Nerds with Muscles

There was a long line at the grocery store giving me plenty of time to study the stuff the guy in front of me had in his cart. The thirty year old inside me thought he was cute enough to be a cover model for a magazine called Nerds with Muscles. His body was what the in crowd today would called ‘hot’ but back in my thirty-something days we would have called him a hunk. He was wearing serious glasses---like the guy in the photo above---and his dark hair was styled exactly the same way as Photo Boy’s. If Photo Boy had a brother you’d swear he was standing six feet in front of me. Be still my aging ticker. What? An old woman can't enjoy the scenery around her? (By the way, that photo was pulled off a hair-styles-for-men site which is a great place to shop for eye candy.)

But what caused me to take a second look at the guy was what was in his cart. He had two giant, red bottles that on closer inspection turned out to be Old Spice Fiji shampoo and conditioner. And flanking those pump bottles were Old Spice Fiji body wash and Old Spice Fiji antiperspirant. The Old Spice website says "it smells like vacation with the scent of coconut and tropical wood.” Of course I didn’t know that standing in line but with all that Old Spice in his cart I had to find out if I could detect the scent of the Old Spice after shave that my dad wore for years. I got in front of my cart to unload my stuff on the conveyor belt and took a deep breath. I can’t honestly say that breathing in Mr. Tall, Dark and Nerdy made me think of my dad or a vacation in Fiji but the 30 year old inside me would have jumped his bones if he showed the slightest interest in me and my Aveeno scented body. 

Instead, I couldn’t help asking him if he had important date that night, motioning to all the grooming products in his cart. He must have had 4 or 5 body washes and an equal number of antiperspirants mixed in with razor blades, Q-tips---even some lip gloss. No food. Thankfully he laughed and didn’t look at me like I was an old cougar trying to hunt where I didn’t belong. “I have a date tonight but not an important one,” he replied. “That didn’t come out right,” he quickly added. “I like to stock up when I shop.” Nice guy, respectful of his elders but the sad part is when I was his age I wouldn't have been bold enough to talk to him.

Before going to the store I was struggling to find a topic to write about and the choices ran the gamut from the loss of a good friend I’ve known since 1970 to a day trip to my favorite tourist town to feeling like a college student at the beginning of a new semester with all the new events planned here on my Continuum Care Campus. One event in particular has me excited: a Murder Mystery Dinner at “Lord Heathchiff's Manor.” I’ve never been to a mystery/murder party so I’m excited about this one. We’ll get our character profiles two weeks earlier so I’ll probably tap my readers for some costume ideas and character idiosyncrasies I can incorporate into my persona. Scratch that. I just googled ‘murder at heathcliff manor’ and came up with the list of 20 characters in the game along with a description of what they should wear. I hope I don’t get the part of the Vicar. It could get me in trouble if I act all pious or let my contempt for organized religion show. Our Activities Director said some of us women will have to play a male part since men are not all that plentiful around here. The day this event was posted it filled up and we have a waiting list. That hasn't happen before.

It’s been a busy week in part because I decided I needed to be more intimately connected around here in a social group in addition to Mahjong. So I’m learning to play Quiddler with the Thursday night group. For someone like me, who is spelling challenged, it’s a bit scary but my mahjong mentor is part of the Quiddler group and I showed her my hand from time to time and asked, “Is this a word?” Her daughter is dyslexic and she has a way of laughing at me that makes me feel loved and understood all rolled into one large ball of acceptance. She puts everyone at easy when she laughs at and corrects a faux pas' I made when I talk “left handed” as I call it. The older I get the more I’m making mistakes like words out of order or the opposite of what I meant to say. The first night I played Quiddler I scored next to the bottom of the twelve of us playing. Last night I scored next to the top. 

I really don’t know if my attempt to network deeper into the social structure here will make me happier or whatever my goal is exactly. I just know a lot my neighbors have made some really good friends and I haven't. This was brought home to me when two of my mahjong buddies were talking about a Rhodes Scholar road trip they are taking with two others here on campus. Occasionally three of the four of them have asked me to dine with them. We even went to see the new Barbie movie together. But they all got close because they do the line dancing class together and that group of 12 do parties together and impromptu to outings for ice cream or coffee and even do off campus dance performances for our marketing department. I can’t say I’m jealous. Not exactly. But their road trip pointed out the fact that while I have friends here I don’t have any close friends. With my long-time friend dying this week and my other long-time one battling Alzheimer's I suddenly feel lonely.

While I was at the grocery store/big box store I got my second Pneumonia vaccine, my 2023 flu shot and the new RSV vaccine for respiratory virus’ and I signed up to get a text when the new Covid shots are available. You can predict with a high level of accuracy who around here is getting the Covid vaccine and new the RSV shots by what political party they support. The Trumpests aren’t getting them because “Covid is just like a common cold” and they say they don’t trust the new RSV vaccine because it is new. One of the guys in my Writing Group just got out of a two week quarantine with Covid and I don’t intend to go to Covid jail. Not that I couldn’t entertain myself that long and survive by getting food delivered to my door. The pharmacist who gave me the three vaccines said they might make me tired and I slept like the dead that night, only waking up once which is a record for me. Otherwise I didn’t even get sore at the injection sites. 

