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Thoughts Upon Leaving the Gym

I left the gym yesterday shaking my head. There are some things I will not do to try to convince others that I are somehow younger than I look.

1.         Wear a man bun

 Now granted, my hair has never been long enough to support a man bun.  Well, maybe in my college days, although then it was much too curly.  And man buns weren’t an in thing in the ’60s.  Long, scraggly hair made some sort of political statement, we thought at the time.  But today, for some reason, man buns are accepted.  However, a man bun on a senior head does not somehow delineate its wearer as virile and hip.  It marks him as someone with thinning, stringy hair, a receding hairline, and a lack of self-confidence. Or a bizarre sense of humor.

            In truth, curmudgeon that I am, I don’t really understand the reason younger men wear man buns.  Especially the little tiny ones on the back of the head.  If they are meant to keep your longish hair out of your eyes, a head band works better, and may keep your manly sweat out of your eyes.  A little bump on the back of your head has no impact on your sweat rivulets.  If instead they are meant to remove your hair from the back of your hot and sweaty neck, you could always cut the offending locks, or just put up with the heat.  It won’t kill you. After all, you’re supposed to be exercising, so suck it up a little.  Finally, if you’re wearing one because you think it makes you look like a cool, even dare I say sexy European soccer player, just keep in mind that you aren’t one.

2.         Wear a muscle shirt

Let’s face it, fellow old guys, Newton’s Theory of Gravity acts upon every object with mass.  That includes those biceps and pecs we thought we were working on so diligently over the years.

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Signs You’re Past Your Prime

You should realize you’re past your prime when:

1…you pull out a T-shirt from your drawer with the logo of your daughter’s 3rd grade soccer club from 2003 and the word COACH on the back, and wear it anyway, usually underneath a sweat shirt commemorating some event from the 1980’s

2…you can’t recall the day you last showered, and still don’t do it

3…not one but two people honk at you as you back out of your parking spot at the grocery store

4…you watch an hour of a 90-minute Netflix movie before you realize you’ve seen it before

4a…that same night, while walking your garbage all the way out to the curb, you realize you can still hear your TV

5…while putting away your clean laundry you notice a tear along a seam of a pair of underwear and put it in a drawer anyway (I’ve now learned why it’s called a pair of underwear or a pair of pants. You’ll have to look it up yourself)

6…you notice a polo shirt is wrinkled, and simply “hand press” it after you put it on

7…you finally find that red folder labeled “To Do – Important” under an unread 6-month old magazine, and then realize you still read physical magazines

8…you start wondering whether a “pill reminder box” might not be a bad idea, and then remember your daughter gave you one last Christmas

9…speaking of daughters, when asked her age you respond”27, 28, 29?”

10…you start getting invitations like this:

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MY NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS

It’s that time of year, and since I haven’t been invited to any New Year’s Eve parties, what else can I do but muddle through some resolutions I’ve been thinking about.

1. A teacher at my high school told me that I should become president of the United States. (Well in truth she told that to the entire class.) I guess I took her at her word. It’s why I went to law school, which was the most terrible decision I ever made. (Sometime soon I’ll describe my first day at Harvard Law School. It was all downhill after that.) So…

I will not run for president

2. Another high school teacher of mine suggested I consider becoming a priest because I did well in Latin class. Now it’s true that most of our teachers were nuns, so there’s that. Honestly, I think the real reason for her suggestion was that I was so pathetic when it came to romantic relationships. That problem hasn’t improved as I aged, but neither has my piety. So…

I will not enter the seminary

3. I continually embarrass my daughter Lydia on so many levels with bad Dad jokes, age inappropriate behavior and half assed plans and schemes. So…

You gotta be shitting me! A father exists only to embarrass his daughter, and if I’ve managed nothing else I’ve become an expert in daughter embarrassment! No resolution here

4. My daughter Lydia chastises me because, in her view, I can sometimes be a cynical old curmudgeon. So…

What? What the hell is there to be optimistic about? Some Americans believe that the government uses Covid vaccines to inject tiny robots into out bodies. A significant number of our fellow citizens believe that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen,” and the ex-president they think was robbed now markets eCards with his head photoshopped on the bodies of comic book superheroes to these same people for $99! Sorry, Lydia; no resolution here

Well so much for New Year’s resolutions for me. I hope you have better luck with yours. So…

Here’s to a better 2023 (I know the bar is pretty low)

Happy New Year!

