As far back as I remember, I was always easily enticed by dictionaries, encyclopedias, and almanacs. Well, guess what. The Web is a crossbred animal containing the steroid-megadosed genes of all three with an abundance of extra stuff that native Louisianans, influenced as we are by our Cajun brethren, like to call lagniappe.
When I cracked open a Merriam-Webster in search of a word as a schoolboy, it was a sure bet that I would discover 10 to 20 other words on my journey. Looking in the rearview mirror, I’ve concluded that I subconsciously started these word trips at points I knew were far from where my destination word would be located. In so doing, I afforded myself more pages through which to wade before terminating my travels at my originally desired word. My odysseys through the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the World Almanac and Book of Facts were also island hops from one morsel of information to another.
Exercising one’s wanderlust in actual bound reference volumes can while away an hour. In virtual travels on a Web surfboard one can ride a wave or sequences of waves for days. Over the course of a profusion of excursions, I have found some interesting places. Some of them have to do with my love of words. Like everyone, I have a favorite dictionary and thesaurus. Mine is Merriam-Webster. Here’s a humorous stumbled-upon site that provides a humorous take on my lexophilia. The place I like to use for encyclopedic information is Wikipedia. Recognizing that it is a sort of commune taking contributions from widespread sources, at least to a degree without immediate editorial oversight, I pull out my imaginary scales of justice to work in tandem with the seat of my pants to judge personal believability. What you get is usually correct, but there have been some high profile cases of questionable, even cow manure (you know what I mean), content. In those cases, I use my IE homepage, Yahoo, to search for the Internet presences of the actual printed encyclopedias.
In conjunction with my love for taking in and understanding words and their sources, I also love spewing them out in printed form, which you already know if you have read my profile or have been here very often. These characteristics of mine lead me to sites about the writing life. One of these is Smith Magazine’s page, which is good place for writers to occasionally hang out. Once there, a fun thing to do is peruse the six-word memoirs readers compose and drop off for the enjoyment of all. They get so many of them that they compile collections of the best ones and publish them in books. They also have a Facebook presence that has an endless supply of memoirs. The idea for these shortest of literary pieces was inspired by Ernest Hemingway, who wrote what he professed was the world’s shortest novel. The six words he wrote were: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”
I’m thinking that most readers here will already know about another favorite haunt of mine, which is IMDB. It stands for Internet Movie Database and is the place to go for anything you want to know about movies and television and the people who perform there. There is a similar site, IBDB, for anything Broadway.
One of my absolute favorite sandboxes on the Web is NNDB, which stands for Notable Names Database. Here’s where to go to get the basic facts and some of the smut regarding anyone who is famous or infamous. They list their most important criterion as “persons for whom the public has demonstrated a permanent interest.” One of the things in the pages for a person you look up is sexual orientation. Sometimes I have found information in that regard that surprised me, such as for John Travolta they say “matter of dispute.” If you click on those words on his page, it will provide you with a list of everyone else for whom they list that sexual orientation. They also provide the names of parents, siblings, spouses, and other acquaintances under the headings, boyfriend, girlfriend, and slept with. For instance, Janis Joplin’s page includes three boyfriends, one girlfriend, and nine slept withs. Under the latter heading, there is one girl. One of the guys listed as a slept with is Dick Cavett. They used to have Janis listed as a slept with on Dick’s page, but it has been altered to include only a mother, a father, and a wife. There are some Cavett interviews of Joplin on YouTube (You can hunt for the interview with Joplin and Cavett. This link will actually take you to an early and rare recording of Me and Bobby McGee. I identify with the Kristofferson song, as I also started out "busted flat in Baton Rouge.") in which they seem to exhibit way more than passing familiarity with each other. Who knows? Anyway, information and smut abounds at NNDB. It is interesting to note that NNDB is produced by Soylent Communications. The underlying content of NNDB and soylent green (green wafers made from euthanized corpses and used to feed the overcrowded masses in the eponymous 1973 movie starring Charlton Heston) is people.
