Roundabout

So, what do you think about roundabouts?  I kind of like them.  Well, I like the one that is in our neighborhood anyway.  My friend that owns my favorite Italian restaurant (Sgt. Peffers) hates it.  That particular intersection was formally a six way stop.  People in a hurry were constantly not stopping or not taking their proper turn, or the overly-cautious were forever paralyzed and fucking everything up by not even taking their turn to move along.  It was always a rush hour mind-dicking and you could count on a fender-bendered every other day.  It could get pretty annoying.  I mean how hard is it to pay attention.  Get off your damn cell phone!  The rule is if you’re first to arrive at a six way stop, you’re first to go.  If you arrive at the intersection at the same time, the driver on the right has right-of-way.  It can’t be more simple, although I have a good high school friend, Al, who honestly had trouble distinguishing right from left.  I suppose that could create some confusion. The person that rectified my friend’s problem was my high school football coach.  He got tired of watching Al run into me on our end sweeps and fixed everything with a permanent marker and scribing a huge “R” and “L” on the backs of  his hands, a technique I believe Al still implements to this very day.

Anyway the roundabout was supposed to correct the traffic confusion.  But my friend Tim that owns my favorite Italian restaurant thinks there have been even more accidents since the roundabout was installed.  I guess he should know.  His restaurant is only a half a block away.  He might be right.  I can’t give you any statistical info about it.  I suppose I could do some research and get back to you, but if you think that’s going to happen you have your head up your ass.

My neighborhood roundabout is a little atypical.  Those of us in the neighborhood call it the “peanut,” because it has a figure 8 shape to it.  It sort of looks like the picture at the left, only it’s a lot bigger, and then instead of eyes and a mouth there are a bunch of plants.  Ann, one of my good friends in the neighborhood, takes care of those.  I don’t know how she keeps all that stuff looking so good.  I mean the flowers there are surrounded by concrete and they bake in the hot sun, but they always stay amazingly perky.  There really is no convenient way to supply water that I know of.   When I was driving through there one night last summer though I remember seeing some guy standing in the middle of the “peanut” urinating on the begonias.  Maybe he makes a watering visit every night.   That could be.  As well as my friends restaurant, there is a bar just down the street.  The clientele of that establishment are the fervently loyal kind is what I’ve heard.

Merry-Go-Round

Another of my neighbors who is kind of a senile old coot got one of his grandchildren all confused because he kept calling the roundabout a merry-go-round and when the little bastard found out the merry-go-round was never going to materialize, he went berserk I guess and threw the Tonka truck he was playing with through a living room window. That’s the story I got from Mr. Nostrum down the street anyway.  We all call him Mr. Nostril because he’s always sticking his nose into other peoples business.

What I really like to do is slip away and drive through the “peanut” in mid-morning or mid-afternoon when traffic is minimal.  With no one to interfere, I often cruise around and around several times.  It reminds me of driving curved roads in the mountains.  I love driving in the mountains.  Not a fancy interstate through the mountains though.  I like a nice curvy mountain road with lots of hairpin turns and switchbacks, the kind that scare the shit out of my wife.  For that provision it’s hard to beat the Bighorn mountains just west of my hometown of Sheridan Wyoming, and the Snowy Range in southeastern Wyoming works out nicely too, but I only get out there once a year or so.  So I just have to make do with the “peanut.”  If you’re ever in town, I’ll hang a  fresh pine-sented air freshener from my rear view mirror, and  while we listen to the long version of John Denver’s “Rocky Mountin High” I will show you how I put my SUV through its paces swerving back and forth through my neighborhood roundabout.  It will be fun.

It’s only because of my extremely sensitive conscience and sense of honesty that I am going to tell you this.  I have been unfaithful.  I could have gotten away with it.  I mean my wife doesn’t have pictures or video or anything.  She can’t prove a thing.  But I could never live with myself, so I came out and admitted it.  So she knows now.  I feel like shit, yet having an open discussion with her I think has cleared the air, and it certainly provided me with a profound sense of relief.  I just hope our marriage is still salvageable.

Things started unravelling the day she found those two spots on some clothing.   Paradoxically the spots weren’t anywhere to be found on my clothing.  No sir.  They were on her clothing.  That sounds kind of weird to you I suppose, since I’m the one who traveled down the path of infidelity.  Normally if you find two spots on your spouses clothing, that’s the person that should be seated under the hot, concentrated beam of interrogation.  The thing of it is the spots were actually more than spots.  They  were raised spots.  I think you would have to call them lumps.  That seems more accurate.  I’ll go with lumps.  And they were brown lumps, and they were stuck on the outside of my wife pants, pretty much right where her ass resides.  I know what you are thinking.  You think there’s a good chance my wife had some sort of “accident.”  But no, like I said, the two brown lumps were on the outside of her pants.