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My First Blog Post

No one said retirement would be this hard! I’ve lurched my way from full time to part time (try this only if you have the discipline to actually do something part time) to retirement. I’ve done lots more lurching in retirement from classes to courses to travel to a memoir class to my TV room and now to a blog, which has proven to be as difficult as everything else I’ve tried. Hang on and come back. I’ve got lot’s to tell. Subscribe below to be notified when I post new updates.

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken

— Oscar Wilde.

Signs You’re Past Your Prime

You should realize you’re past your prime when:

1…you pull out a T-shirt from your drawer with the logo of your daughter’s 3rd grade soccer club from 2003 and the word COACH on the back, and wear it anyway, usually underneath a sweat shirt commemorating some event from the 1980’s

2…you can’t recall the day you last showered, and still don’t do it

3…not one but two people honk at you as you back out of your parking spot at the grocery store

4…you watch an hour of a 90-minute Netflix movie before you realize you’ve seen it before

4a…that same night, while walking your garbage all the way out to the curb, you realize you can still hear your TV

5…while putting away your clean laundry you notice a tear along a seam of a pair of underwear and put it in a drawer anyway (I’ve now learned why it’s called a pair of underwear or a pair of pants. You’ll have to look it up yourself)

6…you notice a polo shirt is wrinkled, and simply “hand press” it after you put it on

7…you finally find that red folder labeled “To Do – Important” under an unread 6-month old magazine, and then realize you still read physical magazines

8…you start wondering whether a “pill reminder box” might not be a bad idea, and then remember your daughter gave you one last Christmas

9…speaking of daughters, when asked her age you respond”27, 28, 29?”

10…you start getting invitations like this:

Today’s traumas

This morning finds me in a highly emotional state. First, and, I suppose, most importantly, I am eagerly anticipating 12:01 p.m. That’s the moment when I can access the website of the Minnesota Department of Health and register for an appointment to receive my initial dose of a Covid vaccine. I know, I know, I told you before that I was standing, pajama clad, at the entrance to my local Walgreens awaiting a shot. That was metaphorical. Minnesota may have announced that it was expanding the number of seniors eligible to receive a vaccine shot by reducing the minimum age from 75 to 65. But it didn’t allocate any vaccine doses to the expanded age group.

Minnesota has now established nine vaccination centers across the state and, starting Thursday, will begin administering shots at those centers to those 65 or older. By appointment only. One way to snag an appointment is to go online, to a brand new website, to register. There will, according to Governor Walz, be 12,000 doses available to those centers. There are approximately 1,000,000 people eligible for these doses.

So why, you ask, would I, burdened as I am by the Hannah Curse, bother to try to register. Especially since, given the Hannah Curse, there is a distinct possibility that as soon as I try to access the website, it will immediately crash. Well why, I may ask, did you risk contracting the Covid virus by entering a convenience store to buy a Powerball ticket, thereby in your mind ensuring that you will be $640 million richer come Saturday evening?

Hope springs eternal.

The other reason for my emotionally charged state of mind? It’s been three months since I last cut my own hair. I still haven’t recovered from the trauma of that experience. I looked in the mirror this morning and realized I have to do it again. Especially if I have to walk into one of those vaccination centers for my shot. I may not survive.

I apologize

I was preparing an apology to my friends and acquaintances who, like me, haven’t reached the age of 75. For some reason, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chose 75 as the cutoff age for early Covid-19 vaccinations. I was convinced that I was partly responsible for this decision.

You see, I’ve always been plagued by the Hannah Curse. Whenever I’ve made an important decision in my life, the Hannah Curse would rear its head and turn the decision against me. More about the Hannah Curse in another post.

The CDC decision to deny early vaccination to my age group wasn’t the first time the Hannah Curse affected others. I still haven’t gotten around to apologizing for the Hannah Curse’s role in the Covid-19 pandemic.

But happily I can put my apologies aside for the moment. Somehow, fate has pushed aside the Hannah Curse. I’m up early every morning. Very early. And early this morning I heard that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is about to announce that those 65 and older (not 75 and older!) will be moved to vaccination priority status!

I’m now standing second in line at my local Walgreens. The person in front of me must be either prescient or have sleep issues even worse than mine. God, it’s cold. Maybe I should have changed out of my pajamas.

