The Savannah Bananas and other Sports in my World

Is it ever going to warm up enough here West Michigan for me to set aside my bulky winter clothes? I doubt it. Right now, it's raining, and if you can believe the weather report Alex gives out upon request, it's 47 degrees outside. Inside, I'm still in my long flannel nightgown and bathrobe made out of sweatshirt material and I'm still cold. It's almost time to take my morning pills (10:00) and get my day officially started with what Victorian era women called their "morning absolutions." aka time spent on a chamber pot, taking a sponge bath, or in our time taking a shower, and getting dressed. Being a slave to routines, while on the 'chamber pot'---yes, I just went there, no pun intended---I play three games on my Kindle: one each of solitaire, the New York Times' Wordle and the Daily Quiddler at setgame. I judge my entire day's mental acuity by how well I play those games and I'm happy when I win all three games on the first try.

I've been up since 8:00 drinking coffee and stalking cyberspace for some pop culture of interest. Currently, Savannah Banana Baseball clips keep popping up on my Facebook Shorts.

Dad's team 

Of all the sports in the world, baseball (and golf to a lesser extend) are the only ones I have a passing interest in watching, but even with them I watch more for the memories that connect me to my dad and the fact that I can multi-task while they are on TV. Dad played on a baseball team of adults that was sponsored by local businesses in a city-wide league.

Dad is holding flag

 

 

 

 

 

And with golf, Dad caddied as a kid and it was a life-long passion of his to play and watch. Fast forward to a time when Dad was dying of cancer and Tiger Woods just broke the color barrier in professional golf to go on to win the 1999 PGA Championship. Dad was so proud that he had lived long enough to see America’s race relationships change that much. I read him every magazine article I could find on the Tiger. To this day I can't see Tiger without being grateful that he became a catalyst for the stories my dad shared about his childhood living in the south. Some were hair raising like the time he was a kid hiding in the woods watching the Klu Klux Klan hang a black man. He also saw cross burnings and the Klan raid houses in the Italian neighborhood where he lived, stealing anything of value they could find. His pride in what his generation accomplished is one of those things that makes me so upset with our current president who is set on destroying all the accomplishments I felt my generation was leaving behind.

Back in my early twenties which I call my Chameleon Days because I would change my likes and dislikes to match which ever guy I was dating at the time. I didn't do it on purpose, but it was the early sixties and I must have felt like that was the way the world worked. Wives (or those of us auditioning for the parts) followed the man's lead. Anyway, back then I took eighteen golf lessons and learned that I didn’t like following a little ball around but it earned me a few dates with a guy I liked. Just like it did when I took downhill skiing lessons. Tennis was also a lessons obsession of mine. That relationship lasted a year but my game never improved enough to give the guy a good enough partner on the court. He was an all-round jock and in hindsight I'm glad I didn't end up with him. I would not have liked a life of making game night snacks and having a living room designed entirely around a big screen and puffy furniture. I took the breakup hard. But now I can see the wisdom the universe dispensed when we didn't end up together.

The Savannah Bananas and their archival, the Party Animals, have brought a different kind of energy to the game of baseball and they are fun to watch. Don't pass up watching the 20/20 YouTube video below. It will explain the popularity, vision and history of the Bananas better than I can. But if I have to describe them, I'd say they are like the Globe Trotters are in basketball only the Bananas play baseball.

I once mentioned the Bananas here at the continuum care campus and no one knew what I was talking about. I was not surprised. My fellow residents are crazy about college basketball and football and will talk endlessly about coaches and players to the point I'd like to gag myself with a spoon. They wear their favorite team colors and have flags and memorabilia decorating their doors. Once in a while I'll sign up for a viewing party but will leave right after the food is served. I just don't get it but I'm sure they don't understand how I can spend an hour every morning looking at Facebook Shorts. 