So my wife confronted me.  She wanted to know what the fuck those two brown lumps were doing on the outside of her pants.  At first I thought she had some medical question about them, since I am a retired pharmacist and she thinks I have all the answers to problems involving issues of personal health.  She insisted that I feel them, and although I was a little apprehensive, I did as instructed and to my amazement the brown lumps were immovable. Stuck to her pants like two small mounds of amber contact cement.  I was at that moment perplexed, and thought maybe she had been nosing around in my shop again and somehow backed into some construction adhesive or something.  But she said the brown lumps smelled like caramel.  So I stirred up enough courage to scrape a sample of one of the brown lumps with my fingernail, and took a whiff, and sure enough it smelled like caramel to me too.

I told her that was really curious.  What the heck could those two brown lumps on the outside of her pants be, we both wondered?   But I knew what they were.  At that very moment I knew but did not, at that very moment, have the balls to admit it.

My Wife and I in Happier Times

I often pick up a package of candy, like Mike and Ikes, or cherry Nibs, and then surprise my wife with it during one of our special nights watching a movie on our big screen TV.  It’s a routine I’ve followed for quite some time now.  My wife is especially fond of cherry licorice, but appreciates my clever ability to keep our marriage interesting and spontaneous by randomly selecting different items for our special movie night treat.   I scramble off and retrieve it from where I have been hiding it and pop it open right after all the annoying FBI piracy warnings.  Like I’m going to actually want a copy of this shitty movie.  Come on!  You think I want to sit through this garbage twice!  The only reason I rented it was because I wanted an excuse to eat some candy.

So we planned another of those special movie nights and in a Pavlovian response I picked up a box of candy to enjoy during the film, ever hopeful that the candy would not be the only thing offering enjoyment for the evening.   Milk Duds.  That was my selection.  But then that night my wife decided she had some stuff to do and couldn’t watch the movie.  I saved the movie for another day, but not the Milk Duds.  I succumbed to temptation and ate half the box-  HALF the box.  While I was eating them I laid the open box down on my wife’s side of our very comfortable reclining loveseat that we sit on  whenever we watch our big screen TV,  and I guess a couple of the Milk Duds must have escaped unnoticed.  So now you probably figured out what the two brown lumps were that later became stuck to the outside of my wife’s pants. Mystery solved.

But as mentioned, at the time I was reluctant to admit my weakness.  Don’t be so smug you piece of fly-infested horse dung.  You know damn well you would pull a big stall yourself.  Guys just don’t like to reveal their deficiencies.  But my wife kept pounding at me.  She was certain I had something to do with the two brown lumps on the outside of her pants and she was unrelenting in her determination to break me.  As I suspected, when I finally did admit my selfish betrayal,  the ridiculing I received was even worse.   After two hours of putting up with her jabs at my heartless soul, I retrieved the remaining half box of Milk Duds and made it clear I had saved the half box just for her and therefore should not be considered to be a total asshole.  I think what transpired in the way of reconciliation on her part was half of one.

But the topper is she won’t admit it but I probably was doing her a favor.  That half box of Milk Duds is still sitting on our kitchen counter untouched.  You know why?  Because as we all know a Milk Dud has the capability to all on its own yank a healthy molar right out of its socket, not to mention how quickly it can remove a partially missing dental filling, which my wife, as of this very point in time, has an appointment with her dentist to repair.  And dare I ask about all the boxes of candy Dots she availed herself to on her solo, four hour road trips to see family in northern Iowa?  Do you think I tasted so much as one of those tasty fruit flavored treats?  Think again bucko!  Who’s the cheater now?  In light of that shocking information  I think you would agree that I could  easily retaliate with some barbed, accusatory remarks of my own.

But no, as usual I will take the high road and leave it alone.  That’s mostly because  I have an even darker secret I just as well admit.  You’ll find out sooner or later anyway.  The box of Milk Duds I bought for our movie night.  I actually bought two boxes.  I saved one box and I ate the entire contents myself.  Now I am sick of Milk Duds.  A similar thing happened to me with Bit-O-Honeys.  I know I am weak, but at least I’m honest and forthright.  I just hope I don’t have to be honest and forthright about Charleston Chews.  I love those things.  I can’t imagine the havoc overindulgence of those delectable delights inflict on relationships.

Well I’m off to Quick Trip to purchase a make-up package of cherry Twizzlers.  Do you know if that place does any gift-wrapping?

