Ode to leftovers......

I think maybe Thanksgiving wuz more difficult back in the olden dayz, you know, before stretchy sweat pants.

Strolling with da boyz on what’ud be a really pleasant day after T’sgiving if it wudn’t for this Gawdawful cough that is clinging that old timey flypaper…

Now, I’m pretty durn sure that sticky flypaper strips is so far in the past that most of y’all ain’t never heard of it much less experienced it so you’ll just have to take my word for it that it wuz some sticky, clingey stuff ‘specially when it wuz covered with dead ’n dying flies….

Anyhow, as we wuz walkin’ down the street, me pretty much in the center of the byway ’n da boyz wuz hither ’n yonning to the best of their abilities ’n like most dogs, they’re pretty good hither ’n yonners…anyway, we passed Harry ’n Walter the Firehouse Roosters who appeared t’be looking for leftovers at the Chicken Wranglers abode…futher down the way, we came upon Doris or according to the Chicken Wrangler, more likely Daryl, who seemed to have a new companion…Doris/Daryl seems a little fickle but Harry ’n Walter prob’ly needed someone to yank their chains a bit anyway…

Doris/Daryl is a Silkie ’n according to the Chicken Wrangler most definitely a Daryl ’n I guess she’d know a lot better than me, my expertise being pretty much limited to the difference between reg’lar ’n extra crispy…

That said, ‘stead of having the family here for T’sgiving, Millyrose ’n I both fighting this cold, ever’one went to Kellye’s…(who posted a pic of Gina ’n the laden table on FB)…’n t’day, returning from our shortened stroll, there wuz Kellye doing her meals on wheels thing ’n bringing our leftovers lunch….we have a lot t’be thankful for but you knew that, didn’t you?

I'm almost pretty sure it ain't loaded....

I can say truthfully ’n honestly that even as a small child in the long, long ago, I’ve never had a ‘bad’ idea…To the contrary, all my ideas have been universally wonderful, maybe even at times, stupendous, but never, ever ‘bad’...

Now, you might think from reading a statement like that, that I might be just a trifle full of….wellll, whatever it is that people are full of when, y’know, they just are…

But, I’m not…y’see, everybody has wonderful ideas, nobody ever has a bad idea…which is not to say that acting on your wonderful idea always brings predictably wonderful results….Nah!  Mostly, good ideas kind’a stumble around in the dirt ’n the dust ’n the mire with a bunch of other great ideas from other people’n when they get all muddied up to where you have trouble recognizing which idea belong to who, why most often, people just kind’a walk away shaking their heads ’n muttering to themselves about what the hell just happened ’n that as a general rule is the end result of most ideas…

Clear as mud, right?

Now, you might think I’m talking about Obamacare or what wuz once upon a time called the Affordable Care Act which is turning out to be not so damn affordable after all ’n you could be right…at least, a little bit…I mean, y’know, ever’one likes a little bit of ‘I told you so’ once in a while even when you look around ’n the mud has pretty much stuck to ever’one…it being one of those ‘the rain falls on the just ’n the unjust alike’ moments…still, I can’t help pointing out that this p’ticklar muddy rain didn’t come from our Creator but from those wonderful folks in the United States government, most specifically those Democrat folks who, following the clear directions of Nancy (what, who, me?) Pelosi, voted the damn thing into law so that we could all find out what was in it…..There, I’ve said it!   

Hope ever’one has a Happy Turkey Day irregardless….

Iffy weather.....

"The rain falls on the just 'n the unjust alike....or so I've been told."

Y’wanna know what’s worse than being sick right before a major holiday???

It’s a rhetorical question, folks…what is worse than me being sick is for She who must be obeyed to come down with the same darn thing…’n it all seems to have fallen upon us courtesy of a little blonde charmer who, wherever she got it from, passed it on to her mother ’n in turn, her father ’n in the course of human events to me ’n Millyrose…So, a big round of applause for Mitzi who scored big-time by taking down at least four adults…

Mitzi loved the chickens ’n the park ’n the big slide ’n the climbing wall ’n wuz bound ’n determined to stay there, so much so that Millyrose gave up ’n called for the cavalry to come to the rescue (I drove to the park, snatched her up ’n drove home)…Well, you didn’t really believe that in this day ’n age, the aging hero w’ud still be riding a white horse…Nah!  An unwashed white Toyota Matrix is my choice of steed these daze…for the little jobs anyway, for bigger jobs, I go to the old standby, The 150…(still wish’t I had a barn to park it it howsumever)….

Anyway, Turkey Day is almost upon us ’n I’m the one nuking the chicken soup for Millyrose (only fair)…

Y’know, seems like it wuz only t’other day that I wuz chuckling over brother John ’n the colds he’s been catching from his g’children…I told him I’d been there ’n done that but my g’children are teenagers now ’n they haven’t given me a cold in a long time….Heck!  I consider m’self lucky when they call to ask for a ride home from school but that’s life….

