Bopping around town doing noble things, as is my nature, stocking up on bourbon, dropping a $50 into the kitty at church. I call it “diversifying my portfolio.”
I do attend church now and then, though I’m not exactly religious about it. I slip in the back pew with the other hungover lads, wishing there were vendors.
“Nuts! Get your peanuts heeeeeeeere!”
Hey, at least we’re there. As per Dylan Thomas, I hold “a beast, an angel and a madman in me.” My struggle? Their self-expression.
Accordingly, I participate in a small faith-based group every Wednesday night, where we discuss our spiritual highs and lows…part confessional, part bar-room screed.
As the resident skeptic, my role in these small-group meetings? To make everyone else feel better about themselves. I usually succeed.
One of the constant takeaways: We’re all a little defective. Me, I’ve been an outlier since age 6. In second-grade, I was the only kid who couldn’t manage to slide his galoshes over his street shoes.
In the Midwest, that’s life-or-death, yet I still couldn’t manage, till Mom added a smear of candle wax to the heel.
Moms, huh?
To this day, my opinion has never matched up with anyone else’s. I don’t like nose rings or salad wraps or those gawd-awful QR code menus.
My iCloud storage has been full for two years. I don’t care. I’m more concerned that they now lock up the deodorant at the CVS. If anyone needs deodorant, it’s shoplifters! Think of the stress!
As a life-long outlier, I never even minded Dennis Miller back when he did “Monday Night Football.” He brought a certain cheekiness.
For a while, “SportsCenter” also offered a wonderful irreverence, before devolving into something dull and conventional. Honestly, is there anything more dull and conventional than Scott Van Pelt?
What TV has done to sports in the past few years makes my ears steam, which is not exactly the look you want in the back pew on Sunday morning.
By the way, they double-gowned me at the hospital during my recent stay — one gown for the front, another for the back.
I attribute this to my all-consuming sense of decorum, though it could’ve been something else. Perhaps the nurses didn’t want to overstimulate the cardio patients.
As you know, I’m a physical specimen, stem to stern. Probably they were just playing it safe, as per hospital policy concerning wandering lunatics.
“You have to walk,” the nurses kept urging me. “Just walk the halls.”
Sure, OK. Can I sing?
Just glad to be free. I love the way the land wears the light in late fall. I love how the sun sneezes through the trees.
Such magic. The other morning, my 4-month-old grand baby (Mookie) woke up singing. She can’t talk, yet she can sing.
Hallelujah. Bless the beasts and the children, as they say.
Look, I’m just glad to be out of the hospital for Halloween, one of the best times of year. For one night, everyone gets to pretend to be someone else.
Surprisingly, I never aspired to be anyone else, except maybe Robert Redford for one beer-soaked Saturday night. That was when I was in my 20s and had untapped reserves of passion, nearly nuclear in nature.
My Saturday nights are far tamer now, thankfully. Here’s how I spend them:
Walk the wolf. Serenade The Suze. Make a little something in the kitchen, probably popcorn. Play gin rummy. Flip through the streamers before settling on some movie from the ’40s (“Philadelphia Story”) or the ’70s (“Billy Jack”).
Snuggle in.
As a friend noted, October is almost a food. The feast ended this week, so I tried to load up my plate: Snickers, taffy apples, Sloppy Joes, a little toot to soothe my post-operative tummy (a pumpkin-spice hot toddy?).
That’s probably not what the hospital nutritionists would recommend, but as my internist Dr. Steve always says (while ordering the pastrami), “Hey, a guy’s gotta live.”
Meanwhile, we’re already making Thanksgiving plans, how about you? I like when the college kids come home — the way the dogs skate across the wood floors, the smiles on the moms, the way the dads laugh out loud again.
All these homecomings, all these departures, all theses changes in what has never been a perfect world, but certainly a fascinating one, full of upheaval and mind-blowing home runs … scandal, health scares, heartache, heroes.
And amid it all, we gotta live.
Even if your writing weren’t so damn good (the sun sneezing through the trees? Come on!), the pictures of your grandkids would be enough to remind us we still gotta live. Cheers to another round of holidays and family gatherings that give us reason enough to hope for a better future. Thanks. Keep em coming!
My favorite sentence in a while: “I do attend church now and then, though I’m not exactly religious about it.” Got to love it.
So glad you’re bopping around town and feeling better. I didn’t get double-gowned during my recent hospital stay (like you, it was my first surgery, and I’m 71). I walked out with two brand-new hips (thanks again, Providence Holy Cross), and am already “diversifying my portfolio,” grateful for another holiday season, and, as Caroll said, hoping for a better future. Starting the day with photos of your magnificent grandkids gives smiles and hope. Thank you for that!