Until next Wednesday…

  Rest in Peace, Vicki. 

Some losses are too painful to express in words or actions. 

I didn't cry when I got the news

 that your valiant fight against cancer ended. 

But two days later I killed a spider

 and

 I broke out crying like there was no tomorrow. 

He didn't need to die and neither did you. 

Already I miss our friendship

 and 

your trademark sense of humor.

Our road trips and get-togethers with you and Ron

 were the best.

You always packed

 the 

best laughter and good cheer.

My Super-Doper Ordinary Day

My life is both speeding up too fast while still moving too slowly. How can both of those things be true, you ask? You can ask from here to Kingdom Come but I’m not sure I know how to explain what is going on in my head. The pandemic has put all our lives on hold, restricting where we go, who we can see, what we can do. Yet we still keep getting older by the day. We still have to pay our bills and we still have to get up in the morning to start our days. That latter thing---get up in the morning---is something I didn’t want to do today. But Mother Nature painted a wicked grin on her face and kept calling me. I tried to ignore her and snuggle back into my dream but that only worked for so long. I flipped her the bird and did her bidding, my eyes barely open.

By the way, I’ve been using the phrase “Kingdom Come” my entire life and just bothered to google its meaning for the first time and now I’m confused. Something about the Lord’s Prayer, salvation, DC comic books and the Justice League? Since I don’t read comic books and never did even as a kid, one can only assume I'm using ‘Kingdom Come’ as an idiom for eternity, the next world, the hereafter, the end of time---take your pick. But my curiosity was peaked about the comic book. The blurb for the comic Kingdom Come at Amazon reads, “Set at the dawn of the 21st century in a world spinning out of control, Kingdom Come is a riveting, alternate reality story pitting the old guard--Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and others--against a new, uncompromising generation of heroes in a war that will determine the future of the planet.” 84% of those who reviewed the comic book gave it five stars and only 1% gave it one star. 84% is pretty high. The Bible only has a 79% on the high end and 3% on the low. I only read books with at least 75% of the reviewers dishing out a 5 star rating. I may read a lot of smut but a girl’s gotta have some standards when reading kissy-face books.

Back on topic if I can remember what that was…oh, ya, my super-duper ordinary day. The second thing I did this morning after a trip to the bathroom is what I do second every morning. I hopped on the scales which often sets my mood for the entire day as I compare my morning weight to what it was just before I went to bed. Yes, I’m one of those females who is obsessed with how those two numbers can vary from three to seven pounds. I like water. I drink a lot of it and it comes back out during the night plus supposedly the moon phases also effects overnight weight loses. Thank goodness I still get up for those "comes back out" events. Somewhere along the pandemic I’ve gotten into a pattern of waking up at 7:30 and I hate getting up that early or at least that’s what I tell myself as my sleepy brain tries to catch up with my body as I’m shuffling towards the kitchen to start my four cup coffee pot. (They call it a four cup pot but it's really only two cups unless you're using a little girl's tea party set with tin cups.) Everything is better once I’ve had my Starbucks Breakfast Blend with Italian Sweet Crème.

Today I had a mission to accomplish. I was scheduled to get my second Covid-19 vaccine---not a very ordinary thing to do but I was having trouble naming this post, so just go with it, okay? After getting the vaccine I visited a Petco where the internet said I could buy live canaries and finches. Last summer I bought myself an Audubon Bird Call and I often sat on my deck in the late afternoon, teaching myself how to use it. When I decided to explore the idea of replace Levi my dearly departed schnauzer with a canary I looked for my bird call and I took it as a sign that I hadn’t downsized it out of my life. Petco was disappointing, though. They only had a couple dozen parakeets and one canary and she was the center in a parakeet sandwich the whole time I was there, never woke up from her nap so we could make eye contact. A couple of summers ago I went to a place that had a walk-in bird aviary with hundreds of finches, canaries and budgies inside. You could buy sticks that were covered in bird seeds and you’d hold the stick out so the feathered creatures could line up on your arm to politely take their turn grabbing a seed then taking off so the next guy in line could grab a snack. I got it into my head that Petco would be like that---have an aviary I could walk into and have a bird pick me instead of the other way around. Ya, I know. It's Petco and I should have known better.

I am still open to the idea of getting a canary. I’ve done my homework and will now let it simmer on the back burner over the summer. My city does have another place to buy birds---that's all they sell---plus everything that goes with them. It's been around since I was a kid. Heck, I went past the place twice a day for ten years when I was working on the south end. When I'm in a serious buying mode, I'll bite the bullet to drive the dreaded S-Curve through town to get there. In the meantime, I don't want to tempt myself too much until I'm 110% sure I'm ready to close the door on getting another dog. I miss Levi and reminders are still popping up when I least expect them. I put on a spring jacket today, for example, and found baggies in the pocket I used when we went on walks---things like that are like pulling a Band-aide off a wound that is still trying to heal. ©

Over Coming the Fear...

