Addams Family Similarities
By admin | November 7, 2008
It occurred to me at 3:27 AM, when I was lurching through my darkened bedroom toward the bathroom that I held some similarity to the Addams family character “Lurch”. As I performed the task for which I had come, I continued to think and realized that all of the Addams family males might be incorporated in my DNA.
I did some Wikepedia research and learned that none of the family had names in the original Charles Addams single panel cartoons done for The New Yorker magazine. Addams himself helped the producers of the original TV series provide identification for each of the characters. But I digress.
Gomez is the patriarch of the clan and he represents, I think, my alter ego, my self perception. He is extremely bright, very athletic and agile and certainly well dressed. He is devoted to his wife, Morticia, and loves his children, Wednesday and Pugsley. He is devoted to his friends and extended family including Thing, Cousin Itt, and Uncle Fester.
I already mentioned Lurch, who is the Addams’ manservant. Not particularly agile, Lurch is what I do when awakened at night or when I am napping and the phone rings or the doorbell sounds. While I generally stop short of the “You Rang?” made famous by Ted Cassidy in the TV series, I have the gravelly voice when I pick up the phone as well as the sour, serious countenance when greeting the UPS man or others at my door.
If Gomez represents my self image, Uncle Fester is probably how others see me. Round bald head, maniac appearance, odd sense of humor, Fester is given to fits of brilliance and is certainly bright in general. He frequently seems to fall short of his own aims, however, and may appear odd to some.
I’d have to say that Pugsley, the youngest Addams gets conflated with Eddie, who was the child of the Munsters. Pugsley, like Fester is round but unlike him tends to be quiet and somewhat studious. What he studies is neither here nor there. He is devoted to his sister Wednesday who is equally devoted to him. As did my brothers, Wednesday includes Pugsley in her play. Wednesday’s play includes attempts on her brother’s life, typically successful, but never fatal to Pugsley. My siblings didn’t try to kill me…as far as I know…but I was the butt of their antics and a source of funds when they needed loans.
If Pugsley is my external image, my memory of myself is more like Eddie Munster. Slim, bright, happy, and with a great head of hair combed into a vampirish upsweep. I lacked Eddie’s widow’s peak, but otherwise had the thick, dark, oiled hair combed back and up. Girls loved me (I did say that Eddie represents my internal image, didn’t I?)
You wouldn’t think to look at me now that I’d have much in common with Cousin Itt, whose main character trait was crown to floor hair. Itt has so much hair, in fact that the only other thing you may see of him is gloved hands. Still, while I am not as hirsuite as Itt, I do find long hairs growing in odd places these days. Glancing down at my toes, for example, I may be surprised to find tufts of coarse, dark hair. My ears and nose are other sources of hairy surprise to me. I don’t let them grow as Itt has done, but I do think there is some similarity.
Finally, Thing, the disembodied hand which provides some services for the family. Thing is a friend, not truly a member of the family nor a senior family servant. I envy Thing his youthful dexterity and the simple beauty of his digits, but I have little in common with him, other than the hands which have typed this blog.
Topics: household | No Comments »
Mop-Up
By admin | October 13, 2008
Mop-up
Yarn mop/do do doot do do doot do/ yarn mop
Ok, Ok, I know the old song was about a RAG mop, but that’s not what I’m writing about!
Most of the floors in my house are tiled, and more will be tiled before long. We’ve got brown tile, white(ish) tile and gray(ish) tile. It all requires just plain water to keep it clean. Sometimes I put just a bit of concentrated detergent in the water for odor control. But really, just a few drops because more can leave too much residue.
Now, how do you wash it? My mother passed away 18 years ago. She was a proponent of getting on your knees to wash the floor. She said that way she could get into the corners and really get it clean. Needless to say, my mother had hard floors only in her bathrooms and her kitchen. Everything else was carpet, which she vacuumed.
