Happy Annvinersary

Waitress: "So's congratulations are in order! How long you guys been married?"

The Missus (without pausing for a second): "Thirty-five wonderful years! Thirty-eight total."

Dinnyland

Took the fam to Disney World to celebrate the onset of my 61st year. Were ten days in and around Orlando, two of which I got to spend at Cape Canaveral's Kennedy Space Center, and one of those as an "Astronaut In Training," a special gift from my darlin' daughters.

Amazed at the scope of Disney's operation and their 66,000+ employees' relentless pursuit of customer satisfaction. Even the guy whose job is picking up litter was at it, noticing Grandson's site map was crumpled and wrinkly, offered to fetch one to replace it. Only one day of rain. All the Dinny Lands terrific save Epcot, a disappointment.

Rode Tower of Terror three times in an hour, Space Mountain twice in half an hour, and my other faves, Splash Mountain and Aerosmith a couple times.

The girl managed to put on a full turkeyed Thanksgiving dinner, and all seven of us were able to live together in one house with no bloodshed; a minor miracle.

Crash Tested Dummy

It's mostly her fault, as you'll soon see.

It's been almost 16 months since I got the new knee, and I guess she just figured it was time to give it a good wringing thrash.

She comes home after tending the grandkids, starts taking in the laundry off the line, putting my well deserved dinner together, and remarks, "Since Herb is mixing stucco for the front of the house, why not have him use some of it to attach those tiles that have come off the roof over the front porch?"

Sounds innocuous, not the least devious, right? I carefully consider my options; nothing here to force me out of my chair in front of the Suns game, so being charitable yet cautious I intone an "Ungh, I guess." Then it came -

"Ok, they're down behind the pool. Why don't you go bring them up and put them out front where he'll see them?"

Damn! Should have seen that one coming.

Groaning, mumbling and muttering I rousts myself, puts the game on pause, and trundles down the hill in the gloaming through the underbrush. I collects an armload of fragile mexican roof tiles and heads back up the hill thinking it's about time to cut back some of these bushes in case I ever come down here again and one of the roots of one of the bushes reaches out, grabs my foot, and the ground rises up and smites me, kerbang on the knee.

The ensuing crash of the shattering tiles and my groveling around in the dirt brought quick response from the conniving laundry wench, who insisted that I get back in my chair, brought an ice pack and a glass of wine, and barbecued pork chops with buttered squash and potato salad for her poor, damaged sweetie.

But how quickly things can change.

After we've et, I'm rubbing my belly, trying to elicit a belch to compliment her, she says, "How's that knee doing?" "Huh? Oh, ok I guess." "Then take these dirty dishes to the kitchen, bring me a bottle of water, and stay the hell away from the good china."

Invocation

Invocation

O God--who art dust mote and fern spore,

salt crystal and dog-star, who art refinery smoke,

cumulus, leaf-rot, dishwater and spindrift--

how can I know thy invisible movements

through this world, when thou inhabit even

the debris of lives, the perforations of years?

God, who wears the green mask of death,

who visits the world in wisps of prayer,

how can I divine thy face through my tears?

Give me some sign--a thumbprint, a fragrance

of hyacinth, stigmata of coal on my brow--

that I may steep my silence in faith;

show me thy secret handshake welcoming

the weeds, thy luminous smile, thy mind

that spins the world wildly on its axis--

consecrate me as thou would the tiger's yawn,

offering itself like the poor man's bowl,

to the terrified fawn, to the wayward dove--

and I will do thy bidding, polishing words

so they gleam like ice, abandoning my rage

to kneel before thee, swallowing my doubt.

But there is no answer when I call out,

and my longing darkens my throat, my mouth.

How can I lift my eyes to a gutted sky?

O God, who art neither father nor son, nor

holy ghost, who art haloed by radium clouds,

beloved by millions of sparkplugs and ants,

thou who nestles in war's lap, in the breasts

of desire, who conspires with the darkest joys,

who art as amorphous as a map of stillness--

I cry out to thee again and again, over

and over, and only the wilderness answers,

and the dangerous world's laughter--

by Maurya Simon, from Ghost Orchid (Red Hen Press).

Where The Wild Things Are

Interminable.

A Curse On Your Ark, Noah

Too many animals.

The girl decided that our ancient sloth "Snapdog", who wears an orange cat's skin, "needs company" since we're away so much. And in the girl's book, two of anything is way better than one, and since we always see things the same way (it's just that most of the time she sees them first) we relieved the pound of of a pair of testicle pummeling (see previous post) pussy cats. And boy howdy, does he have company.

