Virginia Is For Families

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means Maria?
A flibbertijibbet! A will-o’-the wisp! A clown!

–The Sound of Music

Remember this song? Some nuns sing it about Julie Andrews. She just doesn’t want to adopt the program. Well I sing it about Evita.

How do you solve a problem like Evita?

Because every time i read one of her posts I end up throwing something out! First it was the rum!

And now it’s my teflon coated frying pan!

http://evolvingwellness.com/posts/160/green-teflon/

I really hope she doesn’t decide that dog hair is bad for us. Sparky would have a fit. Malarky would start reading the help wanted section of the newspaper. And I would have to sleep with one eye open.

But frying pans are not really the issue today. Because I am addicted to sugar. It’s in just about everything we eat and it’s very addicting. You go into withdrawal if you don’t have your fix after awhile.

And I can’t stand the idea of being addicted to anything. So now your blogging buddy is on a diet. And he’s also walking every day. This morning we walked for forty five minutes. That’s up fifty percent from yesterday. And it’s up 150 percent from the day before. Because way back then we were just walking from the living room to the kitchen and back again.

When I noticed that we might one day go in the medical books as a miracle of some sort. Because it looks from up here like we are going to have a baby.

Blogger this year. Reality show icon next year. Right after the cute show about the parents who got six kids at one time after they took fertility drugs.

When I read Evita she mesmerizes me. I’m not sure if I believe everything she says but it doesn’t seem to matter much. Because I was due for an overhaul and she is the only one I see who has a nice looking blog and seems ready to go there with me.

Because when you do stuff like this you need to become really motivated. It’s an extreme deal until new habits are established and pick up some of the load. And even then it’s not a piece of cake as we all know. Hhmmm cake. I have been carrying around a tube of Ritz diet crackers for those moments when death due to starvation seems imminent. And a bottle of diet Seven-Up.

Please don’t tell me they are going to kill me too Evita! I need something!

Sigh. Why am I doing this?

Because you can be a senior citizen who is healthy or at least trying to be or you can go the other way.

Choose. That’s why.

Grumps must move on. . . .have a nice morning.

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The Beatles/ I’m So Tired

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I rewrote an older poem today and posted it earlier. I had actually been working on another poem but it wasn’t going anywhere fast so I took a look at this one again.

The one that won’t allow itself to be written quickly is about a more serious subject. It’s about why we allow ourselves to be born. Because I think we do. I think we have a choice and we decide to come here for various reasons. The poem goes into some of those reasons.

It’s really about reincarnation.

I happen to believe in this cycle of births and deaths. But the poem is going to take some real work. Maybe this weekend i can clear the desk and do it.

Today I was distracted by this other poem that I hid in my first blog Shooting The Virginia Breeze (a Wordpress dot com blog I don’t really know what to do with it so I hide things in it.)

I rewrote a bunch of lines in this poem and posted it here.

It’s an orphan poem. It never has received any comments. But I like some of the imagery. And we like to go out on a limb here at VB every once in awhile.

This poem originally came about because we often have dinner with the television on. We like to watch The Andy Griffith Show. I had never seen any of the episodes before and they are actually pretty good. There’s a reason this show is still on the air after forty years.

At some point during dinner a commercial comes on about Cialis and impotence. I am sitting there with my wife and often her parents when this thing comes on and they start talking about erectile dysfunction. I find it very strange to be listening to this over dinner with my mother-in-law.

But everybody seems to think it’s pretty funny. There’s a couple in the kitchen and all of a sudden the faucet explodes and water starts geysering towards the ceiling. What’s that all about?

That doesn’t sound like impotence to me. Maybe something else but not that. And then the couple start laughing.

I can just see my wife and i sharing a laugh if our kitchen sink exploded. “HAHAHAH look at that honey! The faucet is sticking in the ceiling and the water’s a foot deep on the floor. I bet there’s a waterfall over by the stairs there. HAHAHAHA.”