ALFIE

You know how they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?  Pardon me but I beg to differ.  My son and his wife decided what was missing in their lives was a dog.  So they went and got one.  A Corgi puppy.  His name is Alfie.  He is unmercifully cute so you can’t help but love the little guy despite what a pain in the ass he can be.  I know because at times my wife and I are called upon to doggy sit and the little shit gets into everything, as most puppy’s do I suppose.  He is constantly sniffing and licking and inserting anything that is remotely possible into his mouth.  The stuff that ends up there absolutely begs the question how can that possibly be appealing in any way?   But make no mistake his perplexing sense of taste is more than made up for by his overwhelming cuteness.  And with him cute does not stop with heartwarming facial expressions and whimsical antics.  He seems to be pretty intelligent, and I believe will keep tracking that way as long as he stays clear of anything coated with lead paint.  Which brings me to my original point.

If you are as perceptive as Alfie you have gathered that this blog will be discussing something about teaching an old dog new tricks, because I happened to mention that right off the bat.  I’m  not here to fuck you over.  I am about to reveal a trick that I learned.  You might have thought since I am mentioning a dog here that Alfie was the one that learned a new trick.  But he’s a puppy for Christ sake.  He’s not old at all.  So that wouldn’t make sense.  So if you are reasonably intelligent you have surmised it was i, an old person, that learned a new trick.  I know some of you out there are all confused because I’m not a dog, or possibly you think I am a really, really smart one that can type.  To clear things up for you, this is just an old saying that has been around for a long time.  I’m not sure what’s up with the dog analogy.  I mean I bet there actually are some old dogs you could teach a new trick to.  I’m just repeating what I heard, so fuck off and don’t make such a big deal out of it.   Here is the trick if you are interested.

Ok, you have a dog, so naturally it’s going to take a shit on your lawn, and I am pretty sure that is THE trick you teach your dog before all others.  It is the primo trick, trick number one.  Well number one and number two go together.  They’re combined into trick number one.  You don’t want your dog to pee or poop in your house, I am pretty sure, at least not on your carpet or sofa.  So I assume your dog is well familiar and accomplished with trick number one and does his business outside.

So there it is, a messy turd on your lawn.  You could wait a few days and let it dry out and then take your 9 iron and chip it over the fence into your neighbors yard.  But then there’s the risk your dog or five year old twins will roll around in it and track the mess all over your house  before you take the time to go find your golf bag.  So really the best resolution is to get it off your lawn asap.  Most people do the thing where you take a plastic bag of some sort and try scooping the stinky stuff up with that.  But what happens is you likely make a bigger mess by smearing everything all over the place.  Now you should really go get your garden hose and wash that slippery brown spot off your green grass.

The solution is to get yourself a big box of surgical gloves.  Put one on and slip your fingers underneath the turd.  The trick is to get way down below that tootsie roll.  Create some space for your gloved fingers to glide under it, letting them comb the grass that supports the butt brownie.  Then you are in complete control.  You’ll be clutching the entire mass and have it confined within a protected environment and you can do whatever you want with that chocolate banana.  That’s what I just learned.  In fact I’m going to go out and pick me up some more surgical gloves today, and then call my stock broker and have him dump some money into Becton Dickinson.  I think my method is really going to catch on.

Now that I’ve figured this out,  best of all I don’t have to worry that little Alfie will tumble into one of his keister cakes and be all stinky while I hold him in my lap.  That’s what I’m doing right now.  He’s so damn cute.  You just can’t help but want to cuddle up with the little tyke.  Isn’t that right, Alfie?  You’re just so cute!  Yes you are.  Yes you are.  Yes, yOWW!!  The little fucker bit me! God damn it those tiny teeth are sharp.  Son of a bitch I’m bleeding all over my carpet.  I bet this is one of those new tricks my daughter-in-law taught Alfie.  She’s had it in for me ever since I made fun of her goofy looking shoes. God damn it I wonder if I need stitchers.

Turns out I needed stitches

I’ve always been hesitant to buy a snow blower.  For one thing I have a storage problem.  The available space in my single car garage is gradually becoming unavailable.  So I have a big debate with myself about spending money on one every winter.   What it’s come down to is a poker game between me and Mother Nature.  The way I figure it, I win the longer I can put off the expense.  The x factor of the equation is inches of snow per season.  As long as I’m not dealing with an avalanche of snow during the winter, I don’t mind shoveling a few times a year.  And if I decide to gamble the other way and finally purchase a snow blower, and that particular winter sets a five year record for snow fall, in my mind I will have cashed in on a double-downed bet.