That’s life wuz an old joke back in the day…went like this: 

 “That’s life!” 

 “What’s life?”  

“A magazine!” 

 “How much does it cost?” 

 “Ten cents!”  

“I ain’t got ten cents.”  

“That’s life.”

A dry November....

Scufflin’ thru the dry leaves in the park, while not quite as much fun as it wuz back in the day in Beatty ’n, I must point out, done at a much slower pace, still manages to create a very soul satisfying sound…at least to these old ears…da boyz didn’t seem to pay that much attention to it, nosing along as they are wont, searching for that elusive dog-thing that humans, no matter how much they love their dogs, never quite understand…

It’s been a long ’n near-perfect Autumn here in Ol Fair Oaks, with warm sunny days ’n cool nites ’n I’m told that ev’ry day that passes without precip is a record but all that is coming to an end…well, we all knew that the rain wuz comin’ sumtime ’n now we’re being told that it’s gonna be here next week…possibly…because weathermen here in norCal hedge their bets all the time….

If you watch the same weathermen year in ’n year out, you’re bound to hear one of them say…”As I predicted…” ~ I’ve heard that many times but I never remember any of them actually predicting the stuff they’re taking credit for…I s’poze they may be right but while I c’n remember what they were saying last week, I ain’t got a clue as to what they said 3 or 4 months ago, let alone last year….

Listening to a weatherman brag about his accuracy is sort’a like listening to any politician brag about his or her accomplishments…Obama ain’t alone in his assertions that he is responsible for everything good ’n someone else is to blame for everything wrong…most pedestrian politicians do the same…’n Obama is proving to one ’n all that he is not brilliant but in all probability would do well as a weatherman, especially if he worked in…say, San Francisco or San Diego where the weather is pretty much the same yearround….

Ah well, according to Will Rogers, Mark Twain ’n Johnny come lately Al Gore, along with Gawd knows how many others, “Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.”

Those Autumn leaves...

peek thru my window 'n pretty much cover my yard 'n my neighbors yards 'n the street...etcetera ad infinitum.....

Give us this day our daily walk…

Round ’n about ‘The Park’ t’day, sniffing ’n hiking, hither ’n yon…dried leaves still clinging to the sycamores…well, the rest of the urban forest also, for that matter, some of ‘em still green but most of them already turned color…reds ’n yellows predominate but most of them still clinging to the branches…it’s been a really dry Autumn with every day without precip a new record or, so the ubiquitous ‘they’ say…

We humans are, as my grandmother use’ta say, a precious lot…we tend to think of ourselves as being at the top of the food chain, the be-all ’n end-all if you will…we even have the effrontery to think of our creator as the most superior human ever, casting ourselves as having been made in his shape ’n form…sort of cloned in His image…that is, I believe, because our imaginations are so limited in scope that we simply cannot visualize beyond our own little universe….

Anyway, as we rounded the corner onto our little street, there wuz Harry ’n Walter, the twin white roosters who reside each night at the firehouse…they were standing neck to neck intently interested in sumthing in the leaves…so interested, in fact, that they failed to notice Rusty coming up behind them…Rusty didn’t bark or anything, just doggie curosity, but when he got within inches of them, they noticed ’n panicked, screaming curses (I imagine since I'm not fluent in chicken-speak) ’n flying off in opposing directions…Rusty tho’t this wuz great fun ’n Willy wuz a little put out that he’d missed out on the action having had his nose buried in the bushes on the opposite side of the street…Great fun in Ol Fair Oaks on this dry Autumnal day….

On a dreary p’litical side note, The SacBee’s new fav’rite cartoonist(?) Jack Ohman, is not only a devout believer in Al Gore (who lost in 2000) but also a believer in global warming…I’d call him an idiot but one of my children objects to my snide comments on fanatical liberals so I’ll just leave you with a comment from one of my favorite columnists...

“Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow?  If not, they why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?”  Thomas Sowell

Pondering the imponderable....

"After all is said 'n done, life turns out t'be pretty much a waiting game."

Beattyville, in mem’ry, at least, wuz a magical place for kids…The ‘It takes a village’ thing so popular a few years ago wuz spot-on for the kids of Beattyville back in that long ago day….There wuz a war going on ’n the parents must have been hardpressed to keep body ’n soul t’gether…many a house in those days had one or more stars hanging in a window (signifying sons or daughters in the military) ’n all too often, we’d see a house with a black bow which meant that someone had given all that was t’be given….’n there wuz also a lot of shortages…autos on blocks, their tires hanging on the wall of the garage…gas wuz rationed ’n hard to come by so people walked or rode the bus, often a combination wuz necessary in order to get to town to work or shop…there wudn’t a lot of toys or candy or soda pop, for that matter….