Since my mother is gone, my wife is my other guide. Sadly, she tends to side with my mother. She’d really prefer to see me mopping on my hands and knees. How often I’ve heard the stories about when she was a young girl and cleaned the high wooden baseboards in her mother’s home…on her hands and knees.
I think I’ve said before in this space that it’s important to negotiate with your partner that whomever is in charge of a task is really IN CHARGE of that task. I’ve tried to tell my wife how to cook. A santoku is a knife that is somewhere between a chef’s knife and a Chinese cleaver. It is certainly not what you want your partner to be holding when she (or he) gives you “the look”. You know the one…it’s the “I’ve been cooking for many, many years without any advice from you. You need to leave the kitchen; NOW.” look.
I don’t have a version of “the look”, at least not one that works on my wife. If I try to give her “the look”, she looks back and says “What!?” Still, if I don’t tell her how to cook, she doesn’t get to tell me how to wash the floors. 
I use an industrial-size yarn mop and an industrial-size wheeled bucket and an industrial-sized squeezer mounted on it. The bucket and squeezer are industrial-strength plastic and are bright yellow. I guess in industrial situations you want to make sure people see the mop equipment. (“Clean-up on aisle five!”).
There was one small problem. Or you might say it was a too large problem. The mop-stick on the yarn mop was designed for the ten-foot or more ceilings found in supermarkets, airports and garages. To keep from constantly bumping the eight-foot ceilings in my home, I had to cut six inches off the end. Be careful that you cut an honest six inches…sometimes men exaggerate…or if you’re blessed, minimize. I don’t have a wood saw so I used the saw blade of my Leatherman tool. I then used the rasp/file blade of the same tool to smooth and round off the cut end so that my hand wouldn’t suffer splinters.
With the yarn mop, I can get into the corners to MY satisfaction. I can run it one way for the grout lines that are east/west and I can run it the other way for the grout lines that are north/south. I use a four foot length of hose from the spigot of my deep sink into the bucket on the floor to fill it with hot water. Since I’m not going to touch the water with my hands, it can be as hot as the water heater will make it. I love my yarn mop.
Topics: household | No Comments »
Ropes Course
By admin | October 7, 2008
I say to my grandchildren “Poppa don’t run.” and “Poppa don’t jump.” So what was I doing here on this dusty field with a group of Junior-High-aged kids? You got it on the first try: I was both running AND jumping. Jack (not Fat Jack, just Jack), the older fellow turning the rope, kept looking at me as though he expected me to collapse at any moment. (or maybe it was just my paranoia) Each time we finished a phase of this “challenge” I thought about stopping by saying “my hips hurt” or “I can’t do this.” Jack had already told us that “I can’t” wouldn’t be acceptable…we had to try…and “My hips hurt.” just seemed too wimpy to even say. So I kept on…and I succeeded!
Here’s how I came to be in this dilemma: I volunteered for the Confirmation class at my church. The head-lady of the education department asked me and it seemed pretty straightforward. I would show up once or twice a month on a Sunday evening and spend time with these kids just talking and playing the occasional game. I did that once in September. Next, Dana (the Ed. boss lady) just mentioned to me that they were going to take this group to a sleep-away camp that would include a “ropes course”. This was to get them better accquainted with each other, and cause them to bond with each other based on shared difficult experience. Finally, thinking it would be a good thing for me to “challenge” myself, I volunteered to go along as one of the adult chaperones. Do ya see how it all crept up on me?
In prior articles, I’ve mentioned that I go to the gym frequently. Since exercise is very addictive, I’ve needed to explain to myself that I go to the gym not just so I can increase the amount of weight I can lift or the speed at which I can use the treadmill; I go to the gym so that I will have the strength and stamina to go elsewhere with friends and others to DO things. This trip was an extension of this philosophy. In addition, at my age and level of recovery from illness, it’s important for me to occasionally push myself a bit (”challenge” myself) just to make sure I’m not fooling myself about how well I’m doing.