Love starting the day with photos of your magnificent grandkids, a reminder to “diversify my portfolio,” and sing when I wake up (much to the chagrin of my husband, dog, and cat). I’m glad that you’re feeling better and bopping around town. I, too, had my first surgery a few weeks ago (I’m 71, so a good run). While I wasn’t double-gowned, I left with two brand-new hips and remain full of gratitude and in awe of the doctors and nurses who are truly angels on Earth (thanks, Providence Holy Cross). Here’s to bopping into another holiday season with thanks to you for the gentle nudges reminding us that despite it all, we still gotta live.
Smaller than usual All Hallows Eve contingent last night. Guess there are enough scary things going on elsewhere (The Dodgers, for one) to frighten all the would be ghouls and Morticias off the porch. Got to hide or ditch the considerable remaining candy lest it infest the invariably odd moments for a lengthy period up ahead. Pumpkin Spice Toddies? “Be well, my friend'”, as my “Dr. Steve”, Dr Len, is fond of saying….but the whiskey sounds “right on” (think Jameson’s Black Label this winter…a little irish smooch smooth as a witch’s bottom). We are on the launch pad for the wobbly shifting run to Thanksgiving…Aaaand we still have much to be thankful for, so the denouement should be warm and heartfelt amid the ongoing societal din and seemingly ceaseless self-induced pain and frenzied media angst. Time for another G&T Society outing before the holiday toddyfest, or have those gone to one and then ground?? The kid pics are, as always, stunning and melting. It’s another lovely Autumn day, Be well.
Thanks for making my morning better than it usually is. I’m glad you are okay and back to a more normal pace. Take care of yourself because what would we do without our favorite columnist/observer of all things good and generally fun guy?
Hope to see you in March for our annual reading event at school.
When I was recovering post-op from a full hip replacement surgery in a convalescent hospital a few years ago, I once saw, from the backside, another patient who was only single-gowned — no undies. I pleaded with a nurse who was walking along a hall with me, monitoring my progress, to never let me look that way! And I reached one hand behind to make sure that I was double-gowned.
So glad to hear that you are on the mend.
And just because: Go Dodgers!
Kay, congrats on your Dodgers!
Robtert Frost : “Retard the sun with gentle mist, enchant the land with amethyst….” -October
Lovely! Have never seen that one.
I’m glad you’re home & fully clothed!
And glad you stop by church & have a faith group, it’s just as important to feed our soul as our stomach, right? That God-shaped hole we all have within us.
The world would be a better place if we all woke up singing!
Lovely note, Ruth. Thanks
Love Unsigned
It’s often love now between the lines
in abstract movements, fleeting designs
In swirls of vagrant ampersands
And those squandered moments of the hands;
Each mindless drift and meandering
The tuneless words that I never bring
And light that fails and begins to rust
In these Autumn sunsets gone to rust;
The wind that blows and then doesn’t
Or the thought that started then wasn’t
Anything to dream, write whenever:
An idea that seemed bright–clever
Then vaporized like the Fall weather;
In the soundless moments and in-betweens–
The puzzling silence–and what it means;
Those starts and stops that go anywhere
They please–so much like the morning air;
And the music playing when not asked
Or some things proceeding when not tasked–
Their similarities not precedent
To where they came from , or where they went
In uncertainty, and what that brings
To the most certain of everything ;
And at the last, to the beginning
Of the end and the start of each new thing
And to love, unsigned; of thee I sing…
“Ya gotta live”. To me that means poetry and its restless urge to express the uncertainty of art, living being the most uncertain of the arts.
…”sunsets gone to dust”….indeed, the uncertainty of art as November turns its majestic mirror into your eyes, October forever gone and already receding in the distance of our sense of time.
Love the photos! Love that you are healing. Celebrate all that is good in the present and fondly remember the past days.
Your words: I love the way the land wears the light in late fall. I love how the sun sneezes through the trees.”
Blessed Autumn 2025!
So flattered you remembered that line. I was proud of that one. Didn’t tinker with it. Just showed up fully formed. Wish it happened more often.
“I don’t like nose rings or salad wraps or those gawd-awful QR code menus.” Nose rings and tattoos on otherwise beautiful girls and women. What are they thinking?
At a local restaurant the server (remember when they used to be called waiters and waitresses?) told me I had to order from a QR code menu. She said they no longer had actual menus. I played the senior card and said I couldn’t. Suddenly a real menu appeared.