Summer, that's my time of year, except this Summer... I swear, as soon as I hit 70, my extended warranty expired. I'm like an old car with too many miles; everything is breaking at once. If I'm not at the Dr's office, I'm on the phone with one, or I'm having some procedure done. Clogged stents, skin grafts, hernias, eye injections, you name it, I'm having it done. This Summer. That means no vacations, no sun, no swimming, and no lifting anything over 5lbs. It's a super buzz kill, but it's not really so bad in the big scheme of things. It'll be good to get everything taken care of and behind me, and Fall vacations can be very nice, although I'm not making any plans just yet. I don't want to jinx things.
It's a Family Affair: On the plus side, my family has been here for me, and not everyone is so lucky. My wife, our sons and our nephews have all been picking up my slack, and I really appreciate it, but Dad loves his work, and it kills me to sit idly by while everyone else does it. Hopefully things will get back to some semblance of normalcy soon. In the meantime, I take pride in knowing that I must have done something right to merit so much love and attention. Thank you, I love you all, more than you can imagine.
Night Moves: Because we can't really schedule anything, and I have to stay relatively cool and dry, we've found some work arounds to get in some fun and positivity. I've become a creature of the night, and of impulse. If it's a nice night, we go for a walk, if there's a good band in town, we roll. We've even squeezed in a few Sox games. Spontaneity is the key, and laughter, music and happy times are the best medicine for all of life's ills.
Low Rider: For a while now I've been seeing an ad on TV for an eye injection that shows a woman driving around town in an orange 65 Mustang convertible. The commercial's soundtrack is Low Rider, and every time I see it, I say to anyone within earshot "Hey, that looks exactly like my car and that's one of my favorite cruising tunes." and then I think to myself; "That's really weird because it's such a unique and specific set of circumstances, right down to the Hula Girl dashboard ornament. I hope this isn't some sort of evil portent." Well, guess what? It was. I've had to start getting eye injections, and they are not fun. In retrospect, it almost feels like it was a predetermined event, and that's more than a little spooky.
The Universal Cat Distribution System: While we're on the subject of predetermined events, I'm a firm believer that cats are agents of fate, and that they choose you, you don't choose them. You can't convince me otherwise. We've always had cats in the house, sometimes too many, but always at least one. This past year the last of our cats passed, and we've been wrestling with the idea of getting another one for a while now, but the timing just hasn't been right. Enter Rudy. Rudy is a neighborhood cat that's been lurking around for years but has always been a little elusive and standoffish. We'd see him in the yard stalking wabbits, but he never came too near the house. Shortly after Noelle passed (she came to us through the UCDS as well, btw), Rudy started coming up on our porch and just hanging out. I'll go out to sit in the shade and he'll come sit beside me. We chat, we nap, and sometimes he gets up on the arm of my chair and nuzzles and licks my ear. We call him our rental cat. We know his name because his owner has attached both a name tag and an Apple Air Tag to his collar. He's a man about town, after all, so his owner has him tricked out for safety. She's stopped by to say hello and to check up on him as she tracks him via the Air Tag and knew that he hung out here. She wanted to see what he was up to, and she was amazed that he was so chummy with us, it's not usually his style. I told her that I thought, A. He knew I needed a little Cat Zen in my life, and B. He wanted to introduce us. It turns out I was right on both counts, Rudy comes by every day to hang, and sometimes the neighbor does too.
Sleeping With the Television On: I'm watching way too much TV lately. How do I know this? Well, before a recent procedure the nurse gave me a little lorazepam in my IV to relax me, and the last thing I remember saying before I drifted off was "Piper, no!" in what I thought to be my best Victoria Ratliff voice, then I laughed myself to sleep.
Reality Bites: Reality TV, that is. It's basically a primer for behaving badly to other humans, and most of us are good enough at that already.