I think it was difficult for the kids we were chaperoning to understand that the part of the course that challenged me most was the jump rope part. After all, this was just the warm up, just the getting ready for the real stuff. They were challenged by climbing the rope ladders and the climbing wall and the zip line off the 15 meter tower. I knew, though, that I’d be protected in doing that stufff: I’d be belayed by the coaches, I wouldn’t be able to fall and hurt myself and the worst I could do would be to embarass myself. With the running and jumping, however, I could fall, I could break a knee or a hip or pull a muscle. The “Team” could only offer me advice, they couldn’t pick me up and carry me through the moving rope. When I felt the pain in my hip joints, I was sincerely worried…it didn’t really make sense, but I was truly worried.
I guess the message for this blog is that there should be a reason that we do the things we do. Since we’re men-who-stay-home, the one who has to decide what the reason is for what you do is you. This has actually always been the case but, for me, I didn’t always recognize it. I worked for many years because I thought that’s what guys do. Only when my son came into our family did I recognize that I worked because I wanted my family and myself to have comforts. At home, I wash bathrooms and clean floors and sort/wash/fold laundry because I want to live in a clean, orderly, good smelling space. My goal is to please myself. In my case, I live with my wife so I try to meet her needs sometimes as well…but, again, that’s my choice.
Topics: household, relationships | No Comments »
Public Transit
By admin | September 23, 2008
The guy was wearing green plaid. His button up shirt and his 10 inch inseam shorts matched. I’m mildly colorblind to red and green, which means I can’t see those colors unless the hues are pretty intense. This guy was wearing GREEN PLAID!
I was sitting on a bus headed for downtown when he got on and sat next to me. His shorts came an inch or so below his knees. My friends say things like dirty busses, smelly busses, odd people, slow busses, and long waits as excuses why they don’t use public transit. This might be a test of those concepts for me.
An elderly white woman boarded the bus and appeared to having some difficulty navigating. A black man about my age got up from his window seat, politely stepped over the woman sitting in the aisle seat and offered the elderly woman his place. She thanked him and sat down. I mention their race only because he was of an age that the irony of Rosa Parks wouldn’t be lost on him. When the polite man proceeded further back in the bus, he brushed by my seatmate, knocking off his hat. I happened to be in a position to keep the hat from falling on the floor which I did, and I offered it back to Mr. Green Plaid. He accepted the hat, said “Thank you” and repositioned it on his head. Then he smiled at me.
That smile was the end of the test, I suppose. Mr. Green Plaid was clean and smelled fine; although he was wearing clothing I wouldn’t choose. Mr. Polite was quiet and polite. The bus was clean and didn’t offer any noxious odors. (It was a CNG bus so it didn’t even have the odor of diesel.) The Hispanic lady who got on the bus with her three children in school uniforms was responsible and the children were polite. I was on the bus because I don’t like parking downtown and I had jury duty. Others were on the bus for their own reasons…some like me didn’t like parking downtown, some probably couldn’t afford cars or couldn’t afford to drive in this economy. One guy, on the ride back, apparently was on the bus because he’d lost his driving license. I guessed that because he had a t-shirt with an anti-addiction logo and he was conversing with another passenger who appeared a little down in his luck.
I’m a stay-at-home guy partly because I’m retired. That means I might have somewhat more time than a person who works a job. I must say, though, that this bus ran on time and took about five minutes more to make the trip downtown than I would have in a car. Factor in parking the car and walking to an office against me walking from the bus stop and it still comes out about the same. I waited for the morning bus because I’m a little compulsive and I arrived ten minutes too early. I waited fifteen minutes in the afternoon because my time of release from jury duty was not what they had predicted.
Topics: musing, relationships | 1 Comment »
SWEATY
By admin | September 1, 2008
Being an at-home-guy, I can choose the time of day and day of the week that I like to do things. Lately, I’ve started going to the gym and I do it first thing in the morning. My otherwise chintzy health insurance company pays for my gym membership, knowing that if I work out, I won’t get sick as often and it’ll save them money in the long run. Unfortunately, the program is called “Silver Sneakers” with the play on words being “silver” hair, “silver” sneakers. Yuk, yuk. Still, I can do anything I want at the YMCA, and that includes weight room, swimming pool and racquetball courts.
