Close Shave

   Did you ever hear of anybody who used an electric razor to shave both legs, and only afterwards realized that the blade guard had been left on the whole time?  No!  It wasn't me!

Sweet Charity

I'm thinking of opening  a Gofundme site to arrange a decent burial for the 300 Norwegian reindeer victims of a lightning strike.

Rituals and Rites

Opening Events-----Okay, good
Closing Ceremonies.........Yuck
   Same goes for victory celebrations and parades, post-game interviews, de-sanctifications, and post-mortems of any kind.  Let it go.

School Days

     I can remember walking to school, mouthing the letters of the spelling words.  We did have spelling tests in first grade back then, and so far I hadn't missed any words.  My mother would go over the list with me and everything had made perfect sense.  Until this time:  there were 2 words on the list that threw me.  The words were "store" and "white."   The first I thought I had, but I could make no sense of the word white, so I relied on memorization.  Around the corner by the Valley Inn, past the Methodist Church, and up the steps into  the red brick school building, I repeated the spellings over and over, my stomach churning every step of the way.
    I was in my seat, pencil in hand, blank sheet of paper before me, awaiting the dictation of the words.  The rest of the list, as usual, was easy, no problem, even the word store, once written, looked right to me. But I panicked at the word white.  I knew it started with a "w" but beyond that, I knew what all the letters were, but had no idea of where they came after the w.  I tried, writing over the letters I thought needed changing.  The word looked scratchy and scrawled.
    Then, the moment of dread---the arrival of the teacher to correct the test.  The teacher was Mrs.Flynn,  to my first-grade self a tall and foreboding presence.  She loomed above my desk, over my shoulder.  And she had her pencil with her, with the sharpened red end at the ready. She scrolled it down over my list of words, and Horrors! stopped at my feeble attempt.  "What is this supposed to be? she asked, in her stern, schoolmarm voice.  I was sure everyone in the room, including the second-grade section on the left side of the room, was watching, aghast.  I whispered "white" and she halted the progress of her pen down the list and laid down a big red Check Mark next to the offending entry.  She said no more, just walked away.
     Is that all there is to a fire?



   
 

Liberated and/or Doomed

    Maybe a mixture of both.  That's the feeling you get when you cancel your doctors' appointments.  It's not that I don't believe in health care, but there is a time and a place for everything.
   Kids hardly ever seem to get sick anymore, except in the most terrible instances where the poor little tykes are diagnosed with cancer.  Back in the day, kids routinely got all the "childhood diseases," and we were no exception:  Chicken pox, which was usually considered a minor disease, when compared to the others; Mumps, which was so very uncomfortable;  Whooping Cough, which threatened Dorothy's life during her severe coughing and strangling spells; Measles, the "regular, red" sort, from which I got so sick I wanted to die;  German Measles, another mild, "You're only sick for about one week" ailment. Our old school Report Cards document our absences during these sieges, some for weeks at a time, and we loved to go to school, hated missing it.
   Even a generation later, my own children, 2 of them, were very sick with Chicken Pox, and its lasting effects of blisters and styes.  They were not yet able to be protected from Mumps, which caused them a lot of misery and pain, from which the youngest was saved due to the advent of the vaccine.
    For a time, there was, and maybe still is, a theory that there are so many more child cancer victims today because children are now spared from the childhood diseases which routinely took the lives of those kids with the weakest immune systems. I think environmental causes have pretty much displaced that theory, though it probably holds a grain of truth, if not more.
    The focus of modern medicine is, and rightfully so, on maintaining health and preventing diseases.  What can be done for treating acquired and chronic conditions can be undoubtedly helpful, some if not all the time.   After all, what doctors and health providers do is prolong your life, not save it.
 

The Case of the Fourth Air Conditioner.

   I couldn't figure out how we came to possess 4 "modern" A.C.'s.  I should have known:  David sent it, for his father.  It is the only one we have that has a remote control, so the temperature and air flow can be regulated without his getting out of bed.

A Different View

   I woke up this morning, and something seemed different. As if something important had occurred.  But everything is the same, exactly the same. And I'm not superstitious, or psychic.  Maybe the planet changed course in the middle of the night.