Not a formula for a good night's sleep, what with said sloth pretty certain he has dibs on our bed and his vituperous assertions that those dibs are exclusive.

Then about 3:30 this morning the javelinas return in hopes of another feast of flowers and herbs that the girl insists on laying out for them. Some times they just tear everything out of the pots and strew dirt around the patio, but this morning they were squeezing in between the trellises and the house and banging and rooting and snorting and about 4 I finally went out in sandals and shorts and hissed at them and clapped my hands and 12 to 15 of them scurried off to the south, more afraid of the apparition than the sounds it made, I'm sure.

Back to bed, shovel the kittens out of the way. They take that as an invitation to play scratch and tickle. I just want some sleep, dammit.

Now come the coyotes, in full throat. Might as well be right in the bedroom, singing into both sets of windows. They sound kind of neat when they're off up the mountain, but when they're close and I'm trying to get back to sleep, it ain't neat. And now I read that some young woman in Canada was killed by coyotes?

This morning I ask, "Weren't those damned pigs and coyotes something?!"

"You know, I thought I heard something."

The girl is going to have to start helping out with this wildlife circus act at night. She's all done with the laundry and cooking and filing and so on by the time she joins me in bed. Why should it fall solely onto me?

Tempest Fugit

In the same week my granddaughter turned eight, my ten year-old grandson regaled us at the dinner table with an anecdote of how a cat in a cage at the shelter kept pawing at his "testicles". He clearly loved the way the word 'testicles' tumbles trippingly from his tongue, and three times worked it into one paragraph of the recounting.

Gramps: "They're not testicles, dammit, they're NUTS".

Nana obviously not enjoying the banter nearly so much as her table mates.

In a related, maybe, incident, the grandson's mother saw the grandson and his buddy snickering and tee-heeing on the sofa after a brief, whispered conversation. Upon inquiry she learned that Friend had just informed Grandson that babies come from "a girl's poophole".

Never one to pass up an opportunity to banish misinformation, my beloved daughter, mother of my grandson, sat down on the footstool across from the lads, eye to eye, and mincing no words, explained in clear, anatomically precise detail what a vagina is and it's non-role in the pooping process.

If you've ever seen film of a spider squirming, writhing in its death throes, you've seen those two boys on the couch as they unwillingly learned about a fundamental aspect of female anatomy.

Deus Vult

Some days it's tough enough being a property manager to the pedestrian mix of laggards, liars and dingleberries that populates my world and phones me with bizarre demands at odd hours, but consider the plight of Henry Jacob, who runs a co-op on the Lower East Side of Manhattan where Orthodox Jews inhabit a substantial portion of his 2,500 apartments.

Hank's life has become more complicated by a ruling issued by a group of prominent rabbis in Israel on Sept. 29 that seems to ban the use of many so-called Shabbos elevators: elevators fixed to stop on every floor from Friday evening until Saturday evening so that observant Jews do not have to press any buttons.

Since the 1960s, when high-rise apartment buildings became ubiquitous, the Orthodox rabbinate has made such elevators one of the few exceptions to Talmudic rules prohibiting 39 categories of activity on the Sabbath, including manual labor or the use of electrical devices. Like flipping a light switch, pressing an elevator button is considered the use of an electrical device.

But the recent ruling, whose signers included Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv — at 99, widely considered the most influential Torah sage of his generation — introduced a caveat based on new technology in elevators. The rabbis wrote that this new technology, which was explained to them by elevator technicians and engineers in “a written and oral technical opinion,” made them aware for the first time that using Shabbos elevators may be a “desecration of the Sabbath.”

Religion sometimes, if belatedly, accommodates the obvious. Witness Pope Benedict's acknowledgment that Galileo was right - 359 years after one of his predecessors condemned GG to house arrest for pointing out the obvious.

I suspect that more malleable minds will come to the fore and we'll have an "up and down turnaround" and the US Senate will retain its ranking as the most prominent bastion of seniority over sanity.

Life In The Junction

How bad would that tooth have to hurt to use this guy? And the other sign just shouts 'Apache Junction".

God'll Get Ya

The Blonde's position on organized religion is well known, and not as difficult to elicit as I would prefer in some situations. Therefore, when I learned that her "talk" last night would be in front of 500 of the Canadian faithful at one of those mega churches, and more ominous yet a Babdist mega church, I despaired.

