The-Once-in-a-While

Daily News

1  Click. TeeVee on. Bam. Plexaderm, and for sure my eyes will sparkle. That's GOTTA be true. I'minna git me some. 

2  Or was that a toothpaste ad?

3  This is what happens when you are not only retired but also when you are experiencing a day off. My thoughts drift back to Memorial Day, which was on, well, Memorial Day.

4  Memorial Day. My first thought always goes out to my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, and people who left too early.

5  So when I see an ad on Memorial Day, I can't focus on sparkling eyes.

6  I'm just glad mine don't have X's across them.

7  AND on Tee Vee, they just got done debating whether or not American Idol should come back.

8  I never knew that it left.

9  Evidently I just missed two hours of world-class tennis on channel 1814 or something. Just channel surfing.

10  I've nothing against world-class tennis, but the tennis court proper bothers me.

11  It's some orange glow reminiscent of my kitchen wall. 

12  I always wanted a job as the guy who speeds across the court to handle vagrant tennis balls.

13  Don't get me wrong. I've nothing against net sports.

14  I used to love going to this weird little area that looked like a redwood forest, but was just a place for kids to shoot buckets.

15  I'm so old I can't even remember what town it was in. I think Los Altos.

16  I KNOW, I KNOW.

17  I lived in the world's cheapest rental when I lived in Los Altos, but I always had rich-snob bragging rights.

18  I never came clean until, well, today.

19  Or was it yesterday?

20  Call me Dory.

21  Will I ever find meself?

22  Hopefully not.

23  I like walking around in a cloud.

24  Keeps me honest.

25  Moving On, Part One: Weird Moments. The other day I opened the front door and forgot why. I remembered that I had not swept the area in front of the doormat. I actually forgot I HAD a doormat until I opened the door.

26  When you do that, you are cooked. You need to act like you know why you opened the door so that anybody outside won't notice you're there.

27  I occupied my time last week assembling boxes of things

I had no business assembling.

28  More and more patio furniture, the Irish furniture.

29  Patty O' Furniture. I oughta change my name.

30  

31  If you're looking for a thesis statement, you'll have to search elsewhere.

32  I woke up at around noon on Memorial Day.

33  And only THEN did I remember it was Memorial Day.

34  I think.

35  Can't remember.

36  I am ill prepared to remember anything, particularly a thesis statement when school seems to be out for most of the country.

37  I should be slipping inside the shade, sipping lemonade.

38  Remember the Beatles?

39  Remember Wings?

40  Remember those chicken wings you ate last week?

41  

42  Oh come on! You KNOW you had chicken wings at least once last week, unless you are a vegan.

43  Perhaps you "ve-gan" to eat chicken wings, but got auto-corrected.

44  Happens.

45  Are you STILL looking for a thesis statement?

46  I'll stop wasting your time. There isn't one. There.

47  Oh no! They're doing a tennis flashback, and the court is the same color orange.

48  Did Stanley Kubrick direct this piece?

49  Did I spell "Stanley" right?

50  Okay I just got a shot of the tennis ball retriever dude, and I just don't have the pants for it.

51  I think you have to take classes in how to be a member of the tennis community.

52  Most of the people look like cardboard cutouts, but I haven't had my coffee yet.

53  Or have I?

54   And I think the announcer just made a reference to linguini. I think he was just bored and trying to slip one past us.

55  Okay.

56  Enough of this. I don't dare bring up Hunter Strickland's accidental insider, nor of the brutal fight that ensued. It speaks for itself, and is a story I want to go away. Too many other things going on, even if I can't remember any of them. 

57  Gottago.

58  I know you crave more, but I'm pretty much done.

59  Everybody just started clapping.

60  I can take a hint. I'll cut this short even though it somehow managed to reach 65 items. I think we can call that a day. 

61  See you again.

62  Have a GREAT day.

63  Live life.

64  Love life.

65  Peace.

~H~

fin.

The Once-in-a-While

Daily News

Things.

. . . and stuff.