I’m the kind of guy that when I step outside the house, I begin to perspire. Let’s be honest…I begin to sweat, big time. By the time I finish forty or fifty minutes of aerobic movement (Silver Sneakers Cardio) or the same on weights and treadmill I look like those movies of Victor Mature in the jungle. (If you were old enough for Silver Sneakers, you’d know who Victor Mature was.) Big sweat rings halfway down the chest…underarm wetness to the waist…my jersey shorts dark at the waistband from sweat. It’s good.
Some tips: I perform my shower and shave in the locker room of the Y. Typically it’s pretty quiet there unless a couple of business men are trading tips from which that I can benefit. Seriously, I’ve never seen a group of strangely dressed men singing Y-M-C-A while body-spelling the words.
I’ve learned that regular hand and body soap works just fine as a base for shaving as long as you get your beard good and wet before you suds it up. I can use all the hot water I want in the shower since the gym is paying for it. That means that after I’m clean, if the shower room is empty, I can luxuriate under the spray, letting it run on my lower back and pelt my tight deltoids (just below the back of your neck). When I’m done, instead of squeegeeing off the walls and wiping down the chrome, I just dry off and leave. Somebody else cleans the shower room and my health insurance pays for it!
I’ve got a day-pack from hiking trips and I carry my clean, dry day clothes in that along with my towel. I stuff my soggy work-outs into the bag and go on home. Once home, I clear the wet work-outs and towel out of my day-pack, placing them flat over the edges of the hamper so they’ll dry. That takes all of 15 seconds. I live in the desert, so they dry quickly and don’t produce much odor in my bedroom.
There are two other sources of odor after working out. One is the day-pack, damp from the clothes I’ve carried in it and the other is my sneakers. I do change my shoes, since I paid relatively big bucks for running shoes made for my type of feet (over pronation). I took a hint from the bowling alley and began spraying my shoes with Lysol (or other disinfectant spray). That seemed to work well, so I also spray the inside of my day pack with disinfectant and there seems to be little or no odor problem. Double advantage: I don’t have to put up with gym odor in my bedroom or listen to my wife complain about it, and I can put clean clothes in the bag the next day and they don’t come out smelling bad.
After breakfast, I start the housework, which gets me all sweaty and smelly again…but that’s another story.
Topics: household, relationships | No Comments »
FAT JACK
By admin | August 15, 2008
The deputy who answered the phone in Coeur d’Alene was on the alert as soon as the name Jack Xxxx was mentioned. She said “The Sheriff is going to want to talk to you.” It is a lightly populated county with a small County Sheriff’s force so it didn’t seem too strange.
The Sheriff was not just alert but was actively suspicious. “Why do you want to reach Fat Jack? Is he a friend of yours?”
“He’s my brother. Our father has died and I’ve called the other numbers he gave me where he said they could always reach him.”
Sounding as though she couldn’t quite believe that Fat Jack had a brother let alone a father, the Sheriff continued her questioning. “Do you know where he is? What are these other numbers?”
Becoming annoyed now the I said “If I knew where he was, I wouldn’t be calling you. I knew he hung out around Coeur d’Alene sometimes so I thought you might be able to help me. I can give you the phone numbers and names, but they’re in other states. One is in Nevada and one in Missouri.”
“So…who are you?” Her tone was softening.
“My name is Hal Xxxx and I’m Jack’s brother. I’m a probation officer. I guess he’s the black sheep of the family, but I’d sure like to be able to tell him about Dad.”
The Sheriff laughed. “Well, I’ve been trying to find Fat Jack for awhile now on some burglaries around here. The last I heard he’d gone out to Montana. I don’t think we’re going to be able to help each other. When you called the numbers in Nevada and Missouri did they have any information at all for you?”