A Fortune

Pamella Couthiner contacted me through a feedback I'd left for the VA several months ago.  She has terminal throat cancer, lost her husband, is from England but is now in France and has chosen to donate to me her fortune of 60,000 somethings, maybe Euros.  I just need to contact her; who says nobody cares?

Toast Crumbs in the Butter

    It's a hard truth to have to face, but when no one else has access, you are the one who is responsible for the toast crumbs in the butter container. You alone must bear responsibility for the spilled coffee stains on the kitchen counter, and only you could have left the front door ajar instead of closing it securely for the night.   But then, nobody knows and nobody sees and nobody cares but me.

Frozen in Time ( Another Draft, 2016)

  While the house he grew up in may have undergone some changes, according to the recent pictures and some background knowledge, the house next door appeared exactly the same.  Well kept up,with the lawn perfectly maintained, as in the old days.  A young couple lived next door, the friendliest and most helpful neighbors the senior Schroders could have imagined. In our early marriage years, when we visited Kingston frequently, the family consisted of  Jan and Jerry, their son, a sweet little boy called Jay, and their toddler daughter Jill, who had completely stolen the heart of Dave's father.  Her mother was very conscious of not intruding when the neighbors had company, but occasionally the child would come over anyway and Herman would have her stand on the footstool in the living room so he could "interview" her and delight in her reactions, before her mother came to claim her.  A few years later, a baby boy joined the family, Jimmy, a gentle and sweet little child.
    But time marches on, Dave's parents gone, 140 Wrentham sold, the swimming pool, the focus of many a summer visit, filled in by the new owners.  Dave's father had a penchant for acquiring that which would bring the family together, and an inground pool, though not exactly a novelty at the time, was rather cutting edge.  He installed the pool, with help from neighbors and family, the weekend that Marilyn was being born.  Hello, grandchidren in the pool!
    When Dave heard that David's curiosity had led to his driving by the old Kingston homestead, a communication on Skype or such, Dave suggested he stop in and see Jan and Jerry.  Their 3 kids were grown and gone by now.  But no one answered the door.  David took pictures of their house also; it was so close to #140.
   Their house and lawn looked exactly the same.  No one had removed their front porch as had been done on the Schroder house.  Dave called to mind the last he had heard about Jerry.  An old mutual friend told him he was accustomed  to seeing  Jerry riding his bicycle around town.  It was easy to picture things as they had been, the inside as frozen in time as the outward appearance.
    Today, Dave took it upon himself to call Jerry, and tell him David had driven by his house, but no one was home.  Jerry answered the phone, from the haven of his seemingly unchanged home.  He told Dave that Jan, his wife, had died several weeks ago.  He said that his daughter Jill, had died several years ago, suddenly, at the age of 44.  And that he no longer rode his bicycle around the town.
 

Frozen in Time

  While the house he grew up in may have undergone some changes, according to the recent pictures and some background knowledge, the house next door appeared exactly the same.  Well kept up,with the lawn perfectly maintained, as in the old days.  A young couple lived next door, the friendliest and most helpful neighbors the senior Schroders could have imagined. In our early marriage years, when we visited Kingston frequently, the family consisted of  Jan and Jerry, their son, a sweet little boy called Jay, and their toddler daughter Jill, who had completely stolen the heart of Dave's father.  Her mother was very conscious of not intruding when the neighbors had company, but occasionally the child would come over anyway and Herman would have her stand on the footstool in the living room so he could "interview" her and delight in her reactions, before her mother came to claim her.  A few years later, a baby boy joined the family, Jimmy, a gentle and sweet little child.
    But time marches on:   Dave's parents gone, 140 Wrentham sold, the swimming pool, the focus of many a summer visit, filled in by the new owners.  Dave's father had a penchant for acquiring that which would bring the family together, and an inground pool, though not exactly a novelty at the time, was rather cutting edge.  He installed the pool, with help from neighbors and family, the weekend that Marilyn was being born.  Hello, grandchidren in the pool!
    When Dave heard that David's curiosity had led to his driving by the old Kingston homestead, a communication by Skype or such, Dave suggested he stop in and see Jan and Jerry.  Their 3 kids were grown and gone by now.  But no one answered the door.  David took pictures of their house also; it was so close to #140.
   Their house and lawn looked exactly the same.  No one had removed their front porch as had been done on the Schroder house.  Dave called to mind the last he had heard about Jerry.  An old mutual friend told him he was accustomed  to seeing  Jerry riding his bicycle around town.  It was easy to picture things as they had been, the inside as frozen in time as the outward appearance.
    Today, Dave took it upon himself to call Jerry, and tell him David had driven by his house, but no one was home.  Jerry answered the phone, from the haven of his seemingly unchanged home.  He told Dave that Jan, his wife, had died several weeks ago.  He said that his daughter Jill, had died several years ago, suddenly, at the age of 44.  And that he no longer rode his bicycle around the town.
 