"You be careful, hear?!" I admonished. "No 'godfry daniels', no 'cheese & crackers', none of that. Can you do that? Can you refrain from your refrain?"

She was confident she could, and I felt assured that her professionalism would carry the day, and lo, none of the faithful would be offended. Selah!

So she gets to the venue; enormous video screens on either side of the dais, an orchestra pit for Christ's sake, wireless microphone, dedicated spotlights, a soundboard Springsteen's guy would envy, all the technical hoo-haw it takes to sell religion now days . . . . . . . . . . . and none of it would work. The guys couldn't figure out why it wouldn't work, it just wouldn't.

In lieu of her planned presentation she had to resort to what she calls Hand Puppets.

See? See?!

The Reader

The Girl begins her "one-or-two-weeks-a-month in-Canada" gig next week, so we thought we'd head up the hill to the cabin for a long weekend where instead of 102 it was 67. It was a perfect day at 6400 ft. We've got our routine down so that it takes us right at a half hour to move out of the truck and into the cabin. Moving the other way takes a bit longer, laundry, dishes, that sort of thing.

We lounged around, my putting some notes and emails together for the *^%#@ attorney and her out on the deck, reading, she won't say what "Oh, just some junk novel".

After meatloaf (the meal, not the artist) we watched The Reader. Loathe as I am to accept a contrived coincidence/hidden disability as a plot device, this is an excellent movie. The direction and screenplay are very good, and the cast has not one mis-step. Ms Winslet has not been on my best actress list, despite her apparent contract stipulation that she gets to take her clothes off in every film she's in, but she has the walk, the gestures, the furtive glances of her character down perfect.

Having said that, and I know it's "art" or "literature", but I detest any attempt, regardless of how roundabout, to elicit sympathy for anything or anyone involved with the nazi era in Germany.

Kitchen's Done

Only time will tell if that's really true. Gas oven explosions have decreased by several megatons, but discomfiting noises still issue therefrom.

Pizza Pooh & Magpie

is how Paul McCartney allegedly referred to Peter, Paul and Mary, now Peter, Paul and Memories.

When I was 14, back when dirt was new and saber toothed tigers ruled the earth, John S, Sherrie C and I formed a "tribute group" called Lyle, John & Sherrie for a school talent show. We enlisted my best friend at the time, Dennis, who was pretty proficient on the acoustic guitar, and we learned a ton of PP&M songs.

Our voices blended pretty well for the callow yoots we were, and our audition for the talent show was well received. In fact, we were the only 'act' that got to play twice in the show. When I complained to Mrs Bauer that we were put last in the order, she patiently explained that "We always save the best for last." That was a nice moment.

Our first offering was 500 Miles, and we closed the show with "The Cruel War" which brought down the house. (This was fairly early in America's troops' involvement in Viet Nam.) We weren't prepared for that reception and stood there, gobsmacked, but were hugely gratified.

Sherrie's brother was killed three years later in that goddam war.

This morning The Girl and I were both up shortly after 3 following another night's unsuccessful attempt to reset our internal clocks after our ten days in Greece. She told me of Mary Travers' passing and I downloaded 24 PP&M songs, played them all and am still reeling under the effects of a nostalgia deluge.

Now listen up.

The absolute minimum you must have in your library is: I Dig Rock And Roll Music; Early Morning Rain; 500 Miles; Puff, the Magic Dragon (I am NOT kidding); their definitive Where Have All The Flowers Gone; Don't Think Twice, It's Alright; and most importantly The Great Mandela, which of course will always have a special resonance for me.

If I find out you don't have these on your device, and in regular rotation, it will not go well for you when I'm in charge.

What's Up With Home Depot?

The kitchen faucet we installed in March quit swiveling. The lever that controls hot and cold by going left and right should be independent of the faucet itself, which should swivel to either basin. Started out working just fine, but somewhere, some time ago, it locked up and you couldn't move one without moving the udder.

The new granite kitchen countertops and sink were installed today so the plumbing was pulled out and I tradfatted on down to Home Depot, rehearsing my Faulty Merchandise Return rant along the way.

In I comes, filled with righteous indignation, ready to make my point as often and to as many levels of nebbishes as necessary. The first poor devil walks square into my crosshairs.