“Nothing at all. So you’re looking for him?” Even at the time, I was thinking that this sounded like a old western movie with the bad guy running off to the badlands of Montana.
The Sheriff took the information, apologized for her earlier suspicion and said goodbye.
Many years before, I had known “Weasel” who hung out at a non-profit drug crisis center. It was the ‘70’s; Weasel was a doper; and the I supposed that he was called Weasel because he was skinny, had lots of hair and had a thin face focused on a sharp nose. Even his girlfriend, Lupe, called him Weasel. I never knew his real name and I never thought of him as having any family other than Lupe, another doper. Weasel’s only criminal activity centered on possessing and using illegal drugs. Possibly he stole some things to support his need, but that didn’t come to my attention.
Did it ever occur to you that criminals with names like Fat Jack, or Weasel or Flap Ears have families? Or, like the Sheriff of Coeur d’Alene County, does it seem odd that they’re related to “real” people? Fat Jack (his real handle) is, of course, my brother. He’s not much of a criminal, as criminals go. Batman wouldn’t be interested in him; he’s a petty thief and a burglar. It surprised me to learn that a Sheriff, not just a deputy, knew of him; and it surprised me that he had one of those nicknames.
In some families it isn’t unusual for children to grow up with criminal nicknames, it isn’t unusual for them to go to prison and it isn’t unusual for them to die young. Still, I suspect that when little Flap Ears was being held in someone’s arms he wasn’t “Flap Ears” but was “sweetie” or “pumpkin”. When he was adopted into my family, Fat Jack was Steve…Steven Jack, which is the source of the Jack part of his nickname. There, he was held and kept clean and fussed over; but he took a wrong turning early in life nevertheless. There are lots of explanations for this, but the fact is his lifestyle caused lots of pain for our parents as well as for me. Weasel probably had siblings too. Certainly he had parents…everyone does. There are probably lots of explanations for why he staggered down the drug lane, but it’s also true that his lurching probably caused someone psychic pain.
I’m no sure whether I’d welcome Jack or Weasel into our church. I know I’m supposed to, because they’re people and they’re children of God. Jack, I’m pretty sure, would look for a way to steal from Church of the Beatitudes. That’s what he does. It’s been part of his identity for fifty years or so. I’d have to predict Weasel’s behavior from what I knew in the 70’s. Based on that he’d just be uncomfortable and would make others uncomfortable. That’s probably not a good reason for not inviting his participation, is it?
Topics: musing, relationships | No Comments »
SORTING AND FOLDING
By admin | August 13, 2008
My spouse won’t let me wash her work clothes. I give her a big grin and tell her that this hurts me deeply. The reason she won’t let me is that I don’t sort her clothes in the way she wants them sorted. She sorts according to what it says on the labels for the clothing. If it says “wash cold, press with cool iron if needed”, that’s what she does. Of course labels vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and seem to have little to do with the fabric. For example, I have plain, white, knit, cotton shirts (polo shirts) which say on the label “machine wash cool”. That’s just crazy!
We all know that one reason to sort laundry into various loads is to avoid having to wear pink underwear when you’re not in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Jail. (Phoenix? Maricopa Co.? Toughest Sheriff in the US?) We all know that some colors fade into whatever else is being washed. There are other reasons to sort too, though. Greenness…no I don’t mean that green clothes fade too; I’m talking energy conservation. In my opinion you should probably wash in the lowest temperature consistent with getting the clothes clean and un-smelly. That’s also a matter of saving money, as in it costs dough to heat the water that you wash your clothes in.
Even though I wash workout/work clothes in warm and I wash perm-a-press clothes in warm (cool rinse on both); I wash the loads separately because I know they will be folded/handled separately. For example, many of the perm-a-press clothes need to be hung and sprayed when they come out of the dryer (see entry Smooth Clothes). I don’t typically do that with the work clothes.