Stir Crazy

   While I probably am, I wonder about something else:   Why does every chef and cook on television use the word "stir" as a noun when describing how to follow a recipe.  "I pour in the ingredients and give it a stir."   "Make sure you give it a good stir."  Didn't people used to just stir the stuff up.  Now you can't simply stir something, you must give it a stir.  Maybe nouns are sexier than verbs.

The A.C.'s

  We bought our first air conditioner one day in July, a few months after we were married and living in an upstairs apartment in Schaghticoke.  The weather that summer of 1968 might have set some kind of record because that apartment was so stifling hot it was intolerable.  After a miserably sleepless night, we drove to some store in Albany where they were having a truck sale of air conditioners in the parking lot.  It was the window inset type and and made life tolerable for the rest of the summer.   I think it ceased to work after a while; I don't remember what happened to it.  If memory serves, we also had, for a while, an air conditioner from Kingston when the folks down there installed central air.  That air conditioner may have gone to Don first and then here, or maybe it was the other way around.  Some summers in our house were hotter than others, but we always installed them, using them frequently or only occasionally.  When my uncle's wife died, she kindly bequeathed to me her 2 air conditioners.  Some years we installed all 3.
   One feature all those air conditioners had in common was their weight; they were pretty good sized and they were heavy as all get-out.  But every year Dave faithfully brought them up from the basement and then back down for the winter.  That was the procedure for many years until about a decade or so ago.  Those old A.C.'s refused to die, but they were so darn heavy that it was getting tedious to handle them.  One day we bought a new, lightweight one, I think at Rite-Aid.  That worked out so well that we bought a second one the next year, and left the monsters in the basement.  I know one of the guys at Dave's office said he would like one of the older ones, for what reason I can't remember, something about the cooling agent.  So we still had 2. I think Dave brought another to a recycling center some years ago.  I know we had the last behemoth until last summer when I put a sign on our lawn offering it and a dysfunctional dryer for free.  A man responded and while he hoisted the clothes dryer with no difficulty,he said the A.C. was the heaviest he's ever encountered.
     So we had the 2 later-model white units, and when Dorothy's friend Gwen was moving back to the city, she  offered her brand new AC to Dorothy to give to us, as she knew Dorothy had central air.  That accounts for three air conditioning units, but I can't explain*why there were four in the house.  At least one too many, for our present purposes, with  only 2 people living here now.  I got rid of one of them today.  It looked quite new, was in the original box, though I don't know its origin.
* In addition to the 2 modern AC's we had bought in recent years, at Rite Aid and such, plus the one from Gwen via Dorothy, the newest of all, just a few months old, was a gift from David to his father.  It has a remote control for easy temperature and fan adjustment.  Thank you, David.
 

Olympic Observations

Criteria for Olympic Athletes
      Beautiful, white, perfect, prominent teeth, and minimal boobage.

Mayhem in the Morning

     This morning, quite early, I was vacuuming the floor, trying to prevent the baby, now in the crawling stage, from being covered in cat hair.  I saw a small spider on the kitchen floor.  I aimed the vacuum at it; it scurried away.  Or attempted to do so. I pursued it as it scurried, caught up with it, and ran the vacuum right over it.  I hope it's dead.  I hope criminal charges are not forthcoming.