"Help you?"
"Yeah!! I got this here and Look! it's supposed to swivel like this, but it doesn't!!"
"Do you want to just get another one?"
"Oh yeah?! Well I want to talk to . . . . . I beg your pardon?"
"Just go get another one and bring it back up here."
"But, but, I beg your pardon?"
"Down aisle 6, get a replacement and bring it up here."

Dazed and confused, I did as told, knowing the punch line was still to come.

"That one gonna do it for ya?"
"Yeah, it's about the same."

Waves it across the scanner, tells me I'm good to go, bids me good day, goes on about his business.

I still don't get it.

Dated Definitions

The OED - Oxford English Dictionary - one of my bibles, with word histories and definitions going back almost 900 years is nearly 22,000 pages long. However, from 1991 to 1999 the Oxford Press published a "Compact OED" - the entire contents in one 14 pound tome. With the type compressed to nine pages per page, combined with my myopia that makes Mr Magoo's vision telescopic by comparison, it was a natural. Then, to clinch the deal Amazon offered free shipping on my next order and Kaching! with its own magnifying glass, even.

Now comes the NYTimes Magazine with word that a major update is in the works. By 'in the works' they mean they began in 2000 with "M" and have almost gotten to "Re-". Definition of the word 'marriage' will be expanded, for instance. But sadly, definitions have fallen out of use and thus, out of favor.

Some of the definitions whose demise is contemplated:

The definition of 'Care' as "some kind of stuff"

'Murinoid': "resembling the mouse or its allies"

'Cretin': "One of a class of dwarfed and specially deformed idiots found in the Alps and elsewhere"

'Pope Joan': "After the fabulous female Pope Joan" (fabulous as in fabled, but I like fabulous better)

'Boodle': "a stupid noodle" which may have stemmed from

'Prothodaw'; which is/was "a prime simpleton, a noodle of the first rank" and, a personal favorite -

'Middle-aged': "between youth and old age, variously reckoned to suit the reckoner"

Now get out there and try to use one of these with their original definition. And let's not all use prothodaw and cretin, ok?

Things I Saw This Weekend That You Didn't

We spent a long weekend on the mountain in the cabin we own 1/8 of (LindenPines.com) and got a welcome respite from the twenty-some days already of 110+ temps in The Junction. The temps topped out at 78 and it was so breezy that while we picnicked at Fool Hollow Lake - (go ahead, I'll wait) - Herself had to wear a jacket.

The man who built the cabin, finishing it on 12/29/99 he says, stopped by with a companion whose mother tongue was not English for a tour. He hadn't seen the fireplace nor the finished basement. He showed us what he believes to be Anasazi ruins on the property, and the best places to scan the ground for pottery shards. We found a few shards with the same wavy, black on white thin striping as I had found a bucketful of up outside Snowflake twenty years ago.

We came across these bones, but my suggestions that boiling them for a few hours might make a decent soup were met with contempt exceeding derision.

Oh, and Snowflake is and/or is not eponymous. The town is named after two men, Mr Snow and Mr Flake. The Flakes are still prominent in the LDS community and in Arizona politics.

Knucklehead Golf Association

Bro DanPan:

Your RSVP and entry fee are conspicuous by their abscess. I was short-strawed into trying to assuage your reticence.

If your concern is the overnightedness of the outing, rest assured that twixt Lar's luxury fun house and my modest hovel, we have more than enough bedrooms with locking doors to prevent a recurrence of "The Sleep-Walking Incident" from the Tucson trip. And in that same sticky arena, GMac has sworn to not use the phrase "warm, soapy shower" in front of Ern more than twice in any four hour period.

If you're worried about the entertainment, GMac is bringing his Liza Minelli records and Lar has promised to reprise his dead-on impression of Carol Channing in 'Hello Dolly'.

If you're worried about the wagers, shut up. You'll be the best golfer there. I know, high praise, indeed.

While there still are past due details to be worked out - Lar's planning the thing after all - every respondent other than Ern has pledged to do his darndest to make this the first ever KGA Road Event where no one goes home in an ambulance or in tears. We just have to continue to work with Ern.

Come visit your Mom on Thursday the 20th, and we'll have you back, mostly safe, as close to sane as you are now, and hopefully tear-free at the airport on Sunday.

Your former fellow dirtmonger

Lyle

If Guile Won't Work, Appeal To His Emotions

I've posted notices, put up signs, advertised in all the major media, made verbal and physical threats, yet the birds continue to build nests in the seemingly endless array of nooks and crannies we now have. And don't pay rent. If you build it I will come. Any of you who've crossed your landlord know what I'm talkin' about.

