Future Shock

Hey there little buckaroos. How’s everything going out there? I am admittedly out of touch with most of the things going on in the world right now. My life has become a fairly insulated cocoon of intentional oblivion. I’m not terribly interested in much of anything that happens beyond our gate anymore. Perhaps you can relate to this. I don’t think I’m the only person that feels this way.

No news is good news. Ignorance is bliss.

There might a lots of truth in those statements. There might not be any. They aren’t mottos or credos that I try to uphold in my life. The only reason I mentioned them is they’re the kinds of things I’ve heard other people say when they’re not terribly interested in what’s going on around them either. And it’s not as if I’ve gone completely off the grid of current events. I don’t watch the news very often anymore, but I receive daily updates on what’s going in the world via social media and the Interweb every time I log onto one of my mobile devices.

* * * *

According one recent report I read, the Minnesota Vikings are suddenly considered to be serious Super Bowl contenders by at least one sportswriter. That made me laugh, so that guy might not be a sportswriter anymore. Football season hasn’t even started yet! That’s probably why the Vikings are contenders to be world champions at this precise moment in time.

Every team has the same chances of winning the Super Bowl right now because they’re all undefeated, and no one knows how good or bad they are. There haven’t been devastating injuries to key players, and there’s almost one or two of those that happen to just about every team as the season progresses. Unless the Vikings field a vastly different team than they did last year, that prognostication won’t stand up very long. They did spend a whole lots money this year upgrading their defense, and everyone who follows American football knows that defense wins championships. Right?

That’s a hope I’m trying to keep alive, though it has dropped precipitously on my priority list over the last few years.

Speaking purely for myself, I’ve been disappointed by the Vikings so many times in my life that I don’t care if they ever make it back to the Super Bowl again. If they do, my doctor is going to have to put me on a whole lots of Valium for the two weeks between the NFC Championship game and the Super Bowl. He’ll probably have to admit me into the hospital and have me sedated during the game because I won’t be able to watch it without having a heart attack or a stroke. And if they lose for a fifth time, he might just as well put me down. I’m not sure I could live through one more post-season heartbreak from them.

Maybe that’s a hope I shouldn’t try to keep alive anymore…

* * * *

A couple of weeks ago I read an article that former president Donald Trump shut down his radically new and revolutionary social media platform (From the Desk of Donald J. Trump), after just 29 days. It turns out that his SMP wasn’t much of a platform. Not even for him. It was, wait for it — a blog. That made me laugh, too. I LOLed. And LMFAOed. And I ROTFLed. Then I re-LOLed some more.

There’s a reason for my reactions. Mr. Trump originally said he was going to create a new social media platform that would redefine the genre and make Facebook and Twitter about as meaningful as Myspace. Both of those sites suspended his accounts indefinitely after he incited a riot that resulted in the deaths of five people.

Given the fact that The Donald is a failed influencer that needs to be in the spotlight, he had no choice but to create his own social media platform, just so he could put himself back into the spotlight, especially after those fascist assholes at Facebook and Twitter wouldn’t even let him appear on their stages anymore.

* * * *

I will never stop hoping that Trump will someday be indicted for a lengthy list of crimes, and imprisoned for a very lengthy period of time — and five counts of murder/manslaughter/homicide need to be on that list. I know this will never happen, but that doesn’t mean I can’t continue to hope that it will. And it doesn’t begin to describe how disappointed I am in the American justice system for letting him get away with… everything… so far.

There. Are. No. Words.

* * * *

You’d think that this self-proclaimed genius would’ve known better, wouldn’t you? A blog? I mean, OMG! WTF?!? That’s a terrible medium for The Donald — for a multitude of reasons. He was at his best — if you can call it that — when he buffooned and clowned his way around the stage for his Trump-pets, speaking off the cuff in front of a microphone with a whole lots of cameras rolling.

It would appear that Donald Trump put as much effort into revamping social media as he did in creating a healthcare system that would improve upon on the Affordable Care Act. Or preventing the pandemic. Or fixing the American budget deficit. Or making America more better greater again… I can do this all day, people. I have a really long list of President Trump’s failures.

A blog, for the most part, is a written venue of communication. There isn’t any means for immediate interaction between the writer and the audience, and there is no opportunity to ad lib anything. Additionally, The Donald cannot spel. Nor can he write a complete, comprehensive sentence. And most of his supporters can’t reed rede read.

_{The Sharpie is mightier than the Quid Pro Quo}

According to the article, that was the reason an infuriated Donald Trump shut down his cutting-edge social media platform. I mean, his blog. No one was reading it. I might have actually had more people reading my mostly meaningless blog than Trump had reading his totally pointless blog. That makes me smile a smile of vast contentment. Unfortunately, The Donald wasn’t infuriated enough to have a heart attack or a stroke.

Oh well, maybe next time… Like, when he finally figures out the election he lost will never, ever, be overturned.

* * * *

I have a lots of hypothetical situations that run through my head, so I’m going to throw this one out there as an example: I doubt that any of the thirteen people who regularly read my blog are Trump supporters, but on the off-hand chance that you are, and you’re female, and you’ve been wondering if you could be in a relationship with me because I seem like an urbane, erudite, cool guy — um, no. We couldn’t.

For one thing, I’m already in a relationship. I’m very happily married to my lovely supermodel wife. But even if that wasn’t the case, no, we still couldn’t be in a relationship. To sort of paraphrase Meatloaf, I can overlook a lots of things. But I can’t/won’t do that.

* * * *

Maybe it’s because I’m no longer as young as I used to be, but keeping up with the pace of life has become exhausting. I didn’t have insomnia prior to the first Coronavirus lockdown. Oddly, I do now. I’ve had it for about the last year. And I consider my life to be more free from stress than it has ever been.

At some point in time in this post I plan on exploring that issue. We’ll see how long it takes me to get there.

The fact that I often have trouble sleeping now — like tonight — doesn’t bother me as much as it bothers my doctor. He seems to view my insomnia as a personal affront to him. I’ve been taking Melatonin regularly at night for the last couple of weeks to make him happy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

I’m retired. If I don’t sleep, it’s not like it’s going effect my performance at work the next day. And if I decide to take a nap in the afternoon it’s not going to get me fired. I don’t see this as a big problem.

There’s at least one more thing I should take into consideration about my current level of physical/emotional enervation and semi-frequent episodes of insomnia: As my wife has pointed out to me several times, I’m not 64 anymore. It’s pretty much all downhill for me from here on out…

To quote my brother-in-law, N. William Pfaff, “They can only kill you once. Everything else is just foreplay.”

Like unto many things in my life, I’m going to stand pat with the Wait and See approach; continue to monitor and assess myself from a distance because I don’t want me to know that I’m under surveillance.

* * * *

Don’t you worry. When things get back to normal again, your life will get back to normal again, too.

Perhaps. But there’s this: The world has changed, and whatever it returns to will not be the same world that existed prior to COVID-19. And there’s also this: No one I know has ever used the word normal to describe me. You probably don’t want to be the first person to go there.

* * * *

¡Feliz Día del Padre! And it’s the first day of summer too. The sun is shining. The US Open Golf Championship is playing on the TV. I usually golf on Sunday, but I took today off for a few reasons:

I haven’t been playing much golf since Todd decided he needed a vacation from us and drove up to Minnesota in early April to see his son, his daughter, and his grandson. We’re assuming that he’ll return in about a month or so. But there was never a strict timeline on his plans, so everything is subject to change. It’s one of the perks of being retired. You get to play a whole lots of things by ear.