If any of these addresses along the Information Superhighway bring you joy or enlightenment, praise Jesus. Since the coin of the realm today is Web sites of interest, I’ll mention in closing that I have added a link to the collection on the right side of my Blogspot page. It is the address at which my cousin, Johnny Barbato, sells his CD, “No Pain, No Gain.” I suppose a lot of folks would classify his music as Southern rock, but what comes through most for me is the grit of the blues. People who can do that well, and I think John is among them, have scratched hard for what they have. Johnny is an Alabama boy now, but he was born and raised in Louisiana. He spent some time in Baton Rouge and New Iberia before he cut his musical teeth in New Orleans, a place where they never talk about a “day the music died.” The name of his band is the Lucky Doggs, which might naturally remind you of the rolling hot dog stands that are found throughout the French Quarter in NOLA. You can click on samples of each cut on the album. Give John a listen. You might just find you’ll want to do some commerce with my cuz.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
A Nod to the Passing of a Southern Lady and a Pistol
Two Fridays ago when I was preparing to head home for the weekend, very sad news came my way. My mom’s sister, Carrie Louise Lawson Barbato, had left us to meet her maker and rejoin her husband, Joe. Though I liked her first name, she was not so happy with it and would, if she could, spank me for using it here. My dad’s mom was a Carrie Lottie, so precedence existed. It’s really a moot point, as she will always reside in my heart as Weezie.
My mom had her hands full with this rambunctious son and my little sister. From 14 months until her passing at age 39, Kathy was by the ravages of encephalitis left in a persistent vegetative state. My folks cared for her in our home for all of those years. Each summer, thanks to Weezie and Uncle Joe, I was treated to a week in their home to romp and play with my three cousins and attend Joe’s youth golf clinic. For a woman with three active boys of her own, that was a brave and generous act. She made it seem like two fun weeks were crammed into that one. Ask anyone who knew Weezie. She made fun happen that way.
Since Dad passed on in 1998, Mom has not been an adventurous traveler. In 2003, when Suzie and I married up here in Kansas, Weezie signed on to be Mom’s travel companion to make it possible and enjoyable for her to participate in our joyous event.
When Mom had to go through knee replacement surgery several years ago, the procedure was performed in Mobile so Weezie could help her through the first post-surgical weeks. My aunt was notorious for leaving when doctors made her spend too much time in their waiting rooms, so when the wait got a little lengthy she tried to get Mom to leave without seeing her surgeon for her one-year checkup. Not being quite the pistol her big sister was, Mom said, “Louise, I can’t just leave. I came all the way from Baton Rouge for this appointment.”
Anyway, I just thought I should give Weezie a nod of love and respect by remembering her here. The newspapers charge exorbitantly for obit lines, so instead of relisting her passing in the Advocate in Baton Rouge after it had already appeared in the Mobile paper, I decided to do it here. With the luxury of free space, I have shuffled and expanded what was written in Alabama. I also have the advantage of penning this after the memorial service, enabling me to mention touching moments provided by family members who contributed to the celebration of a great woman’s life. Here’s my offering:
Louise Lawson Barbato - A beloved mother, grandmother, great grandmother, sister, aunt, and friend, Louise Lawson Barbato passed away in Mobile, Alabama, on Friday, July 16, 2010. Her life was celebrated by relatives and friends in a memorial service at Mobile Memorial Gardens Funeral Home on the following Monday. Her middle son, Johnny Barbato, honored his mother by playing and singing “Mama Told Me,” a song of his writing about their relationship. Mary Catherine Barbato spoke about the joy, wonder, and inspiration she experienced first as a granddaughter and later as a dear pal of Louise.
Louise and her surviving sister, Jimmie Peterson of Baton Rouge, lost their parents in early childhood and were raised in the Good Samaritan Home and the Baptist Orphanage in McComb and Jackson, Mississippi, before moving to Baton Rouge in their late teens to live with a great aunt, Ruth West Barlow. Louise started a career at Standard Oil, where she met her late husband, Joe. They married in 1949. She raised their three surviving sons, James Joseph, John David, and Jack Lawson, while Joe pursued a career as a golf professional at country clubs in New Iberia and Harahan, Louisiana, before moving to Mobile to operate the Azalea City Golf Course side by side with Louise.
Louise loved cooking and dancing, and excelled in both. Her mastery of the arts of conversation and fun are among many reasons she will forever remembered and sorely missed by those who loved her.
Others who survive her include Jack’s wife, Cathy Watson Barbato and grandchildren Sari Labatut of New Orleans, Jessica Louise Barbato of Virginia Beach, Brittany Danielle Barbato of Jacksonville, FL, and Jessie Jeff Barbato, Jamie Barbato Chance, John David Barbato, and Joseph Eugene Barbato, all of the Mobile area, as well as three great grandchildren.
Finally, I have to mention how deeply moved I was to see how profoundly pained Weezie’s grandson, Joseph, was in his loss and the emotion of the service. To him I say, tread courageously and purposefully through life from this day forward, as the force called Weezie will accompany you always.