I have one set of very busy wrens of some sort above the back patio that I've grandfathered in until the current kids leave the nest - sorry, but there that was.

Today I decide to purge the door lights outside my office of the doves therein. As I approached the light, not yet even assuming my most threatening posture, a gray mass was seemingly catapulted onto the rock drive in front of me. There, the poor bird was obviously in its death throes, or at least in some sort of horrific agony, a broken wing at the very least, thrashing about, chirrupping, somersaulting. I cautiously approached and this pitiful creature and its torments edged farther away, out into the middle of the driveway. Again I moved to get to the poor thing, again it maintained the same distance between us. What an incredible, Oscar-worthy performance.

When we'd moved our million-years-old dance clear over to in front of the garage door, a seeming miracle occurred. The writhing, miserable creature at Death's door suddenly burst into flight and disappeared around the corner of the next house to the north.

Like so many other feral creatures before me, I lost track of my original purpose, and wandered, dazed and bemused, off to some other endeavor.

Can't be sure of course, but I thought that in the wind coming from the north I heard "Neener neener neener".

Calf Creep $210

Is $210 a good price?

We traveled Thursday to visit the Children of the Corn in honor of the missus's brother's 50th wedding anniversary. We got to Omaha, drove past the house we built and lived in for twelve years, past the houses her father had built and she had lived in, and had a Runza at the Runza Hut. Then we decided to spend the night rather than drive to Lake Okoboji and decided to dine at the French Cafe in the Old Market, where we'd had many delicious, candlelit dinners more than a quarter century ago.

In the Market I stopped by Homer's Record Shop where my last purchase had been Lou Reed's masterpiece "Berlin".

On 8-track.

Then east and across the street to the French Cafe. I walked in past the bar, looking for a maitre d', and could not believe the stench of the place. I think Nebraska is relatively new to the "no indoor smoking" fad sweeping the nation, and the smell in the Cafe was overwhelming with stale cigarettes, cigars, and spilled wine and beer, I'm guessing now. I beat a hasty retreat and found a good steakhouse, Spencer's, where we whiled away a few hours before bolting out the door without paying our check.

Jeez, you people! I'm kidding.

Friday morning we drove the rented covertible up the 29 and east at Mo Valley. We stopped in Logan for lunch at a bucolic clapboard cafe with a pool table partly blocking the entry. Delish. Back into the 'bishi bug and up the street where we saw the Calf Creep sign on a feed store. My best guess was that it's a treatment for restless leg syndrome, but no: it's a small, apparently portable feed station designed specifically for, you guessed it.

More on the adventure later.

Life In The Junction

Things I saw this weekend that you probably didn't.

Today

Today was a pretty good day, even though it started out with all the characteristics of total crappola.

We've cut back our summer grandchildren duties from past years to just Mondays and Wednesdays. She has them Mondays and Wednesdays until noon, and I have them Wednesdays afternoons. An equitable distribution of responsibility.

So, today is Wednesday and Her's computer has et up and then disposed of her complete itinerary from January forward, and won't give it back. It's all gone. Goddam Vista and goddam Palm conspiracy, near as I can tell.

Now, her's is not a tidy, predictable calendar. Her's trips to Our Gentle Neighbor Northward, her talks to the stupid, unappreciative locals, and even, god forbid, her hair appointments, all at odd, non recurring intervals were gone, disappeared, null, nixo, gotverloren and seemingly irretrievable.

Seems her stuff didn't appear to have backed itself up since NinederJune, when Yerstruly manually made it do so, and yes, Sherlock, that culpability trail was so obvious a 20 year old schnauzer with hay fever could just sneeze and point.

So we phoned for Bob, Miracle Bob. An Aspergers candidate who charges less than 65% of what the last microsoft healer did. Bob shows up, timely. He's not optimistic, not cheerful, not communicative, but not expensive. Stuff doesn't work that should. Drives are stipulated that don't exist. Outcome seems hopeless. Thanks, Bob.

So, what does a guy like me do in this situation?

Takes the grandkids to the Museum, of course.

On the way over we stops by the bank, entertains the patrons. We stops by the pool store to get our pool water tested; entertains the pool store patrons. Pool water fine, by the way, thanks for asking. We sets the bus computer for the museum address, and then find multiple ways to confound the computer. We goes round in circles in the pool store parking lot. We goes north when the bus computer insists on south. We goes right when the computer insists left. We find this hysterically entertaining, hilarious. We imagine the computer cursing, furious that we won't follow its directions. We are consumed by paroxysms of laughter, most of us.