I was under the illusion that I’ve been in a bit of slump for the last year or so. I wasn’t pleased with my scores because they, you know, sucked. But the word slump implies that at one time I wasn’t playing poorly, and I’m not sure I can state that with a clear conscience anymore — if I ever could.

I seem to remember that just before the first quarantine I was consistently scoring in the low 80’s, and I was convinced that I was going break 80 in the very near future. But I’m also the guy that forgets why he went into the kitchen in 20 steps or less, so I’m not sure my memory of being an almost not-so-terrible golfer is accurate.

Theoretically, a slump should be time-limited. Shouldn’t it?? After a year of slumping through the fairways, the roughs and the trees, the sand traps, and the greens — I’m starting to think this isn’t so much of a slump as it is a strong indicator that I’m simply not all that good at golf.

* * * *

While we’re on the subject of golf theories, I’m going to present Naisby’s Postulate of Bad Shots. And Stuff. Dave Naisby is one of the members of my country club, and he explained his theory to me the last time we played together. He’s Scottish, so you have read the next sentence with that wicked cool Scottish accent.

“Bad shots are neither created nor destroyed. They merely rotate in a random manner from one hole to the next.”

It’s the most succinct explanation of the vicissitudes of golf that I have ever heard in my life. Based on the way I’ve been playing, I’m pretty sure I’ve proven Dave’s theory multiple times, and it can now be classified as a Law.

* * * *

Another reason for decreasing my time spent on the golf course is pure psychology. I have previously described golf as a fickle mistress. One day she’s all happy to see you and treats you really nice. The next time she doesn’t have time for you and slams the door in your face. I figure if I start treating Miss Golf like I’m not interested in her anymore, she might start being nicer to me when we get together.

That ought to to do the trick, eh.

* * * *

The final reason I didn’t golf today was the weather. I know I said it was a beautiful day here, but yesterday Tropical Storm Dolores hit the western coast of Mexico, and we’ve gotten about four inches of rain in the last twenty-four hours. It was extremely soggy here this morning, and I thought it would get even soggier. But the prevailing winds must have blown the remnants of Dolores off to the north of the Lakeside Area, and it turned out to be a really gorgeous day.

The Chinese Mountains to the west of the resort will green up and look like heads of broccoli in a few days. The temperatures will moderate and cool off a bit. The dust and pollen have been erased from the sky and you can actually see the other side of Lake Chapala clearly for the first time in months.

_{See? I told you it was beautiful here}

I love the beginning of the Rainy Season. Everything feels fresh and clean. It’s like unto a second Spring. And I won’t have to spend several hours a day watering the dozen or so gardens we’ve resurrected after subduing the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow from Hell. With all of my free time I’ll be able to keep the lawn mowed and trimmed, and make sure that the current hedgerow remembers the limitations its boundaries.

And I might feel like writing more often. We’ll have to see how that goes, too.

The only negative thing about the beginning of the Rainy Season is the bugs. June bugs. Flying Buffalo Ants. The Other Flying Ants. Mosquitoes. Giant motheses. They all appear at this time of year. In hordes. Lea absolutely hates the bug invasion. I have to admit it is kind of creepy.

The only good thing about it is it’s brief. And it does provide a veritable smorgasbord for all of the birds that live around here.

* * * *

It’s been awhile since I wrote anything in my blog about my mostly boring life. I’ve actually been too busy to write. And I’m not making that up. We had a few visitors here at the resort in May. Lea’s sister, Leslie, and her husband, Bill, flew down from southern Minnesota, and spent a week with us taking in the sights and the some of the food here in the scenic Lakeside Area.

I was mildly surprised that Les and Bill made the trek down here. Neither of them is in great health, and they both have varying degrees of mobility issues. I hope they come back soon, and often. They said they would. They’re both sweet people and you’ve already had a sample of Bill’s sense of humor. He makes me laugh.

* * * *

Here’s another hypothetical situation for your consideration: Leslie is eight years older than Lea, and Bill is two years older than Leslie. That part isn’t hypothetical. That’s actually true. Bill leaves Philadelphia in a train traveling west at 65 miles an hour. Leslie leaves Chicago in her smart car traveling east at 45 miles an hour. How many tropical fruits can a Bananasarus Rex eat before Leslie will have to stop to the use the restroom for the first time?

* * * *

Lea and I both took short trips back up to the States in May. Lea said she needed to do some shopping, so she flew to Austin, TX and spent a week with her daughter, Gwen. I suggested that she get the J&J COVID vaccine while she was there because I didn’t have any faith in the Chinese vaccine we had received here. No one — not even the Mexican government — knew when the second injection would be available. And neither of us wanted to spend another ten and a half hours waiting to get it.

* * * *

I thought that little piece of paper stating you had been vaccinated would end up being far more important than it has turned out to be, didn’t you? I’m disappointed that no one has asked to see it. If I wanted to return to the States, that piece of paper is worthless. I’d have to go get another swab shoved up my sinuses to get another piece of paper that says I tested negative for COVID.

That doesn’t make any sense to me.

* * * *

When Lea returned to Mexico, I flew up to Austin to get vaccinated. And that’s the only thing I did while I was there. I flew up on a Sunday. Got the J&J vaccine on Monday. And flew back to Mexico on Tuesday. When I returned, Gwen flew down with me. She spent a couple of weeks hanging out at the resort, and we played several rounds of golf before she flew home.

Gwen is not a good golfer either, but she has demonstrated moments of being just about the luckiest golfer I’ve ever played with. Sooner or later the golf gods are going to notice that. They always do.

* * * *

Future Shock is a book by the American author, Alvin Toffler. It was published in 1970, and I remember reading it in high school. I can’t remember if it was a reading assignment for one of my classes, or if I read it because I liked to read back then. One thing I do remember is it was one of least enjoyable books I ever read. It didn’t have a happy ending.

In the dictionary, shock is defined as a sudden upsetting or surprising event or experience.

In the medical field, shock is an acute medical condition associated with a fall in blood pressure caused by blood loss, severe burns, bacterial infection, allergic reaction, or sudden emotional stress marked by cold, pallid skin, irregular breathing, rapid pulse, and dilated pupils.

In the book, future shock is a psychological state created by “…too much change in too short a period of time”.

In that regard, all of the events of the last year have unquestionably met that criterion. This profound physiological state — that’s how I’m going to describe this flashflood of multiple noxious stressors — can be experienced by individuals, a group of individuals, and even entire societies.

* * * *

In the dictionary, stress is defined as a feeling of emotional or physical tension. It can be caused by almost anything, depending on the person and their perceptions. Something that one person experiences without stress can produce a goddamn pants-wetting panic attack in someone else.

A Perhaps Little Known Fact About Stress: Stress is not necessarily a bad thing. For instance, stress can help you face difficult challenges and achieve your goals. The right amount of stress can help you accomplish daily tasks more efficiently. That’s right. Stress can actually make you elevate your game.

Stress can also serve as a sort of early warning system, producing the fight-or-flight response. When the brain perceives a possible crisis situation, it starts flooding the body with epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol. These hormones focus your senses, enabling you to quickly react and avoid potentially dangerous situations. Stress can actually save your life.

It’s only when you’re overwhelmed with stress that it becomes detrimental.

* * * *

The term future shock seems to be incongruous to me. It’s not the future that shocks us. It’s the present set of particularly nasty circumstances that make us wonder whether or not we will even have a future. And that’s where the shocking part comes into play as far as I’m concerned.