Then there’s an aesthetic issue: I wash kitchen towels/washcloths separately from underwear although both go in hot water and get bleached. I imagine they’d be OK, but who wants to think that the towel you wipe your cup with was next to your skivvies in the washer? I wash bath towels separately mostly because there’s always more of towels and underwear than the machine will handle in one load. It needs two loads so I sort them, again, according to how they’ll be folded. If there’s overflow in either basket, though, I can mix them because they both go in hot.
I am aware that some people don’t fold stuff. It’s just going to get used and wrinkled up again anyway, so why not just stuff it into the drawers or cabinets? I’m OK with that. I can’t do it myself, because I wouldn’t have room to put everything without compacting it by folding. I’ve got underwear and t-shirts that are older than some of the people who might read this so I need to conserve space. Some stuff stays smoother if you fold it and I like my clothes to be smooth. Again, I know that some guys don’t care about that and that’s OK with me…I do care, so I fold. Some things, particularly socks, get lost if you don’t pair them up and join them. There are lots of reasons to fold after washing and drying.
Topics: household | No Comments »
FIRST-OVERS
By admin | August 11, 2008
My wife is an exceptionally good cook. She is also an exceptionally hard worker at her job. This means that the time she has to cook is on weekends, usually Sundays, when she often cooks food enough for several meals. For example, she might prepare a huge vat of chili or a big pot of spaghetti sauce.
This all sounds wonderful, no? Probably, but today I was introduced to the term “first-over”. My partner confirmed to me that there was a meal prepared and in the fridge for me. Since it was a meal that she’d also prepared for our Daughter-in-law and her four boys…our son and our three grandsons; I said “Yeah, I know, left-overs.”
My spouse looked a little hurt and then said “It’s not left-overs; it’s first-overs.” I knew what she meant: a “first over” is a meal prepared ahead of time and then refrigerated for later use. I haven’t eaten a meal from this preparation before so it’s not a left-over; it’s a first-over. It’s not freshly cooked, but it’s not a re-run either.
As I write this and think about the situation, I recognize that I’m whining. Poppa don’t cook, it’s true. I clean house, look after the cars and do what little yard work there is, but I don’t cook. (toast doesn’t count) I suppose I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth. She is, after all, working and bringing needed cash into the family. How hard would it be for me to appreciate her effort to see that I have wholesome food when she’s working in the evening?
And yet I don’t appreciate it like I might and I wonder if that’s about the food or about her not being here to enjoy it with me. When she is here, I’m pretty sure I’m not the kind of company she would prefer. I complain when she discusses her work with me. I complain that she doesn’t give me any openings to talk. When she does give me openings, I don’t have much to say that’s of interest to her. And, it turns out, part of me likes being alone…it’s very freeing. It must be confusing to her…it sure is to me.
Topics: household, relationships | No Comments »
EXERCISE v. TRANSPORTATION
By admin | August 1, 2008
I mentioned in a prior entry that we recently went on a short vacation or long weekend. We drove to a city in the mountains. Once we got there, we could have not used the car at all. We did use it, because we’re accustomed to using our own car whenever we want, but we didn’t have to.
Flagstaff is the city in the mountains where we stayed and it has an Urban Trail System. A work in progress, this is a system of all weather trails on which a person can go throughout the city. They’re not yet completely interconnected, but we were able to go to downtown Flagstaff and return to our B&B, a four or five mile round trip, almost completely on the trail system.
Arizona is in the midst of “Monsoon”. Like any other place in the world, monsoon is a period of time when the wind and therefore the weather systems come from a different direction. Most of the year wind and weather cross Arizona from west to east. In July and August (approximately) weather comes at us from southeast to northwest (bringing moisture out of the Gulf of Mexico as well as the mainland of Mexico) before being blown off again to the east. That means that there are frequent rains in Flagstaff this time of year, one of which occurred the day we made our bike ride. The paved streets were running deep and the giant raindrops were COLD!