My little game of chance has been going on for about eight years now.  That’s about how long I’ve been dealing with the osteoarthritis that has been invading various nooks and crannies of my skeletal structure.  That’s one of the reasons I don’t mind shoveling a few inches of snow, at least up to this point.  You need to get some movement going to keep your joints from freezing up.  No doubt I can stand the work out.  I sit around on my ass all day typing up shit like this.  Some days the only exercise I get is opening and closing the refrigerator door.  Real men don’t need snow blowers.  All my neighbors have one, but to me when they get all show-offie with their machines, if it’s not a validation of self coddling, it is at least a display of hubris.  I generally don’t go for that sort of thing.

Sure there’s the argument that having a snow blower around would save me time.  But right there is maybe the main reason I don’t need one.  Saving time might be important if I had important stuff to do, like go to work.  But I’m retired.  I have no place I have to be.   It’s THE perk of retirement, the life style advantage to which all others are measured. If it snows a foot, big deal. I have all day, all week, to shovel what I need to shovel. The city ordinance about getting the snow removed from a street-side sidewalk does not apply to me because I don’t have a street-side sidewalk. When my wife and I bought this house 43 years ago that was something we did not give the slightest thought to. Sometimes life just works out.

I don’t mind telling you I have been taking Mother Nature to the cleaners.  In the past seven years Omaha has had only one  winter weather event that has produced more than eight inches of snow.  Typically we get a couple of bouts of two to five inches, a few dustings, and that’s about it.  We used to get a lot more winter precipitation, if I remember right.  No doubt what’s happening lately has something to do with climate change.  But five days ago some very ominous weather reports started rolling in.  Three days later I received confirmation from every TV weatherman that the snow storm moving in from the west was going to be a doozie, a virtual white armageddon.  Driving around in my car, radio station KRAP informed me I was going to get at least a foot of snow dumped on my driveway.  I bounced from one of my pre-selected radio stations to another hoping that at least one of them would just keep playing the 60’s music that I had pre-selected them to play, so I could stop thinking about all the shoveling I might have to do.  But every disk jockey was saying the same thing.  Get to the grocery store and stock up.  You won’t be able leave your house for a week so it wouldn’t hurt to check and make sure you have enough of your prescription meds on hand.  .  Better pick up some bottled water because there’s a good chance your pipes will freeze once the power goes out.  Also you might want to drop by church real quick and say a little prayer that you don’t have a heart attack because there’s just no way an ambulance is going to be able to get to you.  Whatever you do don’t go outside and shovel.  You’ll have a heart attack.

So I decided it was time to cash in my chips.  I was certain Mother Nature wasn’t bluffing this time.  I went out and bought a Snow Buster 5000, smugly confident I had outfoxed my opponent once again with my purchase.  The full house of a storm she was about to throw down would be no match for my Snow Buster 5000 royal flush I was going to surprise her with.

There is one thing about my Snow Buster 5000 that is of an inconvenient nature.  It’s heavy.  I made the mistake of removing it from my SUV by myself and tore the flesh away from my shin bone and crushed the small toe on my left foot in the process. I’ll probably lose that nail.  But after filling my Snow Buster 5000 with gas I was confident I was ready for whatever Mother Nature was going to deposit on my driveway overnight.

The next morning what greeted me was not Mother Nature’s wrath, but rather a thumb-nosing mockery- an inch of snow.  Geezuz I can take care of that with my leaf blower, which besides my snow shovel is what I used because my fucking Snow Buster 5000 won’t start.  I could have easily made it through another season without the god damned thing.  You stupid bastard  weathermen can just stick your fancy doppler radar up your ass.  I know you think your incompetence can be easily glossed over by reminding us how lucky we were to have avoided your forecasts,  but I would like to point out your forecasts were the reason I took a personal bitch slapping from Mother Nature.  The least one of you could do is take this piece of shit Snow Blaster 5000 off my hands.

Show Room Snow Blaster 5000                                      My Snow Blaster 5000

I am pretty close to entering the seventh decade of my life.  I am retired too, and so I have a lot of time on my hands to reflect on lots of stuff.  You’re probably too young to have the deep thoughts I have and don’t give a shit about the existential conundrums of life.  So many things are perplexing to me.  Does God really exist?  If there is a God who is the creator of all things, is He sorry about Donald Trump?   Is there life after death?  Are there marshmallows in heaven?  I hope not.  I don’t like marshmallows.  How will I die, like am I going to suddenly drop over from a ruptured  aortic aneurysm with my life’s blood detouring any which way it pleases inside of me till I lose consciousness?   Or will I linger relentlessly in a hospital bed with cancer cells migrating from one organ to another till my insides are just a compressed mass of unrecognizable cell clutter that eventually leads to a grizzly implosion and merciful death?  I’m a registered organ donor, but what a waste that would be if all my organs are enveloped in a neoplastic goo.  That would ordinarily really piss me off, but I’ll  be dead so I guess I won’t worry about it.  So to anyone out there that might have benefitted from one of my fantastic organs if those nasty cancer cells had stayed away and bothered somebody else, just know I tried to help you out.  Now a large vessel stroke would really chap my ass.  A paralyzing stroke or any type of major central nervous system incapacitation  would be the worst.  You just sit around and get in everybody’s way for a really long time before you check out.   I’d probably have to have someone hanging out to feed me and change my diapers.  I hate being dependent on anybody, because anybody is always fucking up my life.