My mom had her hands full with this rambunctious son and my little sister. From 14 months until her passing at age 39, Kathy was by the ravages of encephalitis left in a persistent vegetative state. My folks cared for her in our home for all of those years. Each summer, thanks to Weezie and Uncle Joe, I was treated to a week in their home to romp and play with my three cousins and attend Joe’s youth golf clinic. For a woman with three active boys of her own, that was a brave and generous act. She made it seem like two fun weeks were crammed into that one. Ask anyone who knew Weezie. She made fun happen that way.
Since Dad passed on in 1998, Mom has not been an adventurous traveler. In 2003, when Suzie and I married up here in Kansas, Weezie signed on to be Mom’s travel companion to make it possible and enjoyable for her to participate in our joyous event.
When Mom had to go through knee replacement surgery several years ago, the procedure was performed in Mobile so Weezie could help her through the first post-surgical weeks. My aunt was notorious for leaving when doctors made her spend too much time in their waiting rooms, so when the wait got a little lengthy she tried to get Mom to leave without seeing her surgeon for her one-year checkup. Not being quite the pistol her big sister was, Mom said, “Louise, I can’t just leave. I came all the way from Baton Rouge for this appointment.”
Anyway, I just thought I should give Weezie a nod of love and respect by remembering her here. The newspapers charge exorbitantly for obit lines, so instead of relisting her passing in the Advocate in Baton Rouge after it had already appeared in the Mobile paper, I decided to do it here. With the luxury of free space, I have shuffled and expanded what was written in Alabama. I also have the advantage of penning this after the memorial service, enabling me to mention touching moments provided by family members who contributed to the celebration of a great woman’s life. Here’s my offering:
Louise Lawson Barbato - A beloved mother, grandmother, great grandmother, sister, aunt, and friend, Louise Lawson Barbato passed away in Mobile, Alabama, on Friday, July 16, 2010. Her life was celebrated by relatives and friends in a memorial service at Mobile Memorial Gardens Funeral Home on the following Monday. Her middle son, Johnny Barbato, honored his mother by playing and singing “Mama Told Me,” a song of his writing about their relationship. Mary Catherine Barbato spoke about the joy, wonder, and inspiration she experienced first as a granddaughter and later as a dear pal of Louise.
Louise and her surviving sister, Jimmie Peterson of Baton Rouge, lost their parents in early childhood and were raised in the Good Samaritan Home and the Baptist Orphanage in McComb and Jackson, Mississippi, before moving to Baton Rouge in their late teens to live with a great aunt, Ruth West Barlow. Louise started a career at Standard Oil, where she met her late husband, Joe. They married in 1949. She raised their three surviving sons, James Joseph, John David, and Jack Lawson, while Joe pursued a career as a golf professional at country clubs in New Iberia and Harahan, Louisiana, before moving to Mobile to operate the Azalea City Golf Course side by side with Louise.
Louise loved cooking and dancing, and excelled in both. Her mastery of the arts of conversation and fun are among many reasons she will forever remembered and sorely missed by those who loved her.
Others who survive her include Jack’s wife, Cathy Watson Barbato and grandchildren Sari Labatut of New Orleans, Jessica Louise Barbato of Virginia Beach, Brittany Danielle Barbato of Jacksonville, FL, and Jessie Jeff Barbato, Jamie Barbato Chance, John David Barbato, and Joseph Eugene Barbato, all of the Mobile area, as well as three great grandchildren.
Finally, I have to mention how deeply moved I was to see how profoundly pained Weezie’s grandson, Joseph, was in his loss and the emotion of the service. To him I say, tread courageously and purposefully through life from this day forward, as the force called Weezie will accompany you always.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
The Three Rs: Random and Reminiscent Rambling
We all have comfort zones, comfort foods, comfortable clothes, personal senses of style, quirky behaviors, favorite activities, beliefs, faith, and opinions. I know I have mine. Suzie says that I get grumpy when I’m forced out of my routine. Out of my routine might be defined as a circumstance in which particular ones or multiples of the things enumerated above are unavailable to me.
The most comfortable place in the world for me to be, I think, is in the study in our home. There is way too much stuff in there, especially since other than bathrooms and closets it is the smallest room in the house. That’s where we watch television and movies and diddle on our laptops. I sit at my roll-top computer desk, and Suzie sits in a blue leather recliner that has as many miles on it as an Apollo mission. I used to blog, read and comment on the blog posts of others, read fiction, write fiction, write agents and hope to persuade them to represent my fiction, and search the Web to satisfy my curiosity about a myriad of things, important and not. I still do those things. The difference is that my routine now includes an additional pastime.