What do they put in this medicine. . . . some sort of hallucinogenic? But then I realized that I liked this couple. Because they were happy together and they wanted to work out all their problems together. It wasn’t just about sex. It was about home maintenance and probably a lot of other stuff.

They were not going off looking for thrills with other partners. They were not trying to escape the challenges they faced. They were going to work things out and get old together. And they were going to do it with a sense of humor.

I liked that a lot. So I wrote this poem.

I am also hoping the Cialis people will see it one day and decide they need it for one of their ads.

That way I won’t ever have to worry about home maintenance again. I will have my own live in maintenance guy plus a cook and a cleaning staff.

I really do have this whole thing worked out. And I am a very patient guy sometimes.

You can ask my wife.

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Do you believe in reincarnation?  Have you ever felt like you knew someone from a past life or were in a place that maybe you knew from a past life?

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I am not sure what I have anymore. Maybe it is a fatal flu virus. I don’t have a fever but the pain in my ribs every time I cough is terrible. And I am terribly congested. What an awful end to a wonderful vacation.

But even more than that it is an awful end to a wonderful life full of so many things. All of the problems encountered down through the decades seem so insignificant now. I just want to take time now to say “Sorry” to all those people I disappointed or hurt in some way. Since most of you are still here on earth I will try to make it to the Welcoming Party when you cross over. Since there may not be very many people there I know you will appreciate seeing anybody who shows up.

And I would like to say to my beloved German Shepherds Sparky and Malarkey “Thanks” for guarding the house when we go away. I have not seen the remains of too many bloggers in the yard in a long time. So the message must have gotten out. And it is so nice to come home to a nice looking lawn and a house that doesn’t have blood splatters on the siding.

I feel so dizzy and sit here dreading the next time I will need to cough. I have this small vibrator that is used for muscle cramps I promise and have been vibrating my throat in an attempt to numb the cough reflex. It seems to be working and helped me fall asleep last night. Unfortunately I fell asleep without turning off the machine and it continued on for hours while overheating and nearly burning a hole in the bed and my neck. So my funeral pyre is already in place and all we are doing is waiting for the correct astrological moment to send the blogger off to his just reward.

“And what might that reward be? ” you might ask. And I don’t blame you for asking because it certainly is an interesting question in my view. But I do not have the answer. All I know pretty much for sure is that this evil cold will be Left Behind. The pain will depart and I will be floating around above the blogger’s body trying to figure out how to get into the next room. Because the doors don’t go all the way up to the ceiling.

So now I must go back to bed for the tenth time today. Thank you for all the encouraging words that have come in since I became deathly ill yesterday. Hopefully this bug will not come to see you. Hopefully it is a Washington DC bug and it germinated in the US Capitol where it fed on politician for awhile. I knew we shouldn’t have gone near that building.

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We are in DC this evening at the Regency Hyatt near the US Capitol and just returning from a lovely dinner with Kurt and my beloved partner Beth. We spent an interesting afternoon walking around the area and I have many photos I need to sort out at some point. Now we are back at the hotel and Beth has gone to investigate the pool. As I look out the window I see a fire station and a liquor store. I am very tired having walked miles it seems and had a great meal of blackened swordfish and various other things including three glasses of wine and Boston Cream Pie. Then we walked about ten blocks back to our hotel and here I am on the computer. Dancing With The Stars will be on later and Beth loves to watch it.

She is back. There are twenty kids in the pool. They should not be allowed in there after seven. The pool closes at nine. Oh well. On our walk back to the hotel we went by a homeless center and there was a line of people outside waiting to get inside. Mostly women and some of them were obviously having problems as they were talking to themselves or crying.

My mood of complete happiness was muted in this moment. There are two different worlds living side by side on this earth.

And now I must rest.

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Photo taken by Mathew Brady of Abraham Lincoln a few weeks before his death. National Portrait Gallery.

Bringing separate worlds together. We will always love you Abe.