It's getting easier

Surviving the hectic holiday season is getting easier. Gone is the torture of deciding what to buy my wife. After 57 years of marriage we’ve run out to things to buy each other and refuse to get each other another kitchen item….I cook and love to eat. Marge’s jewelry box holds enough items to pass on to the girls and no one will really want my stuff anyway, so our gift giving has been made easy, we buy each other nothing. Unfortunately or fortunately we’ve begun to reward ourselves with more expensive stuff…..trips! This year a Caribbean cruise, we decided to escape the snow for a week or so. Although we haven’t joined the “Snowbirds” after last year’s ugly winter we decided to escape for at least a few days and get a taste of some tropical weather. Additionally a trip to Oregon in June is also on the calendar. Yah, I guess Christmas gifts would be a lot cheaper.
Gifts for the grown ups has also been solved, $25.00 grab bags. Grandchildren’s gifts no longer present any major problem since it seems that most of them already know what they want and pass that info along to their parents. Besides that, the older ones like the ideal gift, that green folding stuff.

Besides our gift solution I’ve finally convinced Marge that we have no need for a large Christmas tree, real or artificial. Replacing them is a small lighted ceramic one given to me 39 years ago by my secretary. The box it’s in even has the old newspapers I use to protect it. Once a year I take some time to read the 39 year old news and advertisements. It sits on a table in front of the picture window waiting for the oohs and aahs from passerby’s ……..lol. Even my cooking requirements have diminished. Now that the holiday celebrations have been taken over by my daughters and daughter-in-law my culinary skills are now limited to making the traditional family Polish mushroom soup.

While all these things have reduced the hectic nature of the season I can still find things to bitch about, most of them the results of television. Commercials: Just how many times to we need to watch that silly woman prepping us for that wonderful day, no not Christmas but “Black Friday”. Where and when did that ridiculous phrase come from? And how many times do I have to see mom and pop drive away and their son’s new Auidi? And speaking of commercials, does it appear to you that the breaks are getting even longer. I’m able to go upstairs, make a coffee, grab a cookie, take a quick pee and still get back in time to not miss a minute of the show. What are they charging for them these days? Is it like one of those super market things, buy one get three free? Oh well, they “got us”, there’s no escape. The days of looking out at the neighborhoods and seeing all sorts of antennas on every roof are over along with the days when we had no remote in our hands to click away wearing put batteries making Eveready richer. Three channels were all we had and we actually got up to go to the set if we wished to change the station.

Well, I better put and end to this one before I start boring you with all that nostalgic stuff you so often get in your emails. Before I sign off I do want to wish you all a very “Happy and Healthy” holiday season. I think it’s a politically correct greeting.

When did it happen

I’m very early. The tables and chairs are nearly empty. I locate an empty one, one that gives me a people watching view of the later arrivers. I stake my claim and reserve the remaining chairs for friends who will arrive shortly. Why am I here so early? I’ll tell you why, Marge and I are infected with a very serious disease. It’s called acute volunteer-ism, can never say no. Today she’s at another table selling tickets for a raffle held at the Local AARP Chapter monthly meeting. Oh yah, that’s where we are. She handles the ticket table while I sit at the empty table and act as a “Sentinel” observing the parade of seniors marching in. Why am I even here? I’m too young to be here, these people are so damn old.

As I pondered this situation I finally realized that no one is telling me: “Young fellow you must be at the wrong meeting, you’re certainly too young to be here”. I guess these people have accepted me as one of their own. I must actually belong here. When did this happen to me? How did it come so quick? Was I fooling myself at all those class reunions when I said to myself, my God, how old they all look? It pains me to say that I appear to have been wrong; I was really one of them all along. The pain occasionally goes away when someone says: “You can’t possibly be 76, you look great for your age”. Where are those people when you need them?

You know life is full of strange coincidences. As I was writing this little piece I happened to check my emails and found one from a very “old” friend. He sent me a poem that just begs to be included in this Blog.

The Mirror - Edmund Burke, 1729 - 1797, Irish Philosopher.

I look in the mirror
And what do I see?
A strange looking person
That cannot be me.

For I am much younger
And not nearly so fat
As that face in the mirror
I am looking at.

Oh, where are the mirrors
That I used to know
Like the ones which were
Made thirty years ago?

Now all things have changed
And I`m sure you`ll agree
Mirrors are not as good
As they used to be.

So never be concerned,
If wrinkles appear
For one thing I`ve learned
Which is very clear,

Should your complexion
Be less than perfection,
It is really the mirror
That needs correction!!