B: "Grampa, wouldn't it be cool if we could put the address into the computer and it just drove us there? You wouldn't have to do the driving and could just talk to us and have fun!"

"Well. Sweetie, by the time you're able to drive, I'll bet that we'll be able to do just that! What are you, fourteen, fifteen?"

"Grampa, I'm 8!"

"OK then, I'm sure we'll be able to do that when you can drive."

"Will you still be alive then Gramps?


We spend a bit more than two hours at the museum, which has a special display on the Mars Rovers and has added an astonishing skeleton of a 60,000 year old mammoth. We pan for gold, marvel at the snapping turtle, try out the bunks from the Arizona territorial jail, and make sure that B has to handle the fossilized dinosaur poop. She squeals and rubs her hands on our shirts.

We head back to the Junction. School starts up in five weeks and this particular aspect of grandparenting will be over for another year.

A text fom Herself tells me that Miracle Bob has found and restored the lost data. "It's safe to come home and bring the babies to swim in the pool."

"Can we stop at DQ, Gramps?"

"NO!" I bought you drinks at the museum, you're too expensive, no more, I'm done."

"Grampa, you know you always do"

"Ahhhhh ok"

"Grampa, how come you smile so much?"

Today was a pretty good day.

Two Simple Rules

A delightful (I'm guessing, but pretty certain) woman from Santa Monica in her mid-80s writes to the Times that she "continue[s] to be amazed at the number of advice books listed each week in the Book Review as best sellers."

She says she's done very well, thank you, with two 'pieces of advice' she learned in pre-school:

1. Try to play nicely with everyone.

2. If you're crabby, take a nap.

America, America Alas

A survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, and American Association for the Advancement of Science found that

- almost a third of Americans believe that humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time

- a bit less than half the population believes that people are responsible for climate change and about 11% says there is no climate warming at all

- a third of Americans think there continues to be a lively debate as to whether the theory of evolution is valid or not

Not real surprising, I guess, but certainly disappointing.

I've been admonished to point out that my previous post should be read with Sgt Peppers in mind.

Limping Lyle's Patched Patella's Tanned

It was just a year ago today
That my knee was opened up and flayed
It's been healing slow enough to rile
Now I realize it takes a while
But let me iterate to you
It's better than it's been in years
Limping Lyle's Patched Patella's Tanned

A Little Thing Called "Attitude"

My darling granddaughter is the fifth iteration I've known in my life of a female template the likes of which the world could use more of. Sorry to dangle my participle out there like that, but this is going to be one of those.

She's way smart, fiercely loyal, totally committed to the task at hand, and waaaay quick on her feet physically and mentally. With a default gait of 'scamper', (her forebears not quite so much any more) she's just as quick and light with her wit as on her feet.

Case in point: B's always relegated to the MIC seat in the Suburban (Most Important Cargo). While the rest of us fasten our "meatbelts" she applies her "sweetbelt."

A couple days ago I was trucking the grandkids about, as often, using our time together to school them in the finer points of classic rock 'n roll - ("Does it have to be so LOUD, Gramps?! ") - when I noticed that the sound from the rear of the vehicle changed periodically. I was pretty sure I detected some furtive movements from the MIC seat concurrent with the forbidden messing with my decibels.

What are you doing back there, young miss?! I'll show you, Gramps.

We arrive, I clamber into the back. She points out an array of controls on the back of the arm bolster separating the front seats. "See this button? When I push it in, like this, I don't have to listen, it turns the music off back here. When I push it again, it turns the music back on."

She goes through the process again, slowly, as if instructing a painfully slow classmate who's having trouble tying his shoes.

She turns to me, pointedly catches my gaze, looks deep into my soul and carefully enunciates "Get it now?"

. .. and a time to refrain from . . .

Turns out that Tiger "the Wimp" Woods had some pretty good logic as to why he waited so long to get back out on the links. The reason? It takes time for a knee to recover. And the Wimp had only some minor snipping and tucking and a little suction going on, not a complete replacement like your mostly-truly, the Patella Fella.

Sure sure, I was warned repeatedly, and you don't have to guess more than once by whom, but my surgeon, he said, "If you feel like you're ready, go on ahead." Of course a surgeon is only happy when he's wearing green and is up to his elbows in your blood. He doesn't know from rehab.