Go Get Yourself Some Cheap Sunglasses: Speaking of primers, here's a little pool care tip that's worth passing along. I already mentioned that I've been getting a lot of help with my chores of late, and I was showing someone how to shock the pool with liquid chlorine the other day. One thing I've learned is that it's difficult NOT to splash chlorine on yourself when you're doing it, and that's a bad thing. Bad for your clothes, bad for your skin, and really bad for your eyes, it can be dangerous stuff. The splash back happens when the jug glugs, and I've found a way to prevent that. Mostly. You set the gallon jug down on the pool coping about an inch back from the edge of the pool, then gently tip it forward until a steady stream of chlorine comes out, maintaining contact between the leading edge of the jug bottom and the coping at all times. This keeps the jug steady and allows a more controlled pour, it's a trick that's about 98% effective. I said 98% effective, that still leaves plenty of room for error, so always wear your crappy clothes and a pair of cheap sunglasses when you shock. Always.
How 'bout them Red Sox: The Sox have been a constant source of joy for me of late and help my mood immensely. This team is fun to watch, the operative words here are "team" and "fun". In order to win, you need to work as a team and enjoy what you do. These guys personify that on both counts. I think trading Devers was key to their current success. Like it or not, sometimes addition by subtraction is a real thing, and this is one of those times. When you're paying someone a gazillion bucks, they need to be flexible and do what's best for the team, simple as that. When they don't, it creates unease and malaise with the rest of the collective. There was a lot of talk that the Sox got very little in return for him, but I disagree. They got someone to pick up his entire salary, which is unheard of. They also got rid of a problem child that was dragging everyone down, and they ended up with a cohesive and productive team. That's a huge win in my book. Huge. Can they go all the way? Who knows, but you can bet it will be fun to watch.
Are You Ready for Some Football? I know I am. Preseason starts for the Patriots this Friday night, and I'm juiced for it. I really like Vrabel. He's not Belichick, but no one is, and Bill was going to move on at some point regardless of the Foxboro dynamics. Change is inevitable, it's right up there with death and taxes on the "things you can't avoid" list. Promoting Mayo was a mistake; he just wasn't ready, and that's on Kraft. Dumping him and hiring Vrabel was a pretty good course correction, but it never should have come to that. Vrabel brings a nice mix of discipline and knowledge, and the players seem to respect him. Jumping into the fray at the joint practice with the Commanders the other day and coming up bloodied, that will go down as locker room legend. These guys will listen to him and play for him. That's a lock. Did they get enough weapons in the off season to help him turn the tide and stop the bleeding? We'll see soon enough. I think they have a good foundation, and if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on them having a 10-win season this year, and I'd be very happy with that. The team had hit rock bottom, so there's nowhere to go but up. I hope...
Ok, this is getting a little long winded, told you I had a lot on my mind. One more thing though before I let you off the hook:
A Note to our Mobile Readers: If you view this blog on a mobile device, you're not seeing the blog's sidebar, and consequently you're missing out on some good stuff. There's links to schedules and broadcast info for all things Boston sports. There's also tech, sports and music news feeds, plus links to Boston media sources. It's one stop shopping for the discerning New Englander, or anyone with a love of the area and its teams, all served up hot and fresh.
It bums me out that all of that content gets left out of the mobile view, it feels like the site just isn't complete without it. I've tried turning off "responsive view", that's the setting that lets blogger decide what you see based on your device, but the web view page just shows up too small to read on a phone, so I switched it back. I've also tried changing the blog's theme and layout, all to no avail. I guess responsive view just hates sidebars lol. Seriously, I see why they do this; you want your posts to pop, and nothing pops when it's all too small to read. So, until I figure something out, you have 2 options to see the sidebar and all that good info:
The first option is to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the mobile page view and select "Website View". The page view will change and show you the whole blog, sidebar and all, but as I said, it's small, so you'll need to expand the view to read it. Not perfect, but it's a work around.
The other option is to visit the site on a PC or tablet, then it will display as originally intended.
Of course, there's a third option as well, there's always a third option. You can just carry on and not see the sidebar, it might not interest you in the least. I just thought it was worth mentioning. That is all.
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