In the last year and some, I have become a Facebooker to keep up with friends from past chunks of my life. Many of those folks are the people with whom I grew up. I used to bump into some of them before I moved from Baton Rouge to Fairway, Kansas, in 1992, and some of them I did not. A number of my “bumpees” had bumped into “bumpees” I had missed, which still enabled me to keep track. Rediscovering so many of them and learning what interesting people they turned out to be has been a joy.
The best thing in the study is Suzie, but she comes and goes, being mostly a nocturnal studier. She reads, journals, e-mails, shops the Web for shoes (Her weakness for footwear is the reason I sometimes refer to her as the Imelda Marcos of the Midwest.) and peruses it for recipes (I encourage this behavior.), watches the tube with me, plays Scrabble with me, tells me I snack too much, and generally lights up my life. She is a wonderful woman even though she was born in the Yankee state of Illinois. I’m trying to train her in Southern, having even taken her to Graceland once. It took forever to get her to say y’all correctly, but praise Jesus, she picked up on Louisiana cooking right quick.
The other things in there are manifestations of my likes. There are paintings and miniatures of lighthouses. There are paintings and miniatures of ducks and pelicans. There are renderings of crawfish and of fleurs-de-lis. We’re surrounded by bookshelves populated with stuff and books. There’s a putter, five golf balls, and one of those practice holes to shoot at across the adjacent dayroom, so named for the daybed that is its central content.
If I had to describe our study, a serious work of comfort zone-ness, in terms of food, it would be a bowl of tomato soup with a side of grilled cheese sandwich, a red beans and rice sandwich (stacked as bread, butter, red beans and rice, butter, bread), or meatloaf and mashed potatoes. In terms of clothes, it would definitely be one of those pairs of jeans you finally get worn down to cheesecloth softness for the maximum feel-good experience.
Our patio and backyard are, with the exception of sometimes being too hot or humid (I’m spoiled to Kansas weather so I have lower standards for the temperature and water content of my air now.), pure heaven. Suzie is a masterful gardener, and as such paints lush beauty on the canvas of my life, also known as the space outside our backdoor.
Other places that provide good feelings are Tybee Island and Savannah in Georgia, golf courses just about anywhere, and lighthouses and their surroundings. Baton Rouge will always be special to me. I like simply riding around seeing what still is, discovering what has changed, and paying homage to good things that were but are no more. Enjoying the old stomping grounds with family and friends is good. Sharing my roots with Suzie is special. The same thing holds true when she shares Alton, Illinois, her town on the Mississippi (across from St. Louis) with me. That reminds me of an additional comfort
I’ve shown my hand a bit on comfort foods, but there are still a few things to mention. I like shrimp and redfish Creole like that from the kitchen of Copeland’s of New Orleans. The red beans and rice from ZEA Rotisserie & Grill will, as they say, make you slap your mama, and it is just considered a side soup there. The split order of white and red cannelloni and the arancini from Gino’s in Baton Rouge can make you believe you just got off the boat in Sicily.
It was always difficult pole vaulting and playing basketball against Mike Anderson when I was young. (It was even harder to play football against him, but I had the wisdom to avoid that.) Ever since he turned the old Red and White College Town Grocery into an eponymous seafood eatery, I have found it quite easy to partake of the victuals that find their way out of his kitchens.
I was raised to love many things from Piccadilly Cafeteria, but in particular, they have some of the best crawfish étouffée that can be had. (They do the shrimp up here but not very often the crawfish.) Like many people from Baton Rouge, I’ve been eating with them since they had one location in the world on Red Stick’s Third Street. Many a tray was carried to my table by the congenial and venerable Percy Brown. A cafeteria with classy waiters, how elegant is that? Oh, yeah. Thank God for communitycoffee.com. You can find coffee here that is nearly as good as a red bag of Louisiana’s state coffee, but it costs half again or twice as much. I’m making converts. If only we had a CC’s Community Coffeehouse here.
When it comes to comfortable clothes, the soft jeans I mentioned earlier generally are for home, since the deteriorated condition that makes them special also presents the possibility of arrest if terminal failure occurs in public. That’s where shorts come in. They provide the legal ultimate in coolness. In my Southern opinion, they actually even work for me during most, though not all, of the cold weather here in America’s Heartland. You can add balance in the fall and winter by coupling them with long sleeves or even sweaters.