1  I'm rough on things.

2  I just am. 

3  All thumbs, most times.

4  I went through high school at a time where my thoughts changed. As a younger kid in grammar school, I LOVED things. I loved getting things. But when I got to high school, I became more serious, and less impressed by material things. I decided not to worship things so much. I grew up. I also realized something. 

5  I tend to break things anyway, so I might as well come across as non-materialistic. Now that I'm older, I sort of like things again. Plus, I walk for exercise, and air-conditioned stores are nice places to increase daily walking statistics.

6  So on Sunday, we decided to stop lying around, and get out to some stores. We got some great things, mostly new summer clothes. But I also logged on a bunch of midday miles. It surprised me then when after an entire day of shopping for things, we came home exhausted only to find that some guy had parked directly in front of the house. 

7  He had a beat-up, dented car, and was engaged in sitting in the seat texting, with engine running. 

8  We were in our new van, so I didn't particularly want to park it across the street and annoy my other neighbors. 

9  The weather was hot and muggy. The guy chilling in front of my house annoyed me. He could easily have moved his car around the corner, where there were no houses, but he seemed in a worried state of oblivion.  

10  We decided to bypass this guy and go back out. There are no limits on the number of things one could buy in the course of a day. 

11 Things.

12  Especially if some guy parked in front of my house seemed ready to set up camp. 

13  Since he didn't seem too motivated to leave, Helene suggested we go to our new Tuesday Morning store and search for new patio furniture. In our wanderings, we had seen a nice pair of Adirondack chairs at that store and wanted to give them a second look. 

14 It happens every Spring.

15  We had already "hiked" around 4.75 miles, and I was dawg tired. The last thing wanted to do was go out to yet another store and spend money I sort of have.

16  She loved the Adirondack chairs. I, on the other hand, got in the store with the attitude that I wasn't the least bit interested in buying anything. 

17  I just wanted to leave for around fifteen or twenty minutes. That guy would have to have been done sitting around with his motor running by then.

18  We got into Tuesday Morning and they had been pretty picked over in the yard furniture department. The did have this one Acacia Adirondack, pure wood, for a $99.99.

19  Someone had purchased the other one, breaking up the pair.

20  Helene told me to sit in it and see how it felt. I rolled my eyes. They had only one, so why bother? But I went along with it. 

21  "It hurts my ass," I said. "Probably needs a pillow."

22  She put a pillow on the chair, a sort of orangeish black color that went well with the Acacia/Cedar look.

23  I liked it. For whatever reason, when I stood up and looked at the Adirondack, I liked it. A lot. 

24  I liked the laid-back angle it gave; I liked its design, and I really liked the wood-grain. 

25  I didn't care any longer that they had only one. 

26   In some mysterious way,  this chair became an obsession. Maybe it was because I couldn't have it because there was only one left, and the place closed at six o'clock. But because it didn't seem that I could have it right then, I wanted it. I suddenly re-insttuted my youthful exuberance for things. 

27  I asked the clerk if they had another in stock. He seemed nervous and told me they didn't. I asked if there was another Tuesday Morning store in Sacramento. This store was a brand new store, so a lot of the employees aren't going to have all the answers. He said he thought there was one in Folsom.

28  "If that's the last one, I'd like to buy it," I said. There is something alluring about any piece of furniture that comes already assembled. I looked at the piece and it was perfect for our relatively small back yard. The obsession for the thing overwhelmed me. 

29  I bought it, and we threw it into the back of the van. I REALLY liked the look of the chair, and wanted to buy another. 

30  Got home to a free space in front of the house. Dude had departed in his smog mobile. I couldn't wait to bring the new chair in and have a look at it in real time. We brought it in and it instantly changed our kitchen area. The obsession increased. I HAD to have a matching chair. 

31  I  Googled "Tuesday Morning stores Sacramento" and began dialing. It was around 5:30. The store in Folsom told me all the clerks were busy, and to call back later. Helene told me there was one in Citrus Heights, so I called. This guy answered the phone in four seconds. I described the chair, gave him the item number, and he said he'd check and get back to me. Within minutes he called back. His computer said they had SEVEN of them. "But I think they're all red," he said, words to that effect. My heart sank. But dude was all over it. 