According to Toffler, all of this shock and awe about the present/future has been caused by industrialization. Just in cases you were wondering, the first Industrial Revolution started roughly in the mid-1700’s. All we have done since then is streamline the process to the point that it now has a super-charged Hemi engine complete with a couple of twin turbos.

In Toffler’s opinion, we created a monster that has become an out-of-control juggernaut. The genie has been let out of the bottle and there’s no way to get it back in there again. All we can do now is hope we can keep pace with it or we will surely be crushed to death if we don’t.

When I look at the situation in this way, the pandemic appears to be more of a blessing than a curse. It forced us to slow the fuck down, son. It gave us the opportunity to catch our collective breath and reassess almost everything we had been doing.

We have been an industrialized society for almost three hundred years. There’s no way we are going undo that process. Even if we all wanted to do that, I’m not sure it would be the smartest thing we could do. I absolutely love the fact that I have access to an ocean of information at my fingertips, even if I’m not interested in 97% of it.

It took a little over two hundred years before Toffler came up with a name for the menace we had created, even if it’s a stupid name. And we’ve spent some of the last one hundred years trying to figure what we could do about it.

In recent years, a paradigm shift has occurred. The dark future that Toffler was convinced would occur is by no means etched in stone. He may not have been able to see a path that would change his outcome, but that doesn’t mean other people couldn’t. Individuals, groups of individuals, entire societies, and most importantly, corporations have started making a conscious effort to to raise the bar of ethical standards in everything from agriculture to zoology. And that includes pretty much everything in-between.

These are very good things. These are the things that enable me to keep hoping for a better tomorrow. And if enough of us can keep this up, we might not end up destroying ourselves in the process of improving our lives.

To be sure, we still have a lots of work to do. And we have long way to go before we sit back and try to believe that we’ve done enough to correct the error of our ways. But we are doing something. And that’s the most important thing.

20/20 in 2020

¡Hola, amigos y amigas! ¡Feliz año nuevo! 2019 was a good year for us. I hope 2020 is equally kind to us and all y’all, though it hasn’t started out smoothly for me.

During the holiday season, my lovely supermodel wife and I took our first Mexican vacation and went to Mexico City for nine days. Going on a guided tour is kind of like being back at work. You have to get up early and leave your house.  And there’s a timetable. And a schedule. And other people. And stuff…

And I got a Christmas present I didn’t want. In Mexico, it’s called la gripe.

* * * *

Influenza, commonly known as the flu, is an infectious respiratory disease caused by a virus. Symptoms include: high fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle and joint pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These symptoms can be mild to severe, and all of them combined can kill you to death, possibly from something called a cytokine storm.

Infected lung cells create an overstimulation of the immune system. Excessive amounts of cytokines are subsequently released into the lung tissue. This leads to a massive leukocyte migration into the lungs which, in turn, causes major destruction of lung tissue. In layman’s terms, your lungs turn into a soggy mush and you essentially drown to death in your own fluids even though you’re not under water.

It is a terrible way to die.

The worst influenza outbreak on record occurred in 1918. It was a worldwide pandemic that killed anywhere from fifty to one hundred million people, depending on whom was doing the statistical analysis. In comparison, World War I, which ended in 1918, resulted in only forty million people getting dead from bullets, bombs and mustard gas.

* * * *

I shouldn’t have come down with the flu. I rarely get sick or catch colds. I like to think I have a good immune system. And I did all of the things you’re supposed to do to prevent getting the flu. I got a fucking flu shot! I guzzled liters of Emergen-C for two days before I got on the tour bus!! I took zinc. And Zycam. And Theraflu. And I still got sicker than a dog.

Maybe two dogs…

I was in a fog of delirium the entire time we were in Mexico City. If I hadn’t taken so many pictures of the sights we saw, the whole thing could’ve been a dream to me. I can tell you this: Mexico City is incredibly beautiful. And huge. The largest city I’ve ever lived in was Phoenix. Mexico City makes Phoenix look like Dubuque.

I’m finally sure that the flu isn’t going to kill me to death this time. The only symptom I still have is what seems to be an endless case of head/sinus congestion. As result, I’m mostly deaf in one ear and I can’t hear so good out of the other one. Everyone around me sounds like they’re talking underwater. The only thing I can hear clearly is the ringing in my left ear.

This, too, shall pass eventually. That which doesn’t kill you simply gets out of the way so the next thing in line can take its turn…

* * * *

There was one notable passing in our household while we were on vacation. Our LG refrigerator broke down for the sixth and final time. Fortunately, our roommate wasn’t on vacation and literally saved our bacon.

Our property manager, Jaime Mendoza, was true to his word and bought us a brand new GE refrigerator. It was installed last Friday. I’m hoping I’ll never have to write another word about any of the refrigerators here at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa.

* * * *

Our roommate experiment with my lovely supermodel wife’s boyfriend has gone just about as smoothly as it can thus far. Todd and Lea have been friends since middle school. When he decided to relocate here, we invited him to move in with us.

Todd is a good guy, and he’s multi-talented. He loves to garden, and has started growing a whole lots of vegetables and flowers and roses and stuff. He’s also one helluva cook, and has taken over half of the meal preparation for us. For Lea, this is something like unto winning the lottery.

I love to eat. I don’t cook, but I do dishes. With a smile on my face. Winner, winner chicken dinner for me. And pork chops. And ba-sketti, too. Life. Is. Good.

Todd also loves to golf. We hit the links three or four times a week. More golf equals more practice. More practice tends to lead to more better gooder scores. I’m consistently shooting in the nineties now, and frequently in the low nineties. My goal is to shoot 80 by the end of the year.

Don’t worry. I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going.

* * * *

While our roommate experiment has been a success, our four kit-ten experiment was not. We have two darlingpreshadorbs super cute kit-tens, Mika and Mollie. When a friend of ours was diagnosed with cancer, we took in her two kit-tens, Sadie and Sammy.

Our new kit-tens were sweet and loving. With people. But they developed some serious animosity toward Mika and Mollie. I had anticipated some initial friction between the kit-tens, but I figured they’d eventually get used to each other and peacefully coexist. Yeah, that didn’t happen.

I was not prepared for the feline turf war that ensued

Sadie and Sammy became gangsta cats, and systematically terrorized Mika and Mollie. All of our ex-pat friends down here are Dog People. None of them wanted a couple of badass thug cats that might terrorize their dogs. So I talked to my good friend and caddy, Francisco Flores Bernini. His neighbor was willing to take in Sadie and Sammy and give them a good home.

There’s peace at our home once more. Mika and Mollie no longer live in fear on top of the refrigerator or the kitchen cabinets. They’ve resumed running and frolicking all throughout their huge playground. It’s good to see them so relaxed again.

Our experiment didn’t turn out the way I expected, but it all worked out in the end.

* * * *

My former, and somehow, still favorite NFL football team, the Minnesota Vikings, finished their regular season by losing their last two games to divisional foes: the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears. Their 10-6 record was good enough to get them into the postseason playoffs. Then they surprised almost everyone on the planet by stunning the New Orleans Saints in overtime on Wild Card Weekend.

I predicted both of those outcomes. You don’t have to be a prophet to do that. The Vikings are a very predictable team. Over the last three decades, the Vikings have generally been pretty good in the regular season, and they’ve been really good in one playoff game. The last time they won two playoff games in a row was 1987.

Yesterday, they played thirty minutes of decent football before they got  beat up by the San Francisco 49ers in the second half of the game. There will be no Super Bowl rings for the Vikings this year. Again. Good thing I didn’t got dead from the Mexico City flu. I might still have a chance to see it happen…

I’ve come to the conclusion that my experiment with rooting for another football team was a dismal failure. I’ve been married to the Vikings for too long to start dating any other teams. I kind of felt like I was cheating on them by rooting for someone else. Win, lose or draw, I will always hope for the best for them. Even if they break my heart. Every fucking year.

