while.
Everyday someone sends me something that just blows my socks off! There are some really talented people on the net. Make sure you watch the entire video, including the credits at the very end.
Now there are winners and losers in life, that in itself, is a given. Like the guy who was down on his luck, nothing was working for him, and when his IPOD stopped functioning, he called the service help line for some assistance.
But somehow, mistakenly, he got some suicide prevention hot-line in Pakistan and when he blurted out all his problems, they asked him if he could drive a truck, and when he said “Yes.” they got all excited.
Reach out … Reach out … Reach out and kill somebody!
Bad week for terrorism, with the news that a suicide bomber planning an attack on Moscow was blown to bits when an unexpected text message to a cell phone attached to the bomb detonated it. The message was from her phone-service provider, wishing her a happy birthday.
Is that poetic justice or what?
Have you ever noticed these motorcycles going down the road with an attached trailer? I saw one this weekend, and I got to thinking about it. “I mean, if you have to take that much stuff with you … wouldn’t it be a better deal to just buy a car?”
Don’t you think that it kind of takes away from the “ultimate freedom of the open road” and the adventure on life’s highway mystique that a lot of these pretend bikers seem to portray.
We went junking this weekend, we like to get out on Saturday’s and hit the garage sales, see what folks are selling off, look for a bargain or that “thing that I just cannot live without.” It seems a new attitude has hit the market place, garage sales used to be people unloading too much stuff. Now it appears that folks are selling just about everything to generate funds, that it isn’t like it used to be, kind of desperate now.
This one guy had this old bus for sale, definitely the biggest thing we happened to come across, he wanted to know what it was worth … I told him “not much.” Which considering the circumstances, was about as honest as I could be.
Money is tight, and times are hard, and if you can’t get anything for it, you might as well just keep it. It is no small wonder. We build roads in countries where people ride a donkey to town for their staples, we send politicians to the oil rich states to negotiate for us instead of businessmen. We have troops in 147 countries world wide.
Look around, every state in the nation is experiencing problems, you read the daily paper and every other page has some kind of article on “tax increases” or funding problems. The office of comptroller in Illinois admitted it’s “a deadbeat state,” so cash starved that it has hiked income tax rates by some 66% and simply stopped paying the $6 billion it owed to schools, pharmacies, and a host of other creditors. California, once the fifth largest economy in the world, is fending off vendors with IOU’s and Arizona has sold off it state House and Senate buildings and stopped covering organ transplants for Medicaid patients.
Now I understand there is a big push on to get “Mexicans to purchase a home in this country.” Part of the new deal, “you buy a house and we give you a visa.” Desperate times call for desperate measures I guess. Next thing you will possibly hear will be the return of the NINJA loans, so popular with bankers a few years ago.
NINJA = No Income, No Job, No Assets.
Nothing worth a snap on at the local Cinema, so we headed down town for a bowl of spaghetti and a trip to the local comedy store. So, for lack of any other suitable venue to take our minds’ off the current round of insanity coming out of Washington, we headed out to the big city.
Driving the eighteen miles to town Saturday night we eventually ended up at a comedy club downtown. One of the headliners was a hypnotist. I guess he was pretty good, but I felt sorry for the act I saw. He hypnotized five guys on stage and then dropped the mike on his foot and said, “Well Nuts … Screw Me!”
What happened next will haunt me forever.
Monday morning, I got those wake up its early, wash behind your ears they’re dirty, eat your eggs and oatmeal rush to work blues. Another promise of an exciting week here in the heartland is on the horizon.
There are days when I literally wish a comet would come and take me out. Just end my pain, do it now, quickly and with a certain degree of finality. Russian scientists have been warning for a little while, that a 26-million ton asteroid called Apohphis might crash into the earth on April 13, 2036. First thing I thought, “Oh-oh, another Friday the 13th ruse, but if it happens or when it supposed to happen it will be on a Sunday.”
Armageddon?
So we have, if the story is correct (I kinda doubt it), a huge piece of real estate hurtling thru space at a fantastic rate of speed. I would like Species Ending Events for $100 Alex. This of course will cause giant tsunamis, global chaos, and the death of tens of millions of people.
But lucky for us here in the good ole USA, we have NASA, the same people who put into orbit a huge camera that takes somewhat fuzzy pictures and misplaced (lost) a lunar rover on the planet Mars. They say their calculations indicate that Apohphis path will be a near miss, with its chances of hitting the Earth at 250,000 to 1. Here is another take on it if you care to read more? Everyone mark your Mayan Calendar. Oh by the way, they are now saying that the Mayan Calendar is virtually flawed and could be off as much as six months or more. On some days it just doesn’t pay to get outta bed, y’know it?
While we are the topic of numbers, how about this.
Who is doing what … with you know what … to you know who … and YOU voted for them!