32  I heard him ask a worker to check if to see if they had the Acacia/Cedar looking ones. They did. I asked if I could buy it over the phone, and he said they would take it off the display area and put my name on it. Their policy is that if someone calls, they will hold it for 24 hours. I thanked the guy, and smiled. I was going to get a thing. I was excited. The only hesitation I had was that we were having a little work done in the back yard, and the workers don't always arrive at the same time. I never really know it they'll be there early, or if they might need to go to the store early and show up a little later. 

33  I  decided to shower, try on the new clothes I had bought and everything fit. 

34  I'm of an age when I don't want to look good, I just want to avoid looking bad. I included new cargo shorts and a polo shirt. 

34  Everything fit, even my sports socks. I laughed because I had spent most of the winter months wearing baggy bathing suits, pocket-tees, and neanderthally oversized dress shirts, quite the style for old geezers these days. I look like a walrus in a baseball cap when I walk around in the winter months.

35  I am the egg man. They are the egg men. 

36  I awoke the next morning and opened the blinds. Some guy who looks like the aforementioned walrus was in my yard. I'm having a little landscaping done, and this guy's boss man said he'd do a little work, and assemble a small rake-shed for me. It's just weird to open your blinds and have a guy staring back in on a Monday morning. 

37  Nice guy. At first I thought I was looking in the mirror. But the face morphed. I was already up and dressed in my new things. I was gonna head up to Citrus Heights. But it was Caitlin's birthday, so I needed to write or visit. We got her an awesome gift from this glamorous store called Ulta. 

38  While eager to go up and grab that chair, I also wanted to get over to Caitlin's with the gift certificate, a smore's frappucino from Starbuck's, and a birthday balloon from the Dollar Store. They were out of Mylar balloon weights, but the gal behind the counter handed me some cheap strawberry body wash in a tiny bottle. She said I could keep it. So. We got it all, and looked forward to Caitlin's birthday morning. 

39  Mission accomplished. I couldn't wait to see the Beebeez, and how they would react to a real live balloon. They don't see those all the time, so it was fun.

40  As soon as we walked in, the Beebeez came at us screaming and screeching, always my favorite part of the day. They jumped all over the balloon, and I kept saying, "B-b-b-ball-OOOOOOON!" Caitlin loved the gifts. No hurry on the chair. THIS was what life was all about. 

41  After a goodly time, we decided we needed to get up to the Citrus Heights Tuesday Morning and pick up the Adorindack.

42  As soon as we got in, a gal who was going on her break stopped at the break-room door and asked us if we needed help. We described the chair, and she instantly got others to help us, and told us to feel free to keep shopping!

43  I LOVE things. We found a small Acacia/Cedar cart made by the same company that made the chairs, and it matched perfectly.

44  We THEN saw a five-piece patio table and chairs on the floor, but it was the last one, AND it had a damaged leg. They said they would sell it to us for 20% off. I looked at it and it looked a little too banged up. They called another store in Folsom, and they had some of those sets in stock.

45  We ALSO found three garden statues of two girls and one boy playing in a garden. All three had a few dents and bruises, but we figured we could touch them up and stick them around bushes and trees. This all became an adventure. 

46  We got to the other store and this gal with a decidedly Eastern Bloc accent helped us. She put the heavy 
table-and-chair set into the van. We thanked Eastern Bloc gal, and then rolled home. No guy parked in front. And...

47  We had things, things, THINGS!!!

48  I was delirious. I couldn't WAIT to get everything outside and see how the yard would look. We watched sports and 
Unsolved Murder shows, and I eventually drifted off. 

49  I woke up on the couch, didn't want to make noise, found my headphones, put on this ten-hour you tube of chirping birds, along with a second that combined meditative music and thunderstorms, and drifted off. 

50  I slept great, but woke up at around 6 a.m. to loud thunder. It was so loud and real that I decided to turn off the computer. I quickly recalled that you shouldn't be on a computer or a cell phone during a thunderstorm. I clicked on KCRA to see just how bad it was.

