I Want The Mouse Swagger

I always thought that yogurt was for women. I’m sure that statement is sexist in some form or another, but let’s face it, the stuff isn’t really palatable unless you fill it with something that makes the yogurt taste go away. Women eat it because they want to be healthy and look good. Men don’t have that problem. When they look in the mirror, they see George Clooney or Brad Pit and then fool them selves into thinking they already look good. But I’m rethinking this yogurt thing, and that’s because of the mouse swagger. I read yesterday about a study where they fed mice different diets with and without yogurt. It seems that the male mice that ate the diet with yogurt developed more luxurious and shiny hair. But it wasn’t the shiny hair that grabbed my attention; it was the other characteristics that started me thinking about slurping down a little fermented milk. You see the mice that ate the yogurt developed a swagger. They sort of strutted their stuff around the cages, and it turned out that their stuff had grown a little. That swagger apparently appealed to the female mice because they stopped exercising in their squirrel cages and did a joint exercise routine with the males. I told my wife that she better look out; I’m going to buy some vanilla flavored yogurt at the store later today.

The End Of The World: (Humor)

When you look at the TV and read the news, you can see that there is a prevailing theory that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. That phrase is one that my father often used, and it is difficult, at times of late to argue for a more positive destination.

Now you have to understand that, according to my wife, I’ve always been a negative ninny. In my retirement she has patiently tried to train me not to see the world through a set of glasses where fire and brimstone flicker bright along the edges, but to visualize an image of flower filled meadows surrounding me as I plod through the fields of life, all the while emphasizing that I should concentrate on smelling the roses, so to speak
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Her patience has been amazing, especially considering that I grew up with the concept in my head that God created the world just to get even with me when I wasn’t looking.

It’s sort of weird perspective when you think about it, since I often painted myself as a victim whose importance is second only to God, and then I picture God as a “Gotcha” type of deity who just got tired of creating universes and decided to concentrate instead on picking on me
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One by one my wife has exorcised those demons from my head with the patience of a saint. I’m her project in this life, and she figures if she can succeed with me, then she has earned a first class seat to her next incarnation. It’s in a place where I’m hoping she envisions me as her “boy toy.”
I had almost climbed out of that self dug hole until I opened up the paper today and found out that the world is going to end on May 21st.

Now I know that the end of the world has been predicted every few years, and often by the same predictor, but this time the guy says he has it right. Eight weeks from now a few people are going to be whisked off this earth to rapture, and the rest of us are in for some pretty hard times.

I don’t want to sound like I’m whining after all my wife’s hard work, but what really ticks me off about this upcoming event is that I’m never going to get to see the last Harry Potter movie. It’s been a long time since I read the book and I’ve forgotten who wins.

A Bird's Way Of Saying Thanks

My middle daughter bought a toy for her first child that makes noises, plays a set of short tunes or says a few encouraging words when it is touched, moved, or any of the buttons on it are pushed. It is designed to encourage a baby from a few months old to a year old to reach out and grab it and get a verbal reward in the form of a short jingle of music or a few positive words such as “good job” or “thanks.”
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She used it for her first two children and offered it last week to her older sister who now has a four month old.

The unit is pretty touchy, and it will start speaking or making noise, at times, without any intentional input. It cannot be turned off without removing the batteries, and that fact made my oldest daughter say ”no thanks” when I took it to her in New York the other day.

The unit was therefore stuffed back into the bag, and it provided my wife and I more than a few smiles as we travelled on our three hundred mile journey home. Without warning it would start emitting some musical sound or a few words when we hit a big bump or sometimes without any seeming cause.

Whenever the window was opened to pay a toll, the air rushing into the back of our Jeep set it off, and I received a few strange looks from toll takers at my choice of music or the mumbled words that came from the back of the car where no one was seated.

When we got home last night I set the bag on the floor of our laundry room, planning to return it to my other daughter within a few days.

This morning’s routine of starting the coffee, walking down to get the newspaper, finish making the coffee, then read the newspaper was 3/4ths complete when I realized that the bird feeder on the back deck had not been filled for four days.

I wanted nothing more than to sit down with that cup of java, so it took the guilt trip of imagining a starving bird to get me to go out to the laundry room, grab the container of bird seed and run outside without my jacket on and load up the feeder.

When I came back inside my feet were covered with snow so I stamped my shoes on the doormat, and as soon as I finished stamping the toy said but one word: “Thank You.”

You can imagine my first look, then my laughter and I walked back to grab my coffee. And then the “Thank You” reminded me there was also no water in the birdbath so I filled a pitcher and did that task while fully expecting another “thank you” when I came back in and stamped my feet.

Nothing happened until I got back into the kitchen, and then I heard in a rising crescendo “Ta Da Da Da.”

I figured it was the birds’ way of saying thanks
(True story)

I'm No Longer A Father

This morning I got up all happy and jolly. A new coating of snow was on the ground, fresh coffee was brewing, and then "whack" I read in the newspaper that I am no longer a dad.

I went to bed last night the father of three grown daughters and woke up this morning learning that I am no longer a father according to the US government: I am either "parent 1 or parent 2.

This is due to the fact that the State Department has decided to make passports gender neutral by changing the words mother and father to parent one or parent two.

Now I'm sitting here this morning, shaking because I'm afraid one of my daughters is going to call, and I won't know how to answer: Do I say " Hi this is parent 1," or "Hi this is parent 2?"

