Toy Story

    When we were children, we had very few toys. I remember a single cardboard box with miscellaneous blocks, "rescued" pieces, donated and hand-me down toys. We enjoyed them all, and when we were little would spend hours with blocks for walls,random Erecto-set sections as tracks for roads and animal figures to enclose and transport.
   My mother had even fewer toys. But her most cherished were, no surprise, figures of animals. She told me that when they were little and still living in the city of Troy, that, whenever good fortune smiled on them, and they were able to accumulate some money,  she and her siblings would go to the five and ten-cent store and buy little metal banks  in the shape of  animals. She said they cost 5 to 7 cents each.
     She kept them, possibly the only things  she  brought into her married life and she let us play with them. I remember a lion, a donkey, a dog and a deer with a broken-off leg. Nobody cared about that deer; Whatever became of it is a long-gone mystery. Joseph claimed the lion, which I think was blue, Dorothy wanted the donkey. It was silver and was the closest thing to  horses, which she had loved from infancy to the end of her days. I got the black dog. I liked it, but used to wish it didn't have the backpack; I didn't get it at the time. And the dog was not as articulated as the lion and the donkey, but small matter then.
    The donkey was painted gold during the gilded age of Ann Burke. But the dog is just as it was during those halcyon days of yore.

Center of the Universe JACK'S Confectionery Store, "Sara's"

Really, now?

   I was finally contacted in regard to an issue I'd raised with my health care facility. I was told I'd be contacted in a day, but it was more than two weeks before I heard from a manager. She said the reason was that she hadn't been given my date of birth. And "Do you know how many people have the same name as you?  There are many, many."  Well, no, I didn't know that but when I googled it later, I found the answer, or an answer, to be 19 in NYS, and most did not have the same spelling as my last name. I told her that it was hard to believe my DOB was not available, as I've been asked for it thousands of times. I was considerate enough not to say my telephone number and email address were available, but that would be too simple.
   As to my concern that my portal is not private, that my information could go elsewhere, since I have not always received the medical reports, she responded by saying that  if I did not receive a report, I should call. I said (1) that it is very difficult to get through to a responsible party there. She did agree. (2) I said not all doctors enter reports. She said surgical notes are not entered. I said some are, though not as detailed as the interloping report. She looked at the data, and agreed.
  She will have the illegitimate entry removed asap.  She gave me her private number so that if I have any other questions or comments about anything, I can call her direct. What more could I want.

Me and Sara's Store

     "Be careful not to let it get in the road," was the caution. But too late: the cat, mostly white with tan markings, escaped and ran directly into the road in front of Sara's store. And sure enough just as a car was passing by. The car brushed the cat. It didn't seem badly injured, but no one could be sure. Sara said to me, since I seemed to be  a responsible party, that, pending a trip to the vet to see if the animal was hurt, I would have to take it up to her house and put it in the porch. I asked whether the front porch or the back porch. She said the back porch.
   I brought the cat to Sara's house and around to the back porch, which was enclosed. The cat did not want to stay there, and I had a hard time keeping it inside while I closed the door. It was a double door and closed much like the shed in our yard. Because the cat kept trying to get out, I was unable to close the doors correctly. They were slightly ajar.  I wanted them to close securely but was afraid the cat would escape if I opened the doors to adjust them. So I left it the way it was, though I felt uncomfortable doing so.
    A while later, I dared to open the doors to check on the cat. There in the back porch was a wooden swing set and the boys, apparently my grandsons, two of them anyway, were swinging away, with the cat swinging in a third swing, completely distracted and content to be there. I felt relieved and thought that the boys should be praised for their efforts to appease the cat. I left them there.

Puny, Pathetic, but Purple

Diagnose This:

(Sorry, Duke Health)
Findings  BONES:  Postsurgical changes to lumbar region
      A)  Reading represents surgery of other organs in general area of spine
      B)  Naturally occurring bone fusion looks like surgical intervention
      C)  Don't ask any questions or I'll have to guess

Note to Dylan Thomas--"There's a pill for that."

"Do not go gentle into that good night.
  Rage, rage against the dying of the light."