* * * *

According to WordPress®, this is my 200th post. By my own admission, I’ve had some serious input from my Muses on a fair amount of of them, so I can’t take credit for all of them. No doubt some of you are wondering how that is even possible. I’m going to try to explain it.

Thought insertion isn’t a very common thought disorder, unless you have schizophrenia. Even then, thought insertion is viewed as more of a delusional disorder by medical professionals than it is as an actual occurrence.

I’m okay with that. However, sometimes I get insights into things I know absolutely nothing about, like the time I proved the Pythagorean Theorem.

* * * *

Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher who lived roughly 2500 years ago. His geometric theory has been proven numerous times – possibly the most for any mathematical formula, some dating back thousands of years.

I hate math. So, yeah. That was a joke.

* * * *

Back to the way my dysfunctional brain works…  When these thoughts unfold inside my head they feel…different.

It’s like unto this, except I don’t know Ung Fu Chinese…

Something similar happens when my Muses take over writing my blog posts. I am aware that it’s happening, but I have yet to find a way to stop it. In my last post I had no intention of writing about being bullied back when I was a kid. I had been planning on writing about old manic guys, and we all know how that turned out.

It’d probably piss me off if it weren’t for the fact that my Muses are much better writers than I am. My major concern about my Muses is they want to write about subjects I’d rather forget.

* * * *

And that’s about it for this installment. Be safe out there this year. Look both ways before you cross the street. If you live in Mexico, do it even if you’re crossing a one way street. Go ahead, buy those cute shoes. And order dessert. Enjoy this life as much as you can. There will always be something out there waiting for you that will break your heart.

The Rain, the Park, & Other Things

Writing: The Final Frontier.

It is for me. I generally don’t have any idea what I’m going to write about. If I’m fortunate, I have a vague theme in mind. Sometimes I have a sentence. Sometimes, I only have a word. Today, I have a title!

* * * *

The Rain, the Park, & Other Things is a psychedelic pop song recorded by The Cowsills in 1967. It was a big hit, reaching #2 on the Billboard charts. Maybe you remember the 1970’s TV sitcom The Partridge Family. The Cowsills were more or less the inspiration for the premise of the show. At least the musical/family/band part.

I have fond memories of that song, but I’m not sure why. If there was some special event associated with it, I can’t remember what it was. Maybe I just thought it was a good song…

* * * *

The Rainy Season here has probably run its course and might even be officially over. I’m not going to say more than that. Every time I’ve predicted the end of the Rainy Season this year, it has rained. A lots.

Be that as it may, it’s been mostly less wet here. The golf course is drying out, and that has contributed to the remarkable improvement I’ve seen in my scores over the last three weeks.

There’s a few reasons why my golf game has suffered lately, but perhaps the most significant one is my back. In layman’s terms, my back is fucked up. I’m not young anymore. I have osteoarthritis of the spine and spinal stenosis. I can’t remember the last time my back didn’t hurt.

Most of the time the pain just annoying. The rest of the time it’s almost unbearable. That’s basically where my pain level has been for the last week and a half. Sometimes golf makes my back pain worse. Sometimes it snaps all my vertebrae into alignment. I’ve had both of those outcomes happen over the last three weeks.

Right now, my back is about as good as it ever gets.

* * * *

Country Club de Chapala has a lots of really good caddies on staff. That’s good for me because I’m not a great golfer. Most of the time I doubt that I’m even a good golfer, though my caddies like to tell me they think I’m a good golfer. But then, they like getting good tips, so there’s that.

My favorite caddy is Francisco Flores Bernini. He keeps me grounded on the golf course, and he makes me laugh. He’s a great guy, and has become like unto the son I never had. Francisco isn’t the only good caddy in his family. His older brother, Mario, and his younger brother, Sergio, are also good caddies.

Sergio was my caddy a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t playing well that day. Sergio gave me a lots of tips, but I couldn’t do much of anything right. Finally, he said this. “If you don’t know what you’re doing, pretend that you do.”

That made me laugh. That’s essentially the secret to my success. I’ve been doing it most of my life.

* * * *

Whoa, dude! You were a nurse, and you didn’t know what the hell you were doing? I’m glad I wasn’t one of your patients!

Hang on there, Chicken Little. Real nursing is a science, and in that sense it really helps if you know what you’re doing. But I was a psych nurse, and psych nursing is an art. There’s probably only one rule that applies all the time in Psychiatry, and it is this: You should be less crazy than your patients.

Now that I think about it, I’m not sure I was less crazy than some of my patients, but I was very good at pretending I was. And you probably would’ve loved having me as your nurse.

****

So, I started pretending I was a good golfer. And some pretty weird stuff started happening. I stopped caring about my score. Because I no longer cared what my score was, I relaxed — except when my back was tied in knots. And that’s when my scores started improving. My scores were in the 90’s for 18 holes. Not great, but better than what I had been shooting. 

During the Cruz Roja Tournament, on the par 5 fifth hole, I nailed a sixty yard chip shot for an eagle 3. That wasn’t an almost great shot. I lofted that sucker up into the sky, straight at the pin. It landed on the green about a foot from the cup, one bounce, and in the hole. As of this moment, it’s the greatest shot in my life.

Today, I did something I’ve never done before. I shot an 89, two strokes better than my previous best score. I made six pars! I broke 90 for the first time in my life. 

Inside each and every one of us is one, true, authentic swing. Somethin’ we was born with. Somethin’ that’s ours and ours alone. Somethin’ that can’t be taught to ya or learned. Somethin’ that got to be remembered…

Now all we have to do is get our golf cart fixed, again. The brakes have been sorted, so it stops now. It just has problems starting. Sometimes. Our golf cart is old. It’s like unto the Flintstones mobile, but the electrical part we need to replace is made by Spacely Sprockets…

Go figure on that one

Poco y poco…  We’ll get there little by little.

* * * *

Detroit Lions fans will be dismayed to learn that since I’ve become an athletic supporter of their team the Lions have won one game. Well, maybe they won’t. They’re probably used to it by now.

Matthew Stafford, the Lions quarterback, might miss the rest of the season because he has micro-fractures in some of his upper thoracic vertebrae. In layman’s terms, his back is really fucked up.

Conversely, the Minnesota Vikings have gone 6-1, and are undefeated at home. They were getting shutout in the first half of the game today by the Denver Broncos 20-0. Then something that almost never happens, happened. The Vikings played lights out in the second half and scored every time they touched the ball. They defended the North, and won 27-23.

The Vikings are playing some quality football. If I had known this was going to happen, I would’ve become a Lions fan a long time ago.

Don’t get me wrong. I root for the Lions. But I have trouble letting go of long term relationships. I’m the guy that stayed in love with my high school sweetheart for ten years after she broke up with me.

I will probably always wish the Vikings well, except when they play the Lions…

* * * *

Our new kit-tens are doing well. They seem to have adjusted to their new home and their new people. Mika and Sadie might be less antagonistic towards each other, but maybe not. Maybe I’m just getting used to their squabbling.

My lovely supermodel wife is also doing well. We just celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary eleven days ago. Congratulations, honey! Thanks for hanging in there with me.

We’re getting ready for the holidays. Lea and I are hosting Thanksgiving at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa for a select group of friends. For Christmas we’re taking a ten day sightseeing trip  to Mexico City. 

That should be a lots of fun.