We all like what we like...unless you're stuck in Chameleon mode and I suspect a woman that just moved in with husband is stuck. He taught theology in a Christian college and was also a minister for a couple of decades. She looks at him like Lady and the Tramp looked at one another in their famous spaghetti and meatball scene. I do not think I'm going to like this couple---they seem phony---but she has demoted me from the 2nd to the 3rd fattest person living here so I'm happy about that turn of events. ©

 

Bad Luck, Magical Places and and More Tariff Shopping

Never declare yourself to be on the top of world because that's a long way to fall if something goes wrong. That's what happened to my youngest niece this past weekend. She called me on her way up to her 'happy place' to tell me she'd paid off her mortgage and her husband just got clean blood work from an infectious disease clinic where they'd been dealing with for several years. At one point, after multiple knee surgeries and bad infections, they were told his lower leg might need to be amputated, but it's finally free of infection after a doctor from a foreign country took a different approach that worked, and my nephew-in-law just got cleared to start driving again. During the phone call my niece listed all the positive things going on in her life and they were celebrating with a long weekend in Traverse City, Michigan. 

I've grown up thinking of Traverse City as a small tourist town and I'd been to their famous Cherry Festival many times since I was a kid and before my husband's stroke in 2000.. It's also famous for its artist shops, gorgeous views of Lake Michigan along a peninsula drive and rows of Victorian era houses built during the lumber baron era. But while I wasn't looking it became a place for millionaires to own homes. The things you learn with a Google search such as, "More American millennial millionaires live in Traverse City, Michigan, than in any other ZIP code in the US." In recent decades many of the rolling hills that produced the sweetest cherries in The States have been replaced with wine vineyards. 

I went on a day-long a wine-tasting bus tour five-six years ago that was organized by our senior hall and I was shocked at how the Traverse City area has grown and changed since it was a regular summer destination for us. And if you like history this place is steeping with it between its eighty year old coast guard station, the lumber baron era, and a state hospital that housed everything from the mental ill to polio, tuberculosis and typhoid patients. It closed in 1903 and today you can go on a two hour tour of just the hospital featuring its Victorian Style buildings, underground tunnels and places that are supposed to haunted. Recently they've developed one of the buildings into artists' work spaces and local shops and boutiques. I bet most Michiganders would list Traverse City in their top five places to go locally and my niece even has a favorite hotel where they stay when they go up north and walking along a sidewalk she got her toe caught on something and down she went. 

Fortunately, the emergency rescue squad saw her go down so she only had to wait seconds for help to arrive. The bottom line is on Saturday she had a total hip replacement in the hospital up there and was sent home on Sunday. I can't imagine having a surgery while on vacation, in a strange hospital with doctors and surgeons you don't know. She says the nurses were all super nice and professional, and all males---didn't see a female nurse the entire time she was there. I'd love to know why and I have my theories. At least she was only two and a half hours from home and not in some third world country where she doesn't speak the language. (That's my dad's philosophy being channeled through me. No matter what went wrong he could always come up with something worse that could have happened. I'm quite proud that I took that feature of his character and made it my own.) 

Change of topic: I went to the Dollar Tree store to do some more tariff shopping before the 145% tariff kicks in for good made in China. I figure it won't hurt to have six months worth of stuff I use all the time stocked up. I came home with 5 bags of stuff for only $34.00. Stuff like, post-a-notes, and envelopes (from Canada), paper clips and a organizer for my bathroom countertop from China and bunch of fake flowers to decorate a hat for a Kentucky Derby Hat decorating contest we're having on campus in May. I kind of resent spending money on that hat decor but it was only five dollars and I plan on adding some vintage horses that came from my youth. I found a straw hat at Goodwill for ninety-nine cents. It won't be a 'pretty hat' per say, but it will match a new blouse I bought before all the tariff talks. It may be that last piece of new clothing I get in 2025. I also bought cookie and banana bread mixes, trash can liners, olives and mayo. I love those petite sized mayo jars they sell at Dollar Tree. I don’t use enough in a year to buy the larger sizes. I also bought a bag of potting soil the same size and brand as I bought at the grocery store last week only for $2 cheaper. 

I don't know why I was such a snob about not wanting to shop at dollars stores back twenty-five years ago when my dad was alive and I'd have to drive him and his girlfriend to a dollar store on their weekly dates, but if they can see my now I'll bet they're laughing at my changing attitude and Dad's girlfriend would say, "I told you so." Dad would be kinder and tell me that the Dollar Store gene is given with our with our Social Security Cards. Truth be told maybe I was banishing myself from the dollar stores because the only thing I ever shopped lifted in my entire life was from a Dime Store back when I was 10 or 11 years old. It was a cross cut out of a sea shell---or all things---and I still have it today. Every time I see it I'm reminded of my short-lived life of crime. I don't know, maybe I expected the Ghost of Woolworth's to descend upon me as the reason why it took me twenty-five years to get over my fear of going inside a dollar store aka modern-day dime store but it's as good of an excuse as any.