 

One of my Gathering Girl pals has been bugging me about getting signed up to get my Covid-19 vaccine. She’s been bugging everyone in the group because, she says, she misses us all and the sooner we get our shots the sooner we can all do lunches again. She knew I was dragging my feet about signing up. And to be perfectly honest I was scared to death I’d have a severe reaction to the vaccine. I’ve had severe allergic reactions to three different drugs and was hospitalized after eating shell fish so it wasn’t a totally paranoid notion coming out of La-La Land. Having your throat close up after popping a single pill or biting into an egg roll is something you don’t forget. And add to my memory bank of scary allergic reactions is the day Levi my Might Schnauzer got a routine vaccine and while I was writing the check for his visit, he passed out in the vet’s lobby. It was like his legs turned into pudding and he went over in slow moment in a pool of dead-looking-dog. That earned him a free overnight stay in doggy hospital. Trust me, that place isn’t into giving services away for free so you can bet they were as worried about reversing his adverse reaction as much as I was. They all went into STAT! action like they were filming a scene for Grey's Anatomy or ER. I was so shocked Dr. McDreamy himself could have been giving CPR to Levi and I wouldn't have noticed.

After having my friend and niece both texting me about the vaccine on the same day, I finally bit the bullet and at midnight I did an online registration. I only signed up at one vaccination site thinking it would be awhile before I heard anything because others had told me they’d registered at 4-5 places intending to take the first appointment offered and still had long waits to get a call back. By 10:00 the next morning I got a text offering three appointments. That same day. I panicked! First of all I might have been up and walking around but my brain was still half asleep and second I needed a shower. Badly. I'm not a spur-of-the-moment kind of person but I want to be in the next chapter of my life so I told myself, Don’t even think about, just get your ass in gear and get in the shower!

When I got to the big box store that was giving the vaccines I couldn’t find a parking place and I thought the uphill hike to the building was going to kill me. And I was not prepared for what I saw when I got inside! Later I learned that they had 1,200 vaccines to give out that day and I’m pretty sure half the recipients of those shots were waiting in a line that threaded and snaked all over the store. When I finally got to the front of the line there were twenty tables of techs in white coats doing the injections. When my tech read my paperwork she called a nurse over to review the information on my medical bracelet and after my shot the nurse took me to ‘Vaccination Jail’. A place where I had to stay an hour instead of the fifteen minute others people in a different waiting area had to stay. Fine by me. I happily waited close to a person who presumably could jab me with an EpiPen and would call 911 if my tongue got too big to fit in my mouth or to talk. It's happened a half dozen times in my life. Don’t want to repeat it.

When I left Vaccination Jail the nurse leaned on me pretty hard about signing up at the website that does wellness checks over the next week and then again after the next injection. It took me forever to register because my phone doesn't like to take photos of QR codes that are supposed to simplify our lives. They might work for young people with steady hands but for this old bird they suck. Finally, I found a way to sign up online and shortly after I got my first wellness check. Two hours later I got my second wellness check and I had to dig out my thermometer because those daily wellness checks require temperature readings. Got the third wellness check this morning. Presumably, if I don’t give acceptable answers on the wellness check questionnaire a real person will get involved? Not sure how that works. What if I'm laying on the floor with a delayed reaction and don't answer the wellness check text or answer a follow up phone call? I'm hoping a med-vac helicopter will swoop out of the sky, land in my backyard and the dog will unlock the door so I don't have to get a broken window fixed after they save my life. Do I live in a fantasy world or what! (Actually, the dog we had before Levi could open our doors with the lever style door nobs, so that part is not far-fetched. Levi could, too, if he'd put a little hop to his stretch but sometimes he can be dumber than a fruitcake.)

The whole vaccine process was time consuming, taking up most of my day if I count the shower time, stopping to pick up dinner on the way home and playing with the stupid QR code. But I was impressed with how organized the whole process was. And I will be more prepared when I go back for the second shot and I'll bring something to do beside practice how small I can write on the back of a couple of receipts. Mostly I sat there twirling my thumbs and watching all the masked faces and smiling eyes as they passed by my jail cell.

Anyway, I wrote this post on Saturday for Wednesday’s publishing date. But if you’re reading this please note that I added this paragraph as a last minute update proving that I’m alive and well with no more of a reaction than a few days of being really sleepy. My great-niece had the same side-effect so I know it wasn't just me being melodramatic or me accidentally taking a melatonin instead of a vitamin gummy. (Yes, I did that once a few years ago after which the sleep aid got moved to the master bathroom.) I was super afraid of getting the Covid-19 vaccine and I'm glad it was the Pfizer because I heard on the news that more people had minor side effect with the Moderna. I probably wouldn't have gotten the shot for weeks if my friend and my niece hadn't led me---gently in one case and not so gently in the other---to the Trough of Hard Decisions. Now, I'm feeling smug that I overcame my fear and I'm belting out the lyrics to an old Beatles song. ©

"What would you think if I sang out of tune?
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song
And I'll try not to sing out of key

 

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends"

 

One vaccination shot down and one to go!