I’m Back!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. Life ACV (After CoronaVirus) sapped my creative spirit and silence my muse. Hell, it not only silenced my muse but beat the living shit out of it. Frankly. ruminating about my mantra, “I Never Knew Eight Hours Could Last So Long,” seemed downright laughable. I now realize that God, or a Supreme Being, or a Higher Power, or a Cosmic Life Force, or Fate, has a wicked sense of humor. Now I actually look wistfully back at my dismal efforts to fill eight hours, now that I face the daunting task of filling 18 empty hours each day.

So my new plan is to use my ACV experiences to demonstrate that I’m not unexpectedly any better at finding personal interests ACV as I was BCV (Before CoronaVirus). Maybe every once in a while I’ll revisit my missteps BCV as a contrast to the present. In fact, maybe they’ll be a game plan for FWCV (Future Without CoronaVirus) as distant and unreachable as such a time may seem.

Please don’t think that I am taking any of this lightly. I understand the enormity of all we face. If these posts help me cope, even a little, then they’re worth my time. (As if I was too busy BCV!) If they help you cope, even a little, it’s gravy on my mashed potatoes, chocolate frosting on my cake. (Jesus! Those are bad metaphors, given that my lack of cooking skills and general malaise has limited my diet to daily doses of frozen food.)

Now to one of my earliest ACV observations. To those to whom I’ve already mentioned this, my apologies. But I’ve only got so many of these, so . . .

I assume many of us saw television as one way to alleviate our boredom and provide us with a little escape from the jarring reality we faced. I found, though, that 15 or 20 minutes into a program I realize that I have no idea of the plot because I’ve been yelling at the characters to maintain a distance of six feet from each other. Sometimes I wonder the kind of place they’re in, with tables filled and people eating a meal. Then I curse them for reminding me what life was like BCV. Moving on, I try to figure out which them may be an unwitting CV carrier, shedding little tiny virus particles everywhere. If someone coughs, I hide my head under one of my couch pillows. Finally, I whisper to them that they don’t know how good they have it and to prepare themselves for what is to come. My daughter’s cat Bean, whom I’ve been taking care of since my daughter, Lydia, went away to college in 2012, has been giving me that cat stare since the program began. She does that cat stretch, which always unnerves me a little, and walks from the room.

Exhausted, I take a nap.

CDC ADVISES OLDER AMERICANS TO STAY HOME

I’m b-a-a-a-c-k! Im sure those of you who know me fully expected that I would begin this blog with my usual enthusiasm, only to disappear. I completely understand your skepticism. I’m good at disappearing.

But I have an excuse. I’ve been hunkering down as the new apocalypse sweeps over us: COVID-19.

I’ve never believed that we should rely on our government to get much right. There’s no accountability driving our civil servants to seek perfection. But recent events lead me to believe that our government has lifted itself into a new level of incompetence.

Yesterday I tuned into CNN to find out what was the calamity of the day. There, at the bottom of the screen, was the following headline:

CDC ADVISES OLDER AMERICANS TO STAY HOME

Has the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost its collective bureaucratic mind? I could see it all unfold. The economies of Florida, Arizona and Palm Springs, California would collapse. Cities there would become ghost towns as their older residents obediently cowered behind their closed doors. What’s worse, the few citizens not considered “older” would face an impossible and potentially gruesome task. You see, as time passed, we older Americans, most of whom pay close attention to what we are told by our government, would dutifully stay home until our meager supplies ran out, at which time we would meekly cease to exist. I wouldn’t want to be a younger American in those places forced to deal with the aftermath.

I’m also selling my Red Lobster stock. The company has no chance to survive when its “early bird” customers no longer flock (god, I love wordplay) to its doors at 4:00 pm.

There could be a silver (again, I love wordplay) lining to this advice. We may have to call off the 2020 Presidential Election, since the three remaining candidates are well into their seventies, and must remain home. I know there will be conspiracy theorists who might see this as an effort to keep President Trump in office. After all, would vote for a candidate who defied the orders of the CDC?

There’s one other benefit to these instructions, but it applies only to me. Now, when my daughter Lydia calls to inquire why I’m not getting out into the world as I should, I’ll refer her to the CDC website. And of course wash my phone with soap and water afterward.