Somehow, at least in mem’ry, it don’t seem like it mattered very much…we had the streets ’n alleys of Beattyville to wander pretty much as we wished…plus we had ‘The River’ ’n we had ‘The Hills’…

The Ohio River wuz brown ’n wide ’n dangerous, of course, but paddlewheelers right out of Mark Twain churned the water...the sandy banks were lined with willows ’n water maples ’n occasional treasures t’be found by intrepid beachcombers ’n the green hills wudn’t just a backdrop…the lower slopes were covered with honeysuckle, rising to steep ridges whose rocky cliffs overlooked the village below ’n the river wide…

There were caves in those hills, dark ’n mysterious, with hidden passages ’n bottomless pits where danger lurked for small boys…but there wuz candles ’n torches ’n fear to conquer….

My brothers grandson, Noah, told his mother that ‘he felt sorry for Grandpa becuz he hadn’t had any toys to play with as a child, no video games, not even television.…’  

During WWII, there wuz even less…toys were hard to come by as manufacturers turned their skills to making stuff for ‘Our boys’ as they were called by those at home…

But, in Beattyville, kids were kids ’n imaginations worked overtime to turn sticks into horses or swords or the fancy of the moment…’n there were stories from the elders…from the grandparents living among us…stories of hidden treasure, river pirates ’n marauding Indians fighting over that ‘dark and bloody ground’ that became Kaintuck, between the Shawnee tribes north of the river ’n the Cherokee ’n Chickashaw tribes south of the Cumberland, The Great Meadow, they called it, so treasured that no tribe wuz able to take up any sort of permanent residence there…

Less than a half-mile downstream from Beattyville is the site of the first (far as we know anyway) ‘white’ settlement in Kentucky…the remains of a French ’n Indian fort…Back in the day, the French were pretty durn aggressive comin’ down from Canada, making their presence known on what was then, the western frontier….until the French ’n Indian War, that is (not quite sure why it wuz called that but there y’are)….anyway, after that war which the French lost ’n had to pull back to Canada (wonder what might’a been if the French from Canada had been able to join up with the French from Louisana)….ah well, pondering the imponderable is just one of the things that old people do well….

Well, y'know, it's Monday.....

Well, maybe not shine so much exactly ’n Gawd knows I didn’t rise too aw’fly early either…at least the 2nd time I rose…the first time wuz at 5:sumthing or other (still blaming the time change thing)….then back to bed cuz it wuz obviously much too early to be out ’n about…

Anyhow, t’day wuz flu shot Monday…we picked up Pat Martens (our 95 yr old orange-haired Irish friend who has been half the world over but somehow missed Ireland)…we’ve been taking her for flu shot for 10 or 12 years or thereabouts…she has macular degeneration ’n we have basically the same conversation ev’ry time…(Dad had macular degeneration ’n it always amazes me how much blind people c’n actually see…My Aunt Eunice was the same ~ we’d drive miles down a country road ’n out of the blue, she’d say “Turn left at the bend in the road ’n she wuz always right)…

I barely remember my Great Grandparents tho’ I c’n recall visiting their home when I wuz small…My great grandmother wuz blind the last 20 years of her life ’n I imagine that she had macular degeneration tho’ they didn’t call it that way back then….ah well….

People love conspiracy theories ’n one of the most favorite at this time of year is about flu shots…lot’sa people tell me that they never get flu shots becuz every time they got  a shot, they caught the flu…

Time change Sunday...

“I don’t mind going back to daylight savings time.  Considering the present inflation, the hour will be the only thing I’ve managed to save all year.”  Victor Borge

It ain’t what’cha’d ackshully call a ‘blustery’ day here in Ol Fair Oaks, nor even what y’d want’a refer to as a ‘blust’ kind’a day…it’s just a overcast ’n a little breezy ’n noticeably cooler than it wuz yesti’day…I blame it on the time change, of course, but only becuz that’s a convenient hook…”Summer’s almost gone, winter’s comin’ on….” Bob Dylan

Winter here in norCal ain’t like winters back in the states where they actually have four seasons ’n a pretty clear delineation between ‘em…here, winter pretty much consists of a little rain, a little fog, temps in the ’40’s dropping into the ’30’s at night…Sometimes….once in a while, generally for a very short period in the middle of the night, the temp may even drop below freezing for a few moments, even maybe as much as an hour or so….I recall once’t upon a time, back in ’86, I believe, in the last century, the temp actually got down into the teens…killed off a bunch of geraniums ’n wiped out my tangerine tree….didn’t kill it completely, y’understand, just knocked it back to the original rootstock ’n now produces inedible oranges….it’s a pretty tree ’n has some nasty thorns ’n I prune it back ever’ once in a while just for the heck of it….

Me ’n da boyz wuz walkin’ down the street this morning after sleeping in (due to the time change, of course)…ran into a gaggle of our neighbors heading out for a storebought breakfast down to the Bistro…told me they had a strawberry sorbet jelly that wuz to die for ’n that I should just stop sometime ’n ask for a sample….I might have t’do that becuz I tho’t sorbet wuz some kind of ice cream ’n not sure how they make a jelly out of that…

Wondrous things this world supplies to those who choose to look….