So at least once a week I've been out for 18 holes, and Surprise! each time it's taken me two or three days for the swelling and the pain to ebb to the point where I can be my charming, scintillating self.

Friday may have been the one. It's Wednesday and I'm still swoled and hurtful. Told the Knuckleheads to take me out of the rotation until I get this foot/knee thing rehabbed properlike, or learn to swing from one leg, flamingo like.

Pool Maintenance

Note To Self:

If the pool sweep quits moving, and you can't see anything blocking his gullet, but when you poke your finger in there it feels all squishy and waterballoonish, next time don't keep poking at it until it bursts.

And when you disassemble your Nemo and remove the effluvia of what turns out to have been most of a family, do not run trumpeting your discovery to whomever commands the kitchen, or your next meal could be delayed.

Boy howdy.

Settled In

Hard to believe it's been almost two months since we moved in. She's ordered in enough tons of rock delivered to the driveway and around the house to likely change the tilt of the planet. New orange and blanco oro grapefruit trees have been planted to go with the lemon already here. The pool's been scrubbed, bead blasted, chlorine rinsed, had all the DE baffles replaced, the motor replaced, and the little Nemo sweep disembowled, rehabbed, and thrown back in. The water is warm enough for the grandkids already, still too cold for us.

Everything works except the Dynasty gas stove, which everyone tells us is a really good one, save for the sonic boom explosion and hour or so after it is used. Discomfitting. Seems there was some kind of air lock that trapped some gas in a place it wasn't spose to be, where it malingered until I was just starting to nod off, and then ignites, all at once. KABOOM rattle rattle.

I call the thing "Enola Gay".

Three service calls and a new igniter later, now you can't smell the gas. But today, after 45 minutes of swearing and whanging and flailing by the repairman, who's now become pretty much part of the family, when he fires up the oven, great orange flames roil up the right wall of the baking compartment. I stand aghast, wondering if the little red fire extinguisher is going to be enough or should I run out and drag in a garden hose. "Hmmpf," he says. "That still ain't right." No? asks I, with a vocal quality somewhere between a castrati soprano and a mezzo.

He decides to turn off the gas - ok by me - and says he will insist to the home warranty peeps that theys gets a manufreakingacturer's rep out to reset the demsquibblehitches back to where they should be. In his mind it's my fault for not having the struxion manual. In my mind the jury's still out on God's Gas. The nice rosy glow of electric elements versus a lurking half-ton of iron that could any minute decide it wants to start its launch sequence.

. . . And A Time To Refrain From

You'd a been so proud of me.

Was rummaging about in the Fasteners Dept at Home Depot, looking for longer screws than came with the knobs She wants installed on every freaking drawer and cabinet in the Hive. (The drawers have double thick front panels and the included screws are for 3/4" board.)

A bespectacled young woman in an orange bib with what appear to be a couple of rambunctious puppies wrestling under it offers to help.

"I'm looking for this screw, but longer," I begins, showing the palm of my hand, being charitable and cautious.

"That's an 8-32, but I need to know your length," she murmurs.

Pause. Reflection. The sensation of my teeth clamping down on my tongue. My throat seems to need clearing.

But I was strong. I said nothing, other than "Aha! There they are" and continued unassisted to the appropriate shelf.

But that was a close one.

Weas Culpa

Thanks to my brother for passing this along -

Dear World:

The United States of America, your quality supplier of the ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for its 2001-2008 service outage.

The technical fault that led to this eight-year service interruption has been located. Replacement components were ordered Tuesday, November 4th, 2008, and have begun arriving. Early tests of the new equipment indicate that it is functioning correctly and we expect it to be fully operational by the end of January.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage and we look forward to resuming full service -- and hopefully even improving it in the years to come. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Very Truly Yours,

The USA

High Honey, We're Home

I'd mentioned that we had a hard time getting the former owner moved out timely. He's finally gone, except for his horses, but some of the previous residents didn't get the memo.

But things are coming along at the Honey Factory. The interior walls and ceilings are all painted; I detail vacuumed 12 of the 15 ceiling fans, none of which had been dusted in their first five years. The carpet's on order and we're less than a month from moving in. We think.

Here are another couple views from The Aerie (name pending, subject to management's approval).

The Habitual Procrastinator's Wife

Me: I'm quite proud of myself! I've already finished and mailed my year-end reports to my owners and accountants!

Her: That's great, honey. Which year?