51  CRACK! Another crack of thunder, still louder. I assumed nobody was coming over, and that all dreams of yard work would run swiftly down the drain. 

52  POW! BOOM! I worried about the babies, and if they might be scared and crying.  I thought of Caitlin's cats, and worried about them getting disoriented by the storm.

53  And I REALLY worried about flooding. I pulled the headphones off and...

54  Silence. It was eerily quiet. I opened my social media 
stuff to find that bombs had gone off in Manchester. I almost cried for all of it. I shook my head, angry at the perpetrators, sad for the young followers of Ariana Grande, and sad for the world. 

55  I was no longer too interested in things anymore. 

56  Everything got put into perspective. I heard Trump calling the perpetrators "losers." Nice bedside manner. The guy irritates me, but it wasn't about politics. It was about showing a little more dignity for a tragedy. 

57  I won't go there. Students told me about Ariana, so I discovered her talent through them. And I thought of them, and of their parents, and my heart sank. I posted a single candle, wrote a few words, and launched it. 

58  I still like the things I bought, and still had myself surrounded by wonderful things.

59  But for the morning, I could not help but think of how much that news took out of me.

60  A lot. Two words.

61  Gottago.

62  See you again. 

63  Have a GREAT day. You can't make people who do things like that stop you, ever. 

62  Thoughts and prayers to everyone who was affected by all of this. Stay strong. 

63  Live life.

64  Love life.

65  Peace, and I mean that.

~H~

fin.

The Once-in-a-While

Daily News

1  Evidently, we began falling victim to the Wanabe Global Cyber Attack on Friday of last week. I got the spelling from the subtitles on my tee vee, an old Dynex, if you were interested. 

2  Everybody seems panicked. Frightening. 

3  I may go into hiding. 

4  Microsoft supposedly has some sort of patch to protect us, but I don't really know. I may hit up Facebook to get the honest scoop. Then again, I may not. I'm pretty lazy that way.

5  Meanwhile, I have deadlines. 

6  I had an incident far worse happen upon my person on Friday. To begin, I woke up with a slight cough. Nothing serious, but worthy of a trip to the store for some cough drops. Once you think about going to the store, you might as well pick up a few other items while you're there. We all do that, pretty sure. 

7  I had some fresh crab meat that I wanted to eat while it was still fresh. I remembered that the Sports Illustrated with Draymond on the cover had a recipe for tailgate crab cakes in it. Providence reared its lovely head.

8  In fact, it had an entire recipe page that had a bunch of ingredients, AND it was crab cake sandwiches, with separate recipes for the crab meat, and for the sauce. Here's a pic directly from SI. Yes, those are barbecue chips on the sandwiches:

Yummy, yummy, yummy Sports' Illustrated

Crab Cake sandwiches. 

9  Having been born in San Francisco, I developed a love for all seafood. Crab wasn't just food, it was a link to the past. My grandfather Cesare Restani taught me how to crack crab, and how to use the claws to dig out the meat.

10  I needed a few ingredients I didn't have, not the least of which was fennel seeds. I knew the mainstream stores like Raley's and Safeway were going to be busy, what with Mother's Day virtually beginning on Friday. 

11  We have this hidden gem of a store called Food Source hidden a few miles down the road. Any time I think the mainstream places might be crowded, I reverse field and head for the Food Source. It's relatively easy to find because it is near a liquor store with a huge cow on its roof. Food Source, for those who don't know, is actually a Raley's in disguise. 

Arbitrary fake cow on the roof of a liquor store near
our Food Source. 

12  So I was going on a grocery trip for cough drops and fennel. Not glamorous, but a nice outing for a guy in shorts. 

13  On the way, I remembered that I was running low on shampoo, and when I got inside, I was pleased to see that they carried the classic formula for Pert 2-in-1 shampoo. I'm convinced the bottle design was inspired by the picture below it.

Pert gal. I'm convinced she inspired

the bottle of Pert, above. No reason. 