Until next Wednesday.©

 

The old Traverse City State Hospital

Accomplishing Projects, Horrific Mistakes, Tariffs and Disappearing Pain

It's two-thirty in the afternoon and I sat down at one to write my weekly blog post but these are the first words I've written on the topic. I got distracted working on a project that I started back in 2021 and just now I'm ready to push it over the finish line. It's a soft-cover, self-published (of course) book of twenty poems I've written about growing old and living on a continuum care campus. I'm only one click away from ordering my proofing copy using the Book Wright app at Blurb Publishing. The back cover content reads like this:

"_____ __ _____  is a continuum care community that sets on 40 acres in Kent County, Michigan. I was fortunate enough to move into the independent living building when it first opened in October of 2021. Those early days were very much like moving into a college dorm as we learned our way around, attended orientation classes and got to know our neighbors. The uniqueness of all of us moving in at once helped foster a close knit community that remains today and along the way I wrote poems…

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt. ~ Erma Bombeck"

I'm at that antsy time when I want to pull the trigger to get the book published but I know myself well enough to know there is probably a dyslexic-driven mistake in there somewhere and I need to let the content set a few days before proofing it again. Just yesterday I was showing my youngest niece a hardcover book I wrote about my husband back in 2012 and I was shocked and horrified when she read the title of one of the stories within and asked: "What's a Barstood Ranger?" I can't tell you how many times over the years I've looked at that mistake and saw what I meant to type rather than what I did type---Barstood Rancher. Thankfully, there is only one copy of that book in print so I only embarrassed myself in from of one person---well, in front of all cyberspace now that I've confessed it here. ('Confessed' originally spelled 'confused' until Alex did an intervention.) So I'll take the time to let the poetry book set before I click 'place my order'. One of my reading/writing disability comes from a place where I memorized spelling words rather than coming from a place where I learned phonetics. Writing Hell comes in the form of Alex not working on Saturdays when I write my posts but I just learned that she does not answer to Alexis. So whose got egg on her face this time?

Side-note: the idiom 'to have egg on your face' as a creative way to say you are embarrassed came from the theatrical tradition of throwing eggs at performers that the audience didn't like. Obviously, this comes from a century when eggs didn't cost as much as they do now. 

Speaking of the price of goods have you done any tariff shopping? I have. I ordered a new coffee pot. I've needed one for a couple of months when I tried to clean my old one with vinegar and it took the paint off on the heating pad and it turned to rust. The pot works but it looks horrible. And my Waterpik infusion electric toothbrush and flosser had the good graces to spring a leak the day the tariffs went on. I did shop for a replacement part and they have them for other models which would have saved a ton of money. The replacements parts are under $20 while the new Infusion Waterpik is $173. I really didn't want to pay that much but I don't have room for two separate units and my gums have improved since I got my Waterpik. Once they add the 50% tariff onto the $173 it will be out of reach. I also stocked up on Burt Bee's products because they import the bee wax from a third world country that made the tariff list. 

A 45/47 supporter---just after I was bemoaning the outcome of the election---told me, "You'll see, the minute he takes office the prices will come down and the stock market will go up." I know it's petty of me but I recently sat across from her at the farm table and asked the group at large, "Did you see how far the stock market fell today?" She didn't say a word and I was enjoying the fact that she was probably biting her tongue while staring at her bellybutton as a conversation about tariffs broke out.

Other news on the home front: I saw my orthopedic doctor yesterday and he gave me a shot of lubricating gel in my wrist. Since it's given off label, there is no way of knowing if it will last 3 months or 3 years---no statistics are being compiled. And it's private pay because no insurance company will reimburse you for off label treatments. My doctor says the insurance companies don't care how much success is reported in the field because they don't want to start paying for joints other than the knees which the gel was first designed for. I've had great luck with the gel in both knees and in my shoulders so I had no hesitation getting it in my wrist. Private pay was $183 and if I only get a year out of the gel, it will be worth it as I couldn't do anything without pain or dropping things. I suspect I will get more than a year but with all typing I do, who knows. The gel shot adds a padding in where the arthritis has destroyed bone.

 Until Next Wednesday!