Aaaaand … apparently we’re not going to get any part of the monstrous snow dump we were promised this morning when the goobers on NPR told me at least six times we could expect six to twelve inches by nightfall. Well, it’s nightfall. We got nothing.
It’s not that I was hoping for maybe another snow day. I’m thinking pigs will fly out of my butt bearing gift boxes of Havana cigars before that happens again this winter. And I certainly wasn’t looking forward to driving in it, or shoveling it off my driveway and front stoop again, but for some weird reason I really hate being told it’s going to snow, and then psyche! No snow. At all.
My Darling B, on the other had, would rather not see any more snowfall at all this season, promised or not. And I have to say I understand her feelings perfectly. She can’t wait to plant her garden again, and the sooner it stop snowing and she can see the ground again, the more it feels as if planting a garden seems like a possibility within reach. So even though I’m pissed off about being diddled by the heavy snow forecast that didn’t pay out, I’m also pulling for B.
If you’re a Luddite like me who doesn’t watch television, you missed the much talked-about Super Bowl commercials. No fear! Someone has helpfully compressed them into this thirty-second summary:
Stiff muscles … aching joints … swollen ligaments … this is the hand of a man who participated in the company’s annual bowling event, the same man who hasn’t bowled a single frame since 2006. Ouch.
Every year, Bill B (the guy at the office who hired me for my first job after I retired from the military , actually) organizes the company bowling event, partly because he likes bowling so much that he has one of those cybernetic strap-on arms, but mostly because he’s just such a great guy.
I signed up for it the year after I hired on, and enjoyed it so much that I wanted to do it every year.
The second year, I was in an office of not-bowlers, which are different from non-bowlers in that they absolutely will not bowl no matter how much you cajole them or what you threaten to do with their e-mail the next time they walk away from their computer without locking up the screen. I didn’t realize then that I could still bowl even if I rounded up five random people from anywhere. I didn’t have to get them from my office. I could have signed up five of the homeless people who hang out on the park benches on cap square all day.
So this year, as soon as I saw that signups were open, I walked around the office and asked who wanted to go bowling this year. I got four people to make a team in just two minutes, as long as I agreed to be the team captain. Being team captain means delivering the money to Bill B, and that’s it, so I agreed. Easy.
The production values have soared since then, apparently. Here’s James May taking a ride to the edge of the atmosphere in a U-2 and all but succumbing to the same rapture that moonwalker Edgar Mitchell famously described as the epiphany that changed his life.
Ah, Saturday morning: When I can wake up at a reasonable hour, when I can lay in bed for a while after I wake up, when I can sit on the sofa with my morning coffee until I decide I’m ready to start the day. And even then, “start the day” means take a long, hot shower, dress in comfortably shabby clothes, and head into town with My Darling B to visit the farmer’s market, then stop at the thrift store on the way home to pick up some bargain books. I love Saturday morning.
I might add that Saturday afternoons aren’t too bad, either.
One day I’ll be able to stop shredding these things, but today, it’s confetti.
I think because I’m officially retired from the Air Force, the Aid Association for Retired Persons thinks I just sit in the front room in my rocking chair reading novels all afternoon while I wait for the mail carrier to bring me another one of their trial membership cards.
They send one to me about once a month. The most use I can get out of them is to keep the teeth on my shredder sharp, because they’re too thick for bookmarks.
Notice anything missing? I didn’t, until I got to work yesterday. It was like that dream where you’re in a big crowd of people and you suddenly realize you’re wearing nothing but underwear.
My coworkers were very understanding about it. All day long as I padded around the office I expected somebody to say something to me, but they never did. Nobody so much as smirked. Maybe it’s happened to them, too.
It’s not like I walked to work in my stocking feet, I’m quick to point out. I put on a pair of snow boots before I leave the house in the morning. Then, when I get to the office, I change into a pair of brown leather shoes that I usually keep under my desk. But, the day before yesterday, I took them home with me because I thought we’d need them for our dancing lesson. I didn’t. We danced in our stocking feet. It was sort of a foreshadowing of my day at the office yesterday.
Guess what we did last night? We went dancing! We’ve been saying for years that we wanted to take dancing lessons and last week B made a command decision and signed us up for an introductory lesson. We plunked down twenty-five bucks at a studio just north of here for forty-five minutes of private instruction so we could learn to dance the Foxtrot and Waltz.
Sort of. My Darling B and I are not the most graceful of people, and together we make one of the biggest balls of clumsy you’ve ever seen, which is why it’s a good thing this was a private lesson so you never could’ve seen it.
It’s not that we don’t dance ever. We shake our booties to the rock and roll tunes on the radio in the privacy of our own home and, on very special occasions, and usually only with the benefit of a little liquid lubrication, we will put our booty-shaking on display in public.
We have never been much for going out on the town to paint it red, though, and the way we dance together has never required us to actually coordinate our movements. And, as it turned out, it just may be that we are genetically predisposed to remain uncoordinated booty-shakers all our lives. Or maybe not. Neither one of us ever did step on the other’s feet, so I supposed that should be an encouraging sign.
Duncan Hunter, Republican representative from California and proud to be a Marine doesn’t want transgendered hermaphroditic gays and lesbians (well, maybe lesbians would be okay) wontonly peeping at his wee-wee, he only wants that ‘special bond’ that exists in ‘very close situations’ in military life, and says so in no uncertain terms in the interview he gave to NPR:
Rep. Hunter: I think the folks who have been in the military that have been in these very close situations with each other, there has to be a special bond there. And I think that bond is broken if you open up the military to transgenders, to hermaphrodites, to gays and lesbians.
Melissa Block: Transgenders and hermaphrodites.
Rep. Hunter: Yeah, thats going to be part of this whole thing. Its not just gays and lesbians. Its a whole gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual community. If you’re going to let anybody no matter what preference – what sexual preference they have that means the military is going to probably let everybody in.
Everybody! Dogs and cats! Living together! It’ll be anarchy!
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