An analysis of 20 years of politicians’ sex scandals reveals that Republicans have slightly more of them … some 34 since 1990, compared with only 27 for the Democrats. Republicans have had more scandals that involve prostitutes, politicians claiming to stand for “family values,” seem to lean towards underage boys. Democrats scandals are more likely to involve female staffers, sexual harassment and underage girls. Of course most of us know the problem here. Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions.
While we are on the subject of bottom-feeders.
Here is a mix of the good and the bad. Wild oysters are in decline world wide and are now somewhat rare and expensive. This is due to overharvesting, pollution and disease. 85% of all wild oyster beds are now believed to be functionally extinct. Three quarters of the worlds surviving wild oysters now live in just five regions of North America, out of the five, only one was found to be healthy. So I guess we can all count on seeing the elected boys in Washington DC voting in a big subsidy for the folks that make Viagra or Ceallis … The natural stuff isn’t going to be available much longer.
This afternoon, I am standing in the express line at China-World (20 items or less) watching this lady unload AN ENTIRE GROCERY CART stuffed to the point of being over-flowing and all I can think of is ……..C’mon comet.
Have a good weekend, or don’t, it’s still your choice.
Went to the doctor this week, well actually, have been to the doctor twice in just over ten days now. Which if you are a normal person, is never a pleasant sort of experience.
Doctor’s it seems never have any good news for you, they always want to take from you something that you enjoy immensely or have grown quite fond of over the years, and replace it with a little salmon colored pink pill.
Such is the case here.
A new page in the book of life has rolled over, and on the very top of the new one, I see “High Blood Pressure.” This is not really all that new, I have been married to the same woman for over thirty-years and this would give anyone “high blood pressure.” Come to think of it, she most likely has it too. If she doesn’t, she aint that far away from it rest assured. You know what is coming next dontcha?
Give up something.
Funny how things change. I used to believe that your kids gave you high blood pressure, now days I am finding out, I have to be nice to them, as they are the one’s who pick out your nursing home. Other things can lead to high blood pressure, the two neighbor ladies taking up all the aisle at WalMart visiting completely oblivious to other shoppers in the store, or road rage would do it, but now I find that just getting out of bed, watching five to ten minutes of the local news, is enough to jump start it for the day.
Who would have ever imagined that.
This is how it works. You go see the doctor, he or she as the case might be, and then he or she as the case might be, diagnoses you and then you are required to give up something and of course, given a new prescription to take with you as you leave. Right now, after having added this new one to my daily routine, I am now taking “A Ford Hubcap full of lug nuts twice a day” and possibly in line for even more!
Which is kind of sad, when you stop to consider this.
At this point in my life, I have given up: Smoking, drinking, cheating at cards, most of the ten food groups, trifling with other monkeys’ monkeys, lying, popcorn and baby-back ribs. In order to keep my health (which they now say is borderline or marginal) I am required to spit it out, if it tastes good, and a second portion, well, that is out of the question.
Which makes me wonder what I am going to have to surrender now? I suppose it will be coffee, that might be the next thing for me to give up. All of this just to stay above ground every morning and of course, pay my taxes.
At this juncture in life I am discovering that everything that I like is either adding to my weight or killing me softly. And that is a real bummer, a major disappointment. We have a talking scale in the bathroom and when I step up onto it it will say …. “Come back when you are alone.” Which is a real let down. I don’t understand why a doctor cannot understand why it is that when you reach a certain age in life, you become friends with your fat? I don’t want to burn it off, and my metabolism such as it is, won’t even begin to lite a fire in the first place.
Another thing I found out this week, I have the beginning of cataracts, which I did not understand (turns out they are quite common at this age) and I asked my doctor “What causes that?” and she replied, “Too many birthdays.” That is another thing I do not understand, “the sense of humor that permeates the medical community.” These strange sayings that they use to assure us they know what is going on with our worn out old tired bodies.
Stuff like: “Our tests indicate that you have some blood in your grease” and we will have to put you on this cholesterol medicine.
There is good news, I have started walking out to the mailbox to retrieve the mail each day. Just yesterday I learned that I could have possibly won a contest that I did not even enter, perhaps I have a shot at it, I read where I could have won the Clearing House Sweepstakes! I also got a letter from a local health spa that gave me three free visits and they suggested that I bring some loose fitting clothing. Which is ludicrous. If I had any loose fitting clothing I would not need to be heading out to a health spa. Give me a break.
Everything in this country any more is either: “Illegal, Immoral or Fattening.”
Maybe it is me, but I just don’t get it. But then again, I don’t understand American Idol, The X Factor, Dancing With The Stars and most likely, by most standards will never learn how to do the Pa so-Dobley, so I guess it all evens out in the end. Perhaps I can talk them (my own personal army of medical professionals, he or she as the case might be) into allowing me to mix my own prescriptions?
That would be nice, I could relive the sixties again, that was cool, “those years were really good to me” what it is that I can remember of them, that is.
Life is short!
Break the rules!
Forgive quickly!
Love truly, laugh uncontrollably.
And never regret anything that made you smile
OOO