* * * *

My Twitter account has been temporarily suspended, again. Because of something I said to Donald Trump, again. It’s the third time this year. Maybe the fourth. At this rate it’ll probably be permanently suspended before the end of the year.

The Democrats have initiated impeachment hearings, and The Donald has gone off the deep end. The crap he spews on social media is beyond all belief, unless you happen to be one of his supporters, in which case you believe everything he says.

Well, I’ve got a newsflash for you:

And, they still won’t get it…

Here’s a prediction for you. Trump will resign from office just before he’s impeached, citing health reasons. I’m not the only person who has come up with this scenario.

This weekend, The Donald was admitted to The Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for an unscheduled visit. In what can only be assumed to be another of the over thirteen thousand verified lies that Trump has told since becoming President, he tweeted that the visit was part of his routine annual physical. The results haven’t been released.

Remember this?

His doctor later said he didn’t write the report. Donald Trump did.

This is also the guy who said he would absolutely release his tax returns if he was elected President, and has been in a non-stop legal battle to keep them private ever since. He’s currently petitioning the Supreme Court to keep his records out of the public eye.

Do you have any idea how many appeals you have to file to get to the fucking Supreme Court? Hint: It’s way more than one. And there’s only one reason why he would spend so much time time, effort, and money to try to keep something private. Another hint: It’s not because his tax returns will show perfection.

The Impermanence of Memory

It’s been another good day here at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa. 

They’ve all been good days.

Most of the our kit-tens are getting along well with each other, most of the time. Todd and Julia and Lea and I are all getting along well with each other. Julia is Todd’s girlfriend. She doesn’t live here, but she spends a fair amount of time hanging out here. In that regard, things are going about as smoothly as they can.

* * * *

The Minnesota Vikings have won four games in a row now that I’ve become a Detroit Lions fan. Unfortunately, one of the teams my old favorite team beat in that stretch is my new favorite team.

My lovely supermodel wife is actually upset with me for changing allegiances. She says it’s disgusting! I’d think she’d feel a bit of gratitude…  At any rate, I’m still rooting for the Lions. And if things continue on this arc, the Vikings might win a Super Bowl before I die.

* * * *

Todd and I bought a golf cart last week, officially making us serious golfing guys. Now all we have to do is start golfing like serious golf guys. And get the brakes fixed on our cart. And probably the steering…

Presentando el carrito nacional de golf de México

We had all of the batteries replaced when we bought it, so it runs great. Stopping has been somewhat problematic at times…

Seeing how my life is as close to perfect as it will ever be, the Universe has to provide a few areas for me that aren’t ideal, otherwise there would be an imbalance in The Force, and we all know what happens after that.

Whoa. It’s even worse than I thought…

Right now, all of my problems start and end with golf.

Problem #1. The Rainy Season has essentially turned our golf course into a swamp. Swamp Golf might sound like fun, but it’s not. In my case it has everything to do with wet socks. When my socks get wet, all I want to do is sit down and cry. The seasonal rains should end in a couple of weeks, then everything will start drying out and Allergy Season can begin again.

That should benefit my score. 

Problem #2. Todd and I have been taking golf lessons because we’re serious golfing guys now, and that’s another thing serious golfers do. I’ve been trying to tweak a few things with my swing to improve the consistency and quality of my shots. I seriously want to get rid of those shots of random suckdom that plague every golfer at pretty much any level of skill.

If I can do that, that will definitely benefit my score.

Problem #3. My biggest problem has been vision related. I now have three pairs of glasses with the same prescription, but each of them is just a little bit different. Depending on the weather conditions, I was shuffling my corrective lenses around when I golfed.

Between minor variations in how I was seeing, golf lessons to change my swing, and then trying to remember all of the things I was supposed to be doing — I wasn’t having random shots of suckdom. They all sucked!

That hasn’t benefitted my score at all!

I quit shuffling my glasses. I’m wearing my newest pair all the time now, and my eyes are getting used to them. I stopped thinking about the seven things I’m supposed to be doing and focused on a three. Keep your head down. Slow down your back swing. And follow through.

I played nine holes with my golf wife, Phyllis, this morning. I shot a 47. I one-putted five greens because my chip shots were so deadly. And, I replaced the black laces in my magic golf shoes this morning with bright neon green laces. That might have been a contributing factor. Julia needed black laces for her Medusa costume, so I gave her mine.

My caddy, Francisco Flores Bernini, told me I was fun to watch. It’s the first time he’s said that to me. I’m not sure there are any words to describe how pleased I was to hear that.

* * * *

Lea has been helping Julia with her zombie costume much more than I have. The Thrill the World dance is this Saturday. A bunch of people all across the world dress up like zombies and dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Julia is going to be zombie Medusa. 

In Greek mythology, Medusa was one of the Gorgons, three beautiful sisters — Medusa, Stheno and Euryale — who were turned into dreadful, horrifying monsters with live, venomous snakes for hair by the goddess Athena. They were so hideous that anyone who gazed upon them was turned to stone.

* * * *

If you’ve never seen the featured image of my latest blog, you really need to get out more. It’s The Persistence of Memory, by the Spanish artist, Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquis of Dalí de Púbol. He’s one of the best known Dadaist artists of the 20th Century.

Dadaism was an art movement that began in Europe after World War I. Dadaists thought the modern world was stupid and meaningless, so they set out to ridicule it as much as they could before they got dead.

Little Known Fact About Salvador Dali: he hated paying for anything, and whenever he wrote a check he would draw something on the back, knowing the person he wrote it out to would never cash it.

There’s a whole page of his check art on the Interweb. You could look it up if you’re interested…

* * * *

Memory is a tricksy thing. How tricksy is it, you might ask. Well, scientists have been studying memory ever since one of them tied a string around his finger, way back in 1885, so he wouldn’t forget to start studying it. And after all that time, no one understands the exact mechanism of how memory works.

Originally, many experts were fond of describing memory as a sort of tiny filing cabinet full of individual memory folders in which information was stored away. This cabinet was in a select part of the brain.

As technology adanced, researchers likened memory to a neural supercomputer wedged under the human scalp. One with an undetermined amount of RAM. And memory was stored in more than one area of the brain.

Today, experts believe that memory is far more complex and elusive — and that it is located not in one particular place in the brain — but is instead a brain-wide process.

* * * *

I used to think I had a great memory. I no longer think that. Aging affects memory. So does drug and alcohol abuse. And trauma. When I take all of that into consideration, I’m impressed that I still remember my name.

I’ve kind of written about some of the aspects of my particular flavor of insanity. I admitted that I have thought insertions. You can read about it in my archives if you like. Or you can Google it…

In a manner somewhat similar to the way that other people’s thoughts can somehow be inserted into my mind, I’ve come to the conclusion that they can also seemingly be extracted. I could give you an example, but how do you explain something that you can’t remember anymore?

Let’s find out.

* * * *

Behold, the Pleiades

The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters, are a star cluster in the constellation Taurus. They’re somewhat west and north of the constellation Orion. You should be able to recognize Orion. It’s one of the most conspicuous constellations in the night sky. If you’re awake at around 5:00 AM this time of year, look up. It’ll probably be right over your head.

* * * *

In Greek mythology, Orion was a supernaturally strong hunter of ancient times. He was the son of Euryale (Yep, the aforementioned hideous sister of Medusa), and Poseidon, the god of the sea.

Everything I’ve read about Orion indicates he was a complete asshole. He liked getting drunk. He raped Merope, the princess of Thebes. And then he decided he wanted to kill pretty much everything that moved. So Gaea, the goddess of the earth, killed him to death.