We sheltered under an awning before being blown into a store by wind which was moving the rain sideways. Fortunately, downpours in Arizona, even Flagstaff, only last minutes; so the precipitation quickly passed over us. The streets, still wet, stopped being rivers. We retrieved our bicycles, brushed the water off the seats and headed for the Urban Trail. We had doubts, but it turned out that the trails really are made for harsh weather. They were more passable than the streets. It snows in Flagstaff and I don’t think I’d want to ride the bike then, but they’re also designed for walking or, I suppose, cross country skiing.
If the trails had been impassable, we had an alternative transportation plan. Our B&B was only a block or two from a nearby bus stop. The busses have racks to hold bikes. The bus stops have covered benches. It would have been slower though because that route only runs ever 60 minutes.
Meanwhile, back in Phoenix, a few changes have made it possible for me to use alternative transportation. The major change is that eleven years ago we moved in the direction opposite to that in which our neighbors were moving. We moved from a suburb to the city while our friends seemed to be moving away from the core. The downtown core of Phoenix is still about 5 miles from where we live. It has become overcrowded and either expensive or impossible to park in. I’ve learned to use the bus whenever I need to go downtown for lunches or what little business I have there.
Within a mile radius from our present location are our church, various stores, the mechanic shop we use, the YMCA we recently joined, my MD‘s office and my wife’s office. I can use feet or bike to transport myself to any of those places and I do this on a regular basis. I use the gym in the hot summer and the streets in the winter for exercise. I ride the bike hard, or I walk fast and at the gym I do aerobics. Transportation though is much calmer. I can pedal just fast enough to be stable on the bike, or I can walk slowly enough to avoid working up a sweat. I can think, I can be alone or I can have a conversation with the person walking with me. Transportation is definitely not the same as exercise.
Topics: musing | No Comments »
The trouble with retirement is…
By admin | July 29, 2008
The reason I’m a stay-at-home guy is that I retired young after spending thirty years as a Juvenile Probation Officer. I expected to return to some sort of paid work, but for one reason and another I have not.
Before I retired, I remember hearing someone who’d gone before me say that the problem with retirement is that there are no weekends. He smiled when he said it, so I took it as a joke. It turns out that, as jokes go, this one wasn’t particularly funny. Unless you structure your life to avoid it, every day of the week is pretty much like every other day…there are no weekends! And that’s not a good thing.
In addition to the difficulty with weekends, it’s also somewhat difficult to justify taking a vacation. People have a tendency to give you that look…you know…that look…when you start talking about needing to get away. The look says “Why do you need a vacation? Isn’t every day a vacation for you?”
Fortunately with my wife still working too hard, I can justify taking vacations by saying “She needs to get away for awhile.” I guess after she retires people will just have to suck it up and realize that retired people need new scenery too.
Our recent vacation was quite short, a long weekend, but it was action packed. We went to a town in the mountains where we stayed at a Bed and Breakfast Inn for the first time. It’s the kind of place where you feel so at home that you think you might show up for breakfast in your terry robe and moose-hide slippers, unshaven and uncombed. BUT, since breakfast was served to us at the same time as the other three couples in residence, I dressed for the day before coming out of my room.
Monday morning as I was shoving the last suitcase in the car, I glanced up and saw a mule deer doe stotting away from where she’d been grazing on the back lawn. Stotting is the word I’ve been told describes the peculiar bouncing move that muleys perform when they’re alarmed. She only pogoed about three times, though, before she seemed to decide I wasn’t a threat and she stopped.
I knew that deer tend to run in herds, so I looked around for some others. Walking this time, a mule deer buck came out from behind a tree and resumed grazing. His antlers were still in velvet and they were quite short, indicating he was probably just a yearling, perhaps the doe’s fawn…but perhaps her brother. (What do I know about deer ages?)
The odd part of the incident was that the B&B we were in was pretty much within the small city we were visiting. There were pathways from the surrounding woods, though, and I imagine that’s how the deer came to be there.
Topics: musing, relationships | No Comments »
« Previous Entries