My personal style signatures are sweater vests and striped socks. The latter just make you feel better. The only socks I have that are not fully striped are the little short white ones I wear with sneakers or my golf shoes (when I’m wearing shorts). I’m converting friends and relatives one guy at a time. Many of my lady friends and relatives have become much more striped-sock prone, too. My collection is over 80 pair strong. Sadness occurs when I finally have to retire a set.
Suzie will attest that I have quirky behaviors. Starting the striped-sock religion is just one. She believes that I hum or sing all the time. I believe that music brings joy to the heart. I don’t mean to drive her crazy with it, but like breathing, I do it without even thinking. There have been occasions when I’ve been asked by passing coworkers what that tune is because they like it. She totally does not understand how I can fall asleep more readily with lights and a TV on than in bed. I wish I was one of the lucky ones who can fall asleep on a schedule by simply laying head on pillow. Most of that wishing occurs in the dark with my head on a pillow waiting for sleep to come. It also baffles her as to why I talk to inanimate objects and other drivers when they don’t behave as I think they should. These are the utterances in which I make my best use of my bad words.
My lovely wife will tell you I am not active enough, and she is right. The activities I enumerated when telling you about our study make my life interesting and relaxing. I frequently tell Suzie that eating out with her is my favorite thing. What’s not to like? There’s Suzie, food, most often coffee, and every now and then dessert, and we neither cook nor clean up behind it. The fun, relaxing, and enriching stuff we do when we go to Tybee and Savannah or Folly Beach and Charleston are top of the list things to do. A bad day on a golf course is better than any day in an office. Riding beaches, trails, and roads on bicycles with Suzie does it for me, too.
I believe I am blessed to have Suzie, our combined daughters, my mom, other kinfolk near and far, and many friends scattered along the timeline of my life. I have faith that my God will afford me some years to have and enjoy them.
If you’ve been here before, you already know I have opinions. Why, I’ll share one with you now. Obama is the dog, and we are the fire hydrant. When you convert four years into dog years does it constitute a term limit?
The most comfortable place in the world for me to be, I think, is in the study in our home. There is way too much stuff in there, especially since other than bathrooms and closets it is the smallest room in the house. That’s where we watch television and movies and diddle on our laptops. I sit at my roll-top computer desk, and Suzie sits in a blue leather recliner that has as many miles on it as an Apollo mission. I used to blog, read and comment on the blog posts of others, read fiction, write fiction, write agents and hope to persuade them to represent my fiction, and search the Web to satisfy my curiosity about a myriad of things, important and not. I still do those things. The difference is that my routine now includes an additional pastime.
In the last year and some, I have become a Facebooker to keep up with friends from past chunks of my life. Many of those folks are the people with whom I grew up. I used to bump into some of them before I moved from Baton Rouge to Fairway, Kansas, in 1992, and some of them I did not. A number of my “bumpees” had bumped into “bumpees” I had missed, which still enabled me to keep track. Rediscovering so many of them and learning what interesting people they turned out to be has been a joy.
The best thing in the study is Suzie, but she comes and goes, being mostly a nocturnal studier. She reads, journals, e-mails, shops the Web for shoes (Her weakness for footwear is the reason I sometimes refer to her as the Imelda Marcos of the Midwest.) and peruses it for recipes (I encourage this behavior.), watches the tube with me, plays Scrabble with me, tells me I snack too much, and generally lights up my life. She is a wonderful woman even though she was born in the Yankee state of Illinois. I’m trying to train her in Southern, having even taken her to Graceland once. It took forever to get her to say y’all correctly, but praise Jesus, she picked up on Louisiana cooking right quick.
The other things in there are manifestations of my likes. There are paintings and miniatures of lighthouses. There are paintings and miniatures of ducks and pelicans. There are renderings of crawfish and of fleurs-de-lis. We’re surrounded by bookshelves populated with stuff and books. There’s a putter, five golf balls, and one of those practice holes to shoot at across the adjacent dayroom, so named for the daybed that is its central content.
If I had to describe our study, a serious work of comfort zone-ness, in terms of food, it would be a bowl of tomato soup with a side of grilled cheese sandwich, a red beans and rice sandwich (stacked as bread, butter, red beans and rice, butter, bread), or meatloaf and mashed potatoes. In terms of clothes, it would definitely be one of those pairs of jeans you finally get worn down to cheesecloth softness for the maximum feel-good experience.