Take the douchenozzles that set my countertop and laid the tile during my kitchen remodel.  I suppose you could forgive them if they couldn’t spell the word “clearance,” but you would think they would have an understanding of its concept, like how far from the floor should the countertop be to fit a dishwasher underneath, or how many lateral inches should be allowed to accommodate the sink.  I made the mistake of counting on them to have a grasp of those basics.  And then there’s the guy who called himself a carpenter that framed out one side of my bathroom door a solid inch out of alignment with the other during my bathroom remodel.  In the long run it’s just better to do the job yourself.  That’s what I’ve learned.  But there isn’t enough time.  We all know that.  If I had the time maybe I would take an on-line course in dentistry.  Then instead  of having to go back to my dentist to have him replace that filling that he just installed in my last  upper right molar two days ago I could just take care of it myself.  Time.  Just not enough time.

So I’ve been watching time go by.  I’ve been watching time go by and taking a look at it to see how I am doing.  We all measure that differently.  Some people go to church a lot to help them figure it out.  Others go through their check book ledger and take a gander at expenses or all the charities they’ve contributed to, or legal fees they’ve had to pay.  Some check out their stock portfolio.  You know how I keep track of the passage of time?  I’ll show you.

1947- circa 2003       2003-2008         2008 -2012        2012-2015      2015-2016          2016—-?

These are my maintenance prescription meds that I take daily.   They are all lined up on my dresser, like soldiers standing at attention, and  I have watched with some alarm as new recruits seem to be mustered into their ranks within an increasingly compressed amount of time.  And that doesn’t take into account the shit that went down in October of 2012.  In medication bottle terms, it looked like this:

Confusing, I know.  Here my bottles look like a bunch of drunken sailors, which is not far off the mark, because in October of 2012 I had total knee replacement surgery.  That involved taking a lot of narcotics and muscle relaxants and sedatives and for three or four days it was easier to just throw everything haphazardly into my night stand drawer and hope when the time arrived to ingest a dose of something,  my eyes could focus sharply enough to help my brain direct my hand to the proper something.   And if you’re thinking of breaking into my house because you would like to get your hands on all the left-over narcotics I never used, I hate to tell you you would be wasting your time.  You’ll have to go to the Omaha landfill to find them.  If you’re interested, they’re in a baggie with a quarter cup of coffee grounds, an ounce of water and a piece of moldy havarti.

If you look carefully at my prescription bottle time-line, you will notice a straggler falling out of formation in the picture at the right.  That one bothers me.  It’s my newest recruit and I am extremely hesitant to push it forward in rank with the others I insert in different ways inside my body.  It’s a statin, a cholesterol lowering medication that for the past two years I have managed to convince my primary care physician I don’t need.  I still believe my recent, uncooperative LDL levels are temporary.  In my mind It’s all simply the result of some over enthusiastic mouth banging of anything that ended up on my plate during our month-long holiday gormandizing orgy I call glutton-fest.  However, my attempt at a quick fix this January evidently was unsuccessful.  Oral cramming for a week prior to my physical exam on Kentucky blue-grass salad and boiled cabbage didn’t produce the lipid results my physician was looking for.  So according to him, it’s a statin or a potential heart attack or stroke.

I’m ok with a heart attack.  Maybe I’d go out quickly.  Hardly know what hit me.  But stroke?  No, no. no.  You know how I feel about that.  But damn it- the side effects of a statin.  I’m already achy enough.  And you’ve got your head up your ass if you think I’ll stop drinking scotch.  Then, once again, what does my doctor really know.  Maybe he’s just another anybody I should think twice about becoming dependent on.  I should probably take a stand.  As general and leader of my army of prescription bottles, maybe it is time to incite it to insurrection and revolt.  I’m running out of counter space.  On the other hand, my doctor and all his questionable statistics could be right.  If that’s the case I guess I would be better off doing as he says so I can put off running out of what I am beginning to appreciate more and more each day- time.