I Will Be on Vacation

It doesn't happen often, but I am leaving town and going on vacation for an entire week. Hot Damn! I will be somewhere warm where my cell doesn't work which is even better.

So, I'll be back the 27th. I will be hoping for global warming to bring an early spring upon my return. Until then.....

I'm out!

Two Good Things for Tough Times

There was a bunch of miserable news today and there is no reason to repeat it here.

However, my day started wonderfully and ended on a rather high visual note. I woke up this morning around 5:30AM with a plan to get an early start to work in Terrible Haute. That wasn't the highlight.

While lying in bed trying to wake up, my sweetie took hold of my hand. Then she rubbed my head. Then she held me and.....I got up for my shower. Hey, I'm 58 and she is getting chemo. We need to pace ourselves! But, it was a very nice and very quick hour just lying there with my Valentine. Hint, hint, just in case you forgot...get it in gear for your sweetie.

The rest of my day was a drag. it was the kind of day you would expect on the eve of the next Great Depression, thanks to all of the irresponsible money-grubbing low-life's that collect bonuses in the name of capitalism. Maybe Karl Marx was onto something.

Not to be totally discouraged, I arrived home to take my loyal dog, Wrigley, out for his daily constitutional, when I saw today's mail. It was the annual, just-after-the-Super Bowl, what-makes-the-winter-warmer, undeniably the best issue of print in the free world-The SI Swimsuit Issue! And, after inspecting it for editorial integrity, it is an all-time, hubba-hubba issue. My goodness, are there really that many girls that really look like that? There aren't in Indiana-except for one.

That would be the girl I met 37 years ago and she was rubbing my head this morning.

Hair

I am married to a beautiful woman. She also happens to be smart, personable, loving, charming, engaging, entrepreneurial, energetic, caring, and most importantly understanding...after all, she happens to live with a somewhat perplexing man which would happen to be me.

She also happens to have breast cancer. That in itself is quite an ordeal. Well, I'm experiencing my own side effects. How effective would a solar cell be without the sun? Well, she is my sunshine, it has been cloudy, and my batteries are a bit on the low side.

This week, she began to lose her hair. I've known this was going to happen for over a month, but it actually happened this weekend. We have "debated" the length and style of her locks for nearly four decades. My preference has always been the longer the better. Like most women her preference has always been for short, cute, and quick to style. We've normally compromised for something in between. As of today, it's gone until the Colts blow another Super Bowl opportunity.

Isn't it silly for me to fret about hair when she is fighting cancer? You can bet your sweet bippy it is. Nevertheless, I am human and my wife's hair is one of my major weaknesses.

So I'm sorry, but when I look at her tonight..all I can think of is "Cha-cha-cha-Chia"! If the stores haven't yet sold out their Christmas inventory of Chia Pets, and I paste those little seeds on her head, do you think her head will be covered faster?

"What? Me Worry?"

Those are the famous words of Alfred E. Newman from MAD magazine back in 60's. You see, that's what most people did back then and Alfred was the clueless cartoon character who didn't worry. Hey, it was bred into my psyche at a very young age. My first memory of grade school was getting my polio vaccination. My mother was worried I could end up like my best friend who lived four doors away from us. He was paralyzed below his waist from "infantile paralysis". That sounds serious to a kid even if you don't understand what it means.

Eventually, she also told me of her oldest brother who died of diphtheria as a baby, her sister of tuberculosis, and my grandmother of a kidney infection before I was born. The Korean War had just ended, the Vietnam War had just started, the Russians were going to bury us, and my car had no seat belts and a steel dashboard. I was convinced there was no way I would live to my 18th birthday!

My future brightened around the time I flunked my draft physical, met my lifetime sweetheart, bought a house, started a family, and thrived during a couple of recessions that in some ways were actually worse than our current downturn. Besides, Alfred didn't worry. Why should I?

Looking back now, what I avoided scares the bejabbers out of me. There is no need to detail all of the events. There is no reason to give any ideas to my grandchildren.

Let's just say the angels and the good Lord were busy looking after me and my own.