You see my wife is out of town, and we have not been able to discuss our ranking in this parent 1 or parent 2 situation. If she demands the parent 1 designation does that make me a lesser partner? And if I take it, will she feel that fifty years of progress in women's rights has just been thrown out the window?

The state department designations, by indicating a numerical order, imply that one came before the other, and for the life of me I can't remember which one of us came first during each of those three encounters.

Now I don't mind being a parent, but I always sort of like to be called dad.

I'm going to miss that.

It's January, and I want Something New

My wife should never leave me home alone with the checkbook in January.

There is something about the first few weeks of the year that causes my wants and my needs to diverge greatly, and that divergence is an outright danger to the funds in our bank account.

In retirement you have to wisely budget the expenditures of the funds remaining unless you want to end up sitting on one of your children's doorsteps yelling, "remember me?" or asking the Salvation Army to friend you on Facebook.

I am embarrassed to admit it (well not really) but impulse control, for me, during this winter month is usually accomplished only when I look at my wife and realize I don't want her to lead a pauper’s life if I wink out early.

When my wife is around the sanity part of my personality, which is the smallest part, similar in size to an electron, rises up and slays my insanity demon, which is about the size of the current universe. I then usually make it to the end of the month when the huge, unpaid Christmas bills come in and writing those checks mostly cures my illness because the term "insufficient funds" looms in my future if I dare write another check.

When she is away, however, I am left to run amok. I start daydreaming about new cars, about buying a kit airplane and starting to fly again, and I begin my relentless search for the motorcycle that I just have to have to make my life complete. Foolishness realized does not mean foolishness conquered, and I've discovered that age and wisdom are inversely proportional in the male half of my lineage.

Well my wife is away. She's spending a few days watching my new granddaughter, and I'm here alone. Boy that new BMW motorcycle looks good. And the price isn't bad: It only costs as much as my first house.

I sort of feel like the little half man half fly caught in the spider's web in the movie "The Fly."

"Help me. Please"

Christmas Magic

I usually try to embed a little humor in my posts and then surround it with an observation about the absurd behavior of someone who is on this wonderful journey we call life. Often that fool is me. (Microsoft word wants to change that last word to “I” but I prefer to use “me” because I’m writing this and not Bill Gates)

I do realize that my observations about life usually come from a fertile mind where the word fertile has the same meaning implied as when we say that mushrooms are grown in fertile soil
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I have wracked my few hundred still functioning brain cells for the past few days to come up with a piece about Christmas, but I have failed. And I’ve failed mostly because Christmas has always been a time when I revert to a small child both in my mind and my actions. And a small child’s mind is fixated on the magic of Christmas, and not the foibles of the more senior set.

Some would say using the term magic with Christmas is over used, and they would remind me that only a limited percentage of the world’s population celebrates the holiday, and that many millions of them are starving and lonely during this season. While that knowledge tempers my euphoria during this time of year, it does not extinguish it because there are still a billion people or more that for a few days a year can feel and act like a child again.

Since our thoughts have power. (After all they move our arms and legs don’t they?) I have always believed that conscious thoughts are the controller of the universe. And to me that means that the billions of thoughts over the past hundred years about a man in a red suit delivering presents on Christmas eve has certainly changed the world.

If we really do create our reality with our thoughts then a few positive muses about Santa by each of us can’t help but improve the state of the world even further.

I’m getting excited about that round, jolly guy that all of us created visiting me in a few nights and so are my grandchildren. Not just for the toys I’ll play with on Christmas morning, but for the wonder of it all.

And it might even snow.

The Inventor Of Friction

Some of you who read this article will think that I am crazy, which is a fact that anyone who has read any of my previous writings already knew, so don’t feel alone. But this morning I started wondering about the person who invented friction.

Notice that I did not say “the man who invented friction,” and that’s because I’m gender neutral in my thinking even when it comes to deities. And in this case, friction is such an interesting phenomenon that I might place on the female side of the deity discussion during one of those, “Is God a he or a she,” arguments.

The reason for my sudden interest in friction is that as I was walking down to get the newspaper this morning, the wind almost knocked me over on my keister.

It’s only early December here in northern Virginia: a fact that’s pretty much true everywhere on this planet. But the point I am trying to make is that the thermal input from the sun has decided to take an early vacation in the south, and all the hot air from Washington must be blowing east.

The bitter cold, strong, gusty wind reacquainted me with how friction between the air and my face results in massive shivers running down my body, while my nose starts acting like a slowly leaking faucet.

At first I wasn’t really thinking about “who invented what” because the stones in my driveway and my shoes had agreed that when they get rubbed together, friction would be high: Which is a similar deal that many men try to negotiate with their wives.

The gusts dispersed all of the dry leaves and left a wet, thick, under-layer of fall tree droppings plastered to the ground.

Wet leaves, freezing temperatures, and a brisk gust of wind were combined. For a moment I was dancing with the same flare that convinced my wife to quit taking dancing lessons with me a few years ago, but with skill that I’m personally convinced would have qualified me for Dancing with the Stars.

Fortunately I remained upright, and I slid along until gravel replaced the leaves under my feet.

I think adrenalin rushes like that clear my brain for more expansive thinking: You know the big picture stuff like the creation of the universe, quantum physics, and whether my next step was going to result in one of my bones being broken, and if the crutches I threw out last year should have been stored in the basement a little longer.

If you’re wondering why I put the inventor of friction on the female side, it’s because whoever invented friction has a sense of humor. And I can tell you that when that last gust of cold wind hit me as I ran into the house, I wasn’t laughing.