14  If I may reveal some of my beauty secrets, I always liked Pert. I don't have enough hair even to care about shampoo really, but I always found Pert to be pretty inoffensive. I will often wash my hands and face with the stuff, and emerge clean as a whistle. 

15  I took the Pert and placed it in my shopping cart, and then continued through the store, forgetting whatever else I was supposed to get. 

16  The Food Source is one of those cavernous stores, almost Costco-esque. The Pert was an easy find, but looking for a tiny container of fennel seeds? Not so easy.

17  I LOVE when that happens, incidentally. It means I can swiftly move up and down each aisle quickly, and log some walking miles on. Big stores work for me because Sacramento can get pretty hot. An air-conditioned store can help me maintain a four-to-five mile daily walking routine.

18  So. Cough drops and fennel seeds. A tisket, a tasket. 

19  I moved gracefully through each aisle, at what I regarded an inconspicuous speed. People were all moving at their own relative speeds, so I don't think they noticed me. 

20  I remember my Dad claiming he was invisible in stores. Like father, like son. 

21  I must have shot past the spices eight or nine times, because you go down the aisle, and then down the next. LONG aisles in that place, so the walking miles begin to stack up. 

22  I finally found the spices and headed for the checkout. 

23  I stood for a second trying to eye the shortest line. I then heard the voice of a little girl say, "Excuse me?" My hearing gets worse with each passing hour, so I wasn't sure where to look for the voice. 

24  I looked down and saw this little girl with her Mom. She pointed to the area under my shopping cart.

25  The top to the Pert bottle had fallen off (that's a Pert drawback) and I saw a turquoise trail of Pert a mile down-the-aisle, it's source being the bottle of Pert in my cart. 

26  The Pert caps are notoriously sloppy, but this one was everywhere. The floors of the Food Source are glossy cement. Old people shop at the Food Source, so I worried about someone slipping. 

27  I placed my cart over the heart of the spill and searched for help. There is no feeling more helpless. Fortunately, I saw a young Food Source guy and flagged him down. He got on it

quickly, came back with a full roll of paper towels, and began wiping in circular strokes. I thanked the girl, whose Mom was proud of her, and I thanked him.

28  I joked with a few shoppers but REALLY wanted to turn invisible. I slipped away, moving six aisles over. I remember wishing I could push a button and vanish.

29  I found myself in aisle ten, right in the middle of the store when I again looked down. What I saw terrified me. I saw that my original Pert trail had curved through every aisle I had walked. I had somehow designed a booby trap that could conceivably kill tens of thousands of men, women and children. I had inadvertently become The Pert Monster of Food Source! Dun, dun DUNNNNNNN!!!

30  I rolled my cart towards the checkout area and saw the devastation of the Pert storm that I, this old geezer in shorts and horn-rimmed glasses, had wrought.

31  The trail of shampoo went up and down aisles eight, six, four, and two. This became a calamity of epic proportions. 

32  I arrived at the checkout area and saw that the young man was still wiping the first three feet or so of a three-mile Pert serpent. This stymied me.

33  I told him to tell a manager that he might need more help, and he got on it. I sheepishly moved to the checkout with my cough drops, fennel, and Pert bottle, which I had wiped clean with my shirt sleeve. 

34  I wasn't going to leave without taking it with me. I just wasn't. Don't ask me why, but I'm pretty sure I was seeing to it that that the Pert would do no further damage. I hopped back in my car and made my way safely home. I turned on the evening news to hear of any reports. There were no reports of any slippage at the Food Source. My relief knew no bounds. The Food Source took care of its own.

35   And I emerged from it all clean as a whistle. 

36  Moving On, Part One: Anybody lookin'?

37  Old geezers in shorts.

38  America craves stories about them.

39  Whenever I get a haircut, I hunt down magazines that feature those fellows. 

40  Retired geezers. There's a reason we have them around, I suppose.

41  I swear to you.

42  There's a reason we have them around.

44  I gottago.

45  We'll see you again.

46  Have a GREAT day.

47  Live life.

48  Love life.

49  Peace.

~H~

fin.