Well, several very hectic weeks are over with and I’m able to finally sit down and concentrate on my feeble attempts to entertain you all with a few Blogs. What was hectic you ask? Well let me tell you: For one, the seven therapy sessions I attended to try and get rid of the terrible pains I was having in my shoulder, arm and hand, and the of three spinal injections for the same reason. If that wasn’t enough my wife decided that it was about time we had some of the house projects done that were gathering moss on the family to-do sheet. I must say that she has had some real patience with me on a few of them. When we bought our house about thirty years ago it came with a God-awful front door which she hated from the start. A metal one, that included a terrible attempt to make the inside look like wood. Additionally even opening it was a chore. I guessed that it was time to take care of that disaster. Of course that meant a few days of staining, and then two coats inside and out of the polyurethane.
Next on the list was a new furnace, not much work for me, thank heaven, but still a cleaning of a furnace room that still has dust from the 1980’s. Oh, and there’s more, shopping for a new bed and mattress. And what a bed, its’ so damn big I never know if Marge is in it. And tall, I figure when I get older I’ll need a ladder to get in and out. I almost forgot, since we know have a new door, our front (brass?) light looked like s__t, so it was off to Lowe’s for a new one. Of course those electrical jobs never go smooth and easy…..none of the new stuff fit the old. Fortunately I have 75 years of experience making things work without tools or the right parts. Marge thinks I’m a genius when it comes to fixing things without the stuff to fix it.To top all this stuff off, there was always my Church work. Snipping pine branches to make 68 advent wreaths and hauling and putting our Nativity figures up in our Crèche.
Well, what else? I know I had even more November thrills, but I’m sure by this time you’re already bored to death. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, the month did have some bright spots: the shoulder is feeling great, even with all the November work and only one more shot in the back…..yippee!, and Thanksgiving was marvelous, no cooking! Just eating and drinking wine at my daughters. After many, many years of cooking for the holidays the kids have retired the old man. One has us over for Christmas, another Thanksgiving, and even Easter is out of my hands. As much as I enjoy cooking this arrangement is working out just dandy.
So after all this I’m just about ready to begin bitching about everything pissing me off and the world better remember not to make old people mad. We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off.
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of hearing about “Black Friday”, “Small Business Sunday” and “Cyber Monday” and when and why did all this crap start. I don’t know about you, but the fancy names won’t make me buy any more stuff than I would without the “catchy names”. Now on to Christmas carols. Don’t know about you, but I’ve always loved Christmas carols, but I’m talking about the ones that used to be in the little John Hancock carol book that the insurance agent always dropped off in December when he made his rounds to collect the twenty five cent monthly premium payment. Not talking about the crap they try to pass off on us for a whole damn month. Please folks, I never saw Mommy kissing Santa and I sure as hell never had my Grandma run over by a reindeer. This has the makings of one of those nostalgia things, so I’ll stop here and just say that I’m real happy to have had the chance to experience a few of the “real Christmas holidays”.
