Just lucky, and that's all

I hurt my knees -- the right one playing baseball and the left one playing football -- before I was in my teens. My Grandma Knez had arthritis in her knees, and there is a picture burned on my brain of her sitting in a chair rubbing her knees because they hurt her so bad.  Whenever I saw her doing that, I would think, "That's going to be me some day." I'm happy to report that, despite further injuries over the last 55 years or so, my knees are still serviceable, probably more than I might expect considering how many extra pounds they have had to carry around.  The same can be said for my hips (knock wood).  The shoulders are another matter.

And I just spent more than two hours folding paper (origami tchotchkes for my friends), and it occurred to me how lucky I am to be this old and have complete and pain-free use of my hands and fingers.

A while back I was catching up with somebody I went to high school with and hadn't seen since.  When I mentioned that in addition to back surgeries and broken bones, I've survived breast cancer and a heart attack, she responded, "Wow, you're a tough old broad, aren't you?"

Yes, I am.

My recently retired partner, who is today an official 65-year-old senior citizen on social security, has been through a bunch of ringers herself but is in pretty good shape for the shape she's in, and I can guarantee her that never having to go to work ever again has a way of making  little aches and pains quite inconsequential.

I think we're both lucky just to have these golden retirement years; spending them together is a bonus.

Happy birthday, JB, from one tough old broad to another.

The Owl and the Pussycat, or the Chihuahua

This morning my tiny dog was standing in my lap, her body and front legs stretched up against me, and as she looked up at me, and I suddenly wanted to play Owley Eyes with her. It's a game I played as a tot.

It takes two people to play Owley Eyes. (I used play it with my favorite aunt.) Here's how it goes:  you and the other person come face to face, literally -- foreheads and noses touching. Then you both close your eyes, and after a suspenseful second or two, one of you says, "Open," and then you both open your eyes at the exact same instant while also saying, "Hoooo!" like an owl. What you see before you looks for all the world like a cross-eyed owl. No, really. It really does. It did when I was three years old, anyway, so I'm sure it still does.

Anyway, just  at that moment this morning, I wanted to play Owley Eyes with my tiny dog, but her eyes are so close together, owing to how tiny her head is, that it just didn't work.

Boo Hoooo.

A day late and a buck short

Today I intended to post the official rules for Cribbage Solitaire, a card game I invented.  If you go to Wikipedia, however, and look up Cribbage Solitaire, it will give you the rules exactly as I devised them, but written by somebody else.

This has happened to me before. I once designed a very nifty new kind of trailer hitch, except that when I showed it to somebody they told me farmers have been using hitches like that for centuries.  I also invented the first skate board, way back in the '50's, by taking an old roller skate apart and nailing the front wheels to one end of a two-by-four and the back wheels to the other end.  Too bad I didn't market it.

At least I know a good idea when I see it.

Where there's smoke ...

One rather gray autumn afternoon when I was about eight years old, some of us kids were hanging around the vacant lot next to Chuckie Larson’s house on the next street over.  This empty space was our baseball diamond and football field and general hanging-out place.  On this particular day, someone decided it would be fun to make a bonfire.

I joined in with the others, roaming the neighborhood looking for flammable objects to add to the fire.  I got my hands and my clothes rather sooty from the ashes, but I was having a great time, even though down deep I had the nagging suspicion that playing with fire was something I probably shouldn’t be doing.

At one point I looked up and, to my horror, saw our 1951 Oldsmobile 88 coming down the street with my mother at the wheel.  I ran to meet her, mostly to divert her attention.  She told me to get in the car – she had to go to the store and wanted me to go with her, since there was nobody at home.

Realizing what a mess I was, I opened the back door and climbed in.  “Why are you getting in the back?” she wanted to know.  My brother and I used to fight to see who got to ride in the front seat and never voluntarily got into the back.  I said, “Oh, I’ve decided it’s way more fun back here,” or something equally inane.  Used to inexplicable juvenile logic, she just shrugged.

We hadn't gone half a block before my mother said, “Do you smell something burning?”  Afraid she was smelling the smoke from my clothes, I replied innocently and emphatically, "No!"

It was then that I looked down and saw that my pant leg was on fire.

And today is Thursday

Yesterday I complained that with my newly-retired partner not going to work five days a week, I'd have trouble remembering what day it is.  I thought of several things that might be helpful -- checking the calendar in my computer each morning, for instance.  Then when preparing for bed last night, I realized that I have the ideal solution already in place.

In my drawer in the bathroom vanity there are not one but two handy weekly calendars that I see every day.  They are long, narrow plastic boxes divided into seven small compartments that say S M T W T F S on their lids, and as long as I remember to take my pills from the light blue one every morning and the dark blue one every night before going to bed, fill them up regularly every Sunday morning, and not miss a dose, I will always be able to tell what day it is.

All of life's little worries should be so easy to allay.