Our patio and backyard are, with the exception of sometimes being too hot or humid (I’m spoiled to Kansas weather so I have lower standards for the temperature and water content of my air now.), pure heaven. Suzie is a masterful gardener, and as such paints lush beauty on the canvas of my life, also known as the space outside our backdoor.
Other places that provide good feelings are Tybee Island and Savannah in Georgia, golf courses just about anywhere, and lighthouses and their surroundings. Baton Rouge will always be special to me. I like simply riding around seeing what still is, discovering what has changed, and paying homage to good things that were but are no more. Enjoying the old stomping grounds with family and friends is good. Sharing my roots with Suzie is special. The same thing holds true when she shares Alton, Illinois, her town on the Mississippi (across from St. Louis) with me. That reminds me of an additional comfort
I’ve shown my hand a bit on comfort foods, but there are still a few things to mention. I like shrimp and redfish Creole like that from the kitchen of Copeland’s of New Orleans. The red beans and rice from ZEA Rotisserie & Grill will, as they say, make you slap your mama, and it is just considered a side soup there. The split order of white and red cannelloni and the arancini from Gino’s in Baton Rouge can make you believe you just got off the boat in Sicily.
It was always difficult pole vaulting and playing basketball against Mike Anderson when I was young. (It was even harder to play football against him, but I had the wisdom to avoid that.) Ever since he turned the old Red and White College Town Grocery into an eponymous seafood eatery, I have found it quite easy to partake of the victuals that find their way out of his kitchens.
I was raised to love many things from Piccadilly Cafeteria, but in particular, they have some of the best crawfish étouffée that can be had. (They do the shrimp up here but not very often the crawfish.) Like many people from Baton Rouge, I’ve been eating with them since they had one location in the world on Red Stick’s Third Street. Many a tray was carried to my table by the congenial and venerable Percy Brown. A cafeteria with classy waiters, how elegant is that? Oh, yeah. Thank God for communitycoffee.com. You can find coffee here that is nearly as good as a red bag of Louisiana’s state coffee, but it costs half again or twice as much. I’m making converts. If only we had a CC’s Community Coffeehouse here.
When it comes to comfortable clothes, the soft jeans I mentioned earlier generally are for home, since the deteriorated condition that makes them special also presents the possibility of arrest if terminal failure occurs in public. That’s where shorts come in. They provide the legal ultimate in coolness. In my Southern opinion, they actually even work for me during most, though not all, of the cold weather here in America’s Heartland. You can add balance in the fall and winter by coupling them with long sleeves or even sweaters.
My personal style signatures are sweater vests and striped socks. The latter just make you feel better. The only socks I have that are not fully striped are the little short white ones I wear with sneakers or my golf shoes (when I’m wearing shorts). I’m converting friends and relatives one guy at a time. Many of my lady friends and relatives have become much more striped-sock prone, too. My collection is over 80 pair strong. Sadness occurs when I finally have to retire a set.
Suzie will attest that I have quirky behaviors. Starting the striped-sock religion is just one. She believes that I hum or sing all the time. I believe that music brings joy to the heart. I don’t mean to drive her crazy with it, but like breathing, I do it without even thinking. There have been occasions when I’ve been asked by passing coworkers what that tune is because they like it. She totally does not understand how I can fall asleep more readily with lights and a TV on than in bed. I wish I was one of the lucky ones who can fall asleep on a schedule by simply laying head on pillow. Most of that wishing occurs in the dark with my head on a pillow waiting for sleep to come. It also baffles her as to why I talk to inanimate objects and other drivers when they don’t behave as I think they should. These are the utterances in which I make my best use of my bad words.
My lovely wife will tell you I am not active enough, and she is right. The activities I enumerated when telling you about our study make my life interesting and relaxing. I frequently tell Suzie that eating out with her is my favorite thing. What’s not to like? There’s Suzie, food, most often coffee, and every now and then dessert, and we neither cook nor clean up behind it. The fun, relaxing, and enriching stuff we do when we go to Tybee and Savannah or Folly Beach and Charleston are top of the list things to do. A bad day on a golf course is better than any day in an office. Riding beaches, trails, and roads on bicycles with Suzie does it for me, too.
I believe I am blessed to have Suzie, our combined daughters, my mom, other kinfolk near and far, and many friends scattered along the timeline of my life. I have faith that my God will afford me some years to have and enjoy them.
If you’ve been here before, you already know I have opinions. Why, I’ll share one with you now. Obama is the dog, and we are the fire hydrant. When you convert four years into dog years does it constitute a term limit?
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