In the Bible, there once was a mighty hunter named Nimrod. Orion and Nimrod are probably one in the same. Interesting side note: Nimrod allegedly ordered the construction of the Tower of Babel.

* * * *

Hey, that’s really cool and all, but what does this have to do with you not being able to remember stuff? That’s what we were talking about, right?

If you look at the Pleiades with the naked eye, the only way you can see them somewhat clearly is with peripheral vision. When you look directly at them, they practically disappear.

That’s what it’s like with some of my memories. I know they existed. I even know the context in which they existed. But when I try to find them, they are gone. I’m not sure that explanation makes any sense to you, but that’s as close as I can get.

* * * *

Back when I was a nurse, other nurses, girl nurses — real nurses — would sometimes ask me what the essence of my job was. Real nurses don’t tend to have a lots of respect for psych nurses. They think psych nurses are essentially babysitters for icky people. And I would tell them a story.

It was about a mother talking to her child. And that’s the extent of what I can remember. I can’t remember how I came to know the story. It might have been something I actually experienced. I know I told the story at least three times that I can remember, and you’d think I’d remember something I did that many times.

There’s one other thing I remember: that story was fucking perfect. 

Those real nurses would look at me and think, Damn! I totally want to have sex with this guy! Okay, they probably didn’t think that, but they had a higher level of respect for pysch nursing and psych nurses for at least a few minutes after they heard it.

* * * *

I don’t know how explain Donald Trump’s frequent lapses of memory, especially in terms of geography. In his latest gaffe he apparently thinks Colorado is one of the states bordering Mexico because he said part of his Great Southern Border Wall is being built there.

He called the European country of Belgium a beautiful city. And he thinks Paris, France is in Germany. Nor does he understand the differences between England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom.

The Donald said this during an interview with Piers Morgan in August of this year:

TRUMP: You have different names — you can say “England,” you can say “UK,” you can say “United Kingdom” so many different — you know you have, you have so many different names — Great Britain. I always say: “Which one do you prefer? Great Britain? You understand what I’m saying?’

MORGAN: You know Great Britain and the United Kingdom aren’t exactly the same thing?

TRUMP: Right, yeah. You know I know, but a lot of people don’t know that. But you have lots of different names. The fact is you make great product, you make great things. Even your farm product is so fantastic.

There are a few possible explanations for Trump’s general lack of geographical knowledge.

Theory #1. He’s old. He’s 73. As stated earlier, aging does impact memory. So that’s a remote possibility. Plus, all those places. They’re never in the same place twice. If only the planet would stop spinning. Then locations would finally settle down and stay in one place.

Theory #2. He fabricates stuff all the time. Maybe he thinks he can do the same with geography because it’s so difficult for anyone to actually ascertain the exact position of any particular place on this planet. It might also be a symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome, so there’s that.

Theory #3. He’s an idiot.

The prosecution rests.

When the Bough Breaks

I’m going to figuratively go out on a limb and say that everyone has heard the lullaby Rockabye Baby. Even Millennials. If you haven’t, you should know the drill by now. That’s right, look it up on the YouTube®.

It’s a cute little song to fall asleep to, except for the whole crashing to the ground from the top of the tree part. That would startle you awake no matter how deeply you were sleeping.

See? I told you.

A lots of bad shit can happen when the bough breaks. It’s like unto the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. You take as much as you can for as long as you can, and then you snap.

Like I did last Sunday.

* * * *

The Minnesota Vikings played their fourth game of the season. In yet another dismal performance against a divisional rival, they looked absolutely pathetic as they were manhandled by the Chicago Bears and lost, 16-6.

Four games. The Vikings are 2-2. Hey, that’s no reason to jump ship, Mark!

I actually had people tell me that. But I’ve seen this movie before. It doesn’t end well. Being a Vikings fan is like unto dating a really hot girl that fucks you like a nympho pornstar one weekend, then shits all over the bed the next.

I finally got tired of having to clean up the mess. Halfway through the Chicago game I decided it was time to cut my losses and change allegiances. I became a Detroit Lions fan. I’ve been thinking about doing it for two years, so it shouldn’t be a complete surprise to anyone.

If there’s one team in the NFC North that sucks more than the Vikings, that team is the Lions. They’re so bad they only have one great player, but he is their quarterback. Matthew Stafford is a fourth quarter wizard. He is a master of the fourth quarter comeback, and finds a way to almost win a lots of games.

In the last ten years, the Lions have lost more games by three points or less than any other NFL team. You better check that. I may have made that statistic up.

I decided I’d rather root for a team that no one expects to ever win a game and almost always does, than root for a team almost everyone expects to dominate their opponents and looks like the Keystone Kops more often than not.

I. Am. Done.

There were few notable events in the game that contributed to my meltdown. The first was Chase Daniel. He’s Chicago’s backup quarterback. He came into the after Mitch Trubisky, Chicago’s starting QB, was injured. Backup quarterbacks don’t usually win a lots of games in the NFL. There’s a reason why they’re backups.

Chase Daniel looked like Tom Fucking Brady against the Vikings defense, which is supposed to be one of the better defenses in the NFL, but Mr. Second-string Junior Varsity moved his team up and down the field with relative ease.

The Vikings revamped offense looked terrible against a depleted Bears defense. That’s right. Chicago didn’t play a few of their best players because of injuries, and they still shut down Kirk Cousins and friends.

The Vikings had one of the best rushing games in the league prior to last Sunday. Against the Bears they rushed for forty yards. If you can’t run the ball, you have to pass it. And if you’re going to that, you better protect your quarterback. Kirk Cousins was sacked six times, and spent most of the game running for his life.

Kirk Cousins is the $84 million man. He was supposed to be the missing piece of the puzzle for the Vikings’ Super Bowl aspirations. The Vikings hired at least two coaches to come up with plays just to make Kirk look good. And as long as he’s playing against teams that aren’t very good, he looks awesome.

However, when he plays against good teams with winning records, he looks like the biggest mistake the Vikings have made since the infamous Herschel Walker trade.

The Purple and Gold are the new Browns. You heard it here first.

This is what my social media meltdown mostly amounted to…

* * * *

Last week, the House of Representatives began an impeachment inquiry into some of President Trump’s more questionable actions. The Donald may have abused his presidential powers and sought help from a foreign government to undermine former Vice President Joe Biden, one of the Democrats trying to become the next President of the United States.

The Donald has said and done a lots of questionable things since he became President. Some of them have been reprehensible, in my humble opinion. But you can’t be impeached simply because someone thinks you’re an idiot. Or an asshole. If that were the case, we wouldn’t have any Presidents that weren’t impeached.

Bill Clinton was impeached because he got a blowjob from one of his female interns in the Oval Office. It’s ironic because I’d be willing to bet every dime I own that every man who voted in favor of impeaching President Clinton was also guilty of getting blowjobs from their interns in their offices.

I know it’s hard to believe that a guy who acts like he’s a Mafia boss would actually do something that you’d expect a mob boss to do, but that’s what appears to have happened. According to several diverse sources, this is just the tip of the iceberg of Trump’s illegal activities, and they are seemingly legion. We’ll see how all of this plays out…

The Donald denies any wrongdoing. This weekend he had a Twitter® meltdown that made my meltdown look like the beginning of the last Ice Age. He posted over eighty tweets saying he was the victim of a witch hunt and was being harassed and bullied by the Do Nothing Democrats. Then he demanded to know the identity of the whistleblower who exposed him, and threatened everybody associated with the inquiry with vague retribution and severe punishment. 

That, is witness tampering, and it is most definitely a crime.

He said the country would be torn apart in a civil war if he were to be impeached, which may cause some of his more loosely-hinged supporters to shoot a whole lots of other people. We’ll have to see how that unfolds, too. He added this wasn’t an impeachment, but a COUP intended to take away the God-given rights and freedoms of all Americans. And he said he’d be willing to fight with his supporters, but he has bone spurs and a note from his doctor, so there’s that.

At any rate, there has been a paradigm shift in American politics that will likely only increase the huge divide that already separates the Republicans and the Democrats. Though if you were to ask Republicans how they feel off the record, many of them would probably say they support impeachment and are secretly relieved.

* * * *

My lovely supermodel wife and I had lunch with a friend of ours last week. She was an attorney and a political lobbyist in New York State. During lunch she told me her theory about why the American political system fell apart.

White wine.

Remember when everyone started drinking white wine because they heard about some study that said white wine was good for you?

Before the release of that study, people drank whatever they wanted. Beer. Gin. Whiskey. Vodka. Tequila. Whatever. And that included politicians. That’s how legislative deals were made. After a political session ended, all of the legislators would get together in an office and have a few drinks, and voilà!

Shit got done.

Then everyone started drinking white wine, and going to the gym, and no one could eat gluten anymore…

Now nothing gets done.

I hadn’t heard this theory before, but chronologically, it makes sense. And I never thought I would ever hear myself saying these words to anyone, but you goddamn politicians aren’t drinking enough alcohol. Get your heads out of your asses. Drink a couple of glasses of Scotch, and do your jobs.

Drink, drink, and vote yea.

That, and nothing else, will make America great again.

Vision

It’s the Independence Day weekend in Mexico. El dia de independencia. 16 de septiembre. On that date in the year 1810, the cry of freedom first rang out in Mexico, and the revolt against the fucking Spaniards began.

¡Viva, México!

This weekend inaugurates what I’ve come to call fiesta season in the Lakeside Area. It’s more or less one big party down here from now until Christmas. Lea has actually looked up all of the annual national and local holidays. There’s something like unto ten thousand of them.

I call it, Los Meses Que Nadie Duerme. The Months That No One Sleeps. The locals don’t sleep because they’re celebrating! And the gringos don’t sleep because there’s no such thing as a quiet celebration in Mexico.

Neither Lea nor I got any sleep last night. A loud party nearby kept us awake until 2:30 AM. There was music. And singing. And storytelling. And laughter. And I’m going to guess all of that was fueled by a lots of alcohol. Then our four kit-tens took over when the celebration finally died down. Yes, we now have four felines and Casa Tara has become a cathouse.

I’ll get to that later.

* * * *

The Minnesota Vikings played their arch rivals, the Green Bay Packers in their biggest game of the young NFL season today. The Vikings were favored to win, so they played their worst game and lost 21-16.

I can’t say I’m surprised. Or even disappointed. I’ve learned to accept the fact that my team just doesn’t do well with high expectations. I’m going to hope that they’re able to get their act together and play better. It’s either that or give up on football and take up ballet. Or fishing. Or anything else.

The Detroit Lions won yesterday. I’m still considering them as my new team. They’ve sucked for years, so any game they win is a pleasant surprise.

* * * *

The Vision is a fictional superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe®. He’s an android created by Ultron, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner and Thor. He possesses the Mind Stone, one of the Infinity Stones that Thanos collected so he could exterminate half of all life in the universe.

Vision is the faculty or state of being able to see. Sight is one of the five senses. It’s arguably the most important one of the bunch. Most people I know like to be able to see what they’re doing. When people talk about sight they rarely use the word vision. Vision seems to have taken on a long range connotation in the minds of many people.

Except when you’re drunk. Then there’s that whole double vision thing…

And that’s all I have to say about that.

* * * *

I haven’t been able to write lately. Actually, I haven’t been able to do much of anything. There’s a reason for that.

I recently got a new pair of glasses.

* * * *

Little Known Fact About Me: I’m more or less legally blind without corrective lenses. I’ve been wearing eyeglasses since the third grade. I probably should have been wearing them in the womb. I’m terribly nearsighted. I’m also farsighted. And I have astigmatism. Oh, and sometimes I can’t see colors so good. I probably should have learned Braille. But even if I had, the keyboard on my Notebook isn’t equipped with it, so there’s that.

* * * *

There’s nothing wrong with my old glasses. I’ve had my current pair of glasses for almost five years. The lenses are getting a little scratched up, but that’ll happen over time. I can still see out of them, and that’s really the only purpose eyeglasses serve.

I’m not sure why I decided to get new glasses. My lovely supermodel wife got new glasses this year. So did my golf wife. They both look super cute. Lea actually looks like a really hot librarian. It would appear I thought it was my turn…

Normally, something like this wouldn’t have a major impact in my life, but in this case there was one small, insignificant detail. I couldn’t see much of anything with my new glasses.

I wear progressive bifocals. Hey, I’m old, okay? I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain what went wrong, and this is the best I can do: I live in a Central Time Zone, but my right eye was seeing in the Eastern Time Zone, and my left eye was seeing in the Mountain Time Zone.

Everything was clear, then it was fuzzy, then it was blurry, then it was distorted. And then the process started all over again. It was déjà vu, jamais vu, and goo goo g’joob all rolled together into one disturbing optical illusion.

My eyes were sending so much contradictory stimuli to my brain I started hallucinating. For someone as loosely held together as myself, it was the last thing I needed. I was pretty sure a bunch of ninjas were trying to sneak up on me because that’s what I was seeing out of the corners of my eyes. When I tried to focus on them, the ninjas disappeared. It made sense to me at the time. That’s kinda what ninjas do…

* * * *

Another Little Known Fact About Me: I don’t look crazy, but I have at least four Axis I psychiatric diagnoses, and at least one Axis II diagnosis. I wouldn’t be surprised if I have more. I’m not going to elaborate on any of them, but I’ve never taken any psych meds. I’ve learned to adapt to the kooky way my brain works, mostly by trying to ignore it, and rarely taking anything that goes on inside of my head too seriously.

If you don’t know what Axis I or II are, look them up on the Google®. They’re all in the DSM-IV. It’s the Big Book of What’s Wrong With You for Psychiatry. And you should probably know that there’s no diagnosis of Normal.

Be that as it may, I…suffer…from frequent unpleasant intrusive thoughts. If they weren’t so unpleasant, I don’t think there’d be any suffering involved. It’s one of the reasons I tried drinking myself into a coma for three decades.

I don’t hear voices, but I do have thought insertions. They can also be intrusive. And unpleasant. And, they can sometimes be misinterpreted as voices. Thought insertion is a somewhat uncommon symptom: I sometimes feel my thoughts are not my own, but rather belong to someone else and have been inserted into my mind.

You know, like, whenever I actually have a good idea.

* * * *

I got my new glasses last Saturday, so that’s when my corrected vision problems started. I figured it was just the new prescription, you know, my eyes would adjust. I wore them last Sunday when I went golfing. It was the worst round of golf I’ve played since I quit drinking. I finally ended up doing this:

As ridiculous as it might sound, this classic bit of advice actually worked for me. Once I stopped trying to see the ball, I could actually hit it better. I might have accidentally learned something from essentially being blind, and Caddyshack.

Feeling the golf course, finding a form of oneness with it. Seeing not with your eyes, but with your mind. It was oddly spiritual, and even more oddly, relaxing. I don’t recommend this method to improve your golf game to anyone. To be honest, I’d rather be able to see.

I went golfing today with my old glasses, my new Tour Edge® putter, my golf wife, Phyllis, and our friends, Tom and Cheryl. For the most part, I think I putted better today, but I also discovered I’m still capable of three putting.

Motherfucker Osmond Brothers!

The biggest problem with any golf club is they all have manual transmissions. There’s no D for drive. There’s no cruise control. There’s no semi-autonomous driver-assist features. They are all subject to user error.

But something amazing happened to me on the front nine today. For the first time in my life, I did not fuck up a single fairway shot. I nailed every one of them, setting myself up for all of the things golfers dream about: eagles, birdies, and pars.

Unfortunately, reality decided to tag along. My chipping game still needs some serious tweaking.

* * * *

I think I tried getting used to my new glasses for four days, then gave up and put my old glasses back on, then went to see Kristi, the sweet young lady that runs the optical shop where I bought my glasses. My new glasses are under warranty, so she’s going to have a new pair made with my old prescription.

I’m sure there were several factors involved in the process that resulted in my incorrect corrective lenses. There have already been a few steps in the process to re-correct them, and there’ll probably be a few more. But it probably won’t be as arduous as getting our refrigerator fixed.

By the way, that’s still working. I’m starting to believe it’s not going to break down again this time.

* * * *

Last Thursday, we welcomed two more kit-tens into our household:

Behold, Sadie and Sammy. We’re going to rid of all our dark clothing

Planet Janet, our former landlady, asked us if we could help out her best friend, Neelam. Neelam is being treated for cancer, and she could no longer care for her three dogs and two cats.

We didn’t want the dogs, so we took the kit-tens.

Sadie is a Champagne Tonkinese mix female. I’m not sure if she’s a Mexican kit-ten, or if she’s a gringa gatita, but she is the cutest, littlest little kit-ten, ever! She’s roughly seven weeks older than our purebred Mexican street kit-tens, Mika and Mollie.

Sammy is a five year old male of undetermined lineage, but he’s probably a purebred Mexican street kit-ten, too. I think he’s half white tiger — like unto the tigers Seigfried and Roy used to have in their magic act — and half polar bear. He. Is. One. BIG. Kit-ten.

His real name is Sonny, but Lea kept calling him Sammy because of Samantha, our first kit-ten. I suggested we change his name. He’s a cat. It’s not like he’s not going to come when you call his name, you know, like he’s a dog.

Sonny/Sammy. What’s the difference? If he wants anything from you, he’ll let you know. If he doesn’t, he’ll ignore you, like any other cat.

Sammy appears to understand that he’s the only male in a house full of kit-tens, and if he plays his cards right he’s going to end up with a harem of adoring females. He already has Lea won over. He is one cool cat, and he knows it.

* * * *

The transition hasn’t been easy for any of our kit-tens. Sadie and Sammy are freaked out because they’re in a new place and the woman who had taken care of them has disappeared. Mika and Mollie are freaked because of the new kit-tens on the block and no one asked them if they were okay with this new arrangement.

If anyone reading this knows any tricks to introducing new pets into a household, I am willing to hear anything you have to say.

I know as much about being a parent as I do about algorithms, and that would be next to nothing. You could ask my stepdaughters. I’m pretty sure I sucked at it. But I figured our new kit-tens would need a safe place to readjust to their new environment, so we set them up in the den. It’s a huge room, and we rarely use it.

Sadie and Sammy essentially hid in the den for one day. We checked on them frequently so they could get used to us and sound of our voices and stuff. Then they came out into the living room and started exploring.

Mika and Mollie jumped up to the top of one of the bookcases and looked down on everything with kit-ten amazement. It’s been sort of a North/South thing ever since. Sadie and Sammy mostly occupy the South Wing of the house. Mika and Mollie mostly hold the North Wing and occupy the high vantage points in the living room, dining room, and the kitchen.

I’m not Doctor Fuckin’ Doolittle. I can’t talk to the animals and explain that we took the new kit-tens in because they would have been put to sleep if we hadn’t. I’m sure our first rescue kit-tens wouldn’t want that to happen to any kit-ten, and then they’d settle down.

There haven’t been any battles, but there’s been some aggressive posturing and a fair amount of blustery speech. It’s like unto the cold war between the US and the USSR back in the day. Except Saturday night when all four kit-tens ran into each other in our bedroom and all hell broke loose.

That’s when Lea and I decided we needed to trim the needle sharp talons of death on all of our kit-tens. That job was actually a whole lots easier than either of us thought it would be. I almost feel like a psych nurse again, trying to keep the peace on my unit. That’s basically what psych nurses do: keep everyone safe in a confined space until they’re stable enough to go home and start making bad decisions all over again.

Maybe I should try giving all the kit-tens some Cativan…

* * * *

In retirement, Lea and I have become real life versions of Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers. We rescued our first two kit-tens when they were darlingpreshadorbs babies. We rescued Lord Mark’s sprawling villa from hideous interior design and general disrepair and turned it into the Chula Vista Resort and Spa. We rescued Todd from having to spend another winter in Idaho. And we rescued Neelam’s adult kit-tens from having to get dead.

Life is essentially one long recovery/rescue program. We’re all recovering from something. Every now and then we get to rescue something. We didn’t know it at the time but when we got married, Lea and I would end up rescuing each other.

But that’s another story for another day. For now, this is Mark Rowen signing off. Que tenga un buen dia y hasta luego.

Headline Action Breaking News Live! Update … Report

If you were thinking about creating a news show and you needed to come up with a catchy title, you’re clearly not going to want to hire me as your slogan guy.

* * * *

There was yet another mass shooting in the US last week.

I’m actually too emotionally exhausted to even get outraged anymore. I’ve come to the conclusion that if the lawmakers in Washington DC aren’t going to do anything to change this, then there can be no more tragic mass shootings in America. They are simply the price you might have to pay for living in the Land of the Free.

And if the American people aren’t going to elect representatives that actually represent them, then they can go fuck themselves, too.

Damn you! God damn you all to Hell!

* * * *

My Twitter® account was suspended again because of some comments I posted in response to Donald Trump.

It appears there are some limits to my hypocrisy. I found I couldn’t encourage The Donald to be more of an asshat than he already was and continue to sleep well at night. So, I kind of went off on him the other day.

Apparently, you’re not allowed to call the President a dumb cunt…

Twitter® made me delete my posts, told me to play nice with others, and wouldn’t let me do anything on their site for a day.

It’s ironic because the one person on the planet that shouldn’t be allowed to post anything on their site never gets his hands slapped…

* * * *

I’m assuming the fucking rat I tried to kill to death in our carport, then disappeared into the engine of our car, decided to move to a safer location. One that doesn’t have broom-wielding maniacs. Or two dozen hungry cats. I haven’t seen it again, and believe me when I say I’ve looked.

I haven’t seen any rats anywhere, but I have seen a lots of the many semi-feral cats that live in the neighborhood.

They like hanging out in our carport, too. And I’m reasonably sure they’d pursue the rat if it was still hanging around. If I thought there was seriously a chance the rat was still living in my car, I really would set it on fire.

* * * *

The NFL football season kicks off this week! This is the best time of the year for me. The Minnesota Vikings have looked good in their preseason games, so hopes of a stellar season are running high with their fans right now.

Well, after last year, they can only go up…

To say that the Vikings struggled last year is an understatement. They were supposed to be an elite team that would be in the running for another Super Bowl appearance. Instead, they barely finished with a winning record and were mediocre at best.

This year should be different. The Vikings have a rejuvenated offense. They have two of the best receivers in the NFL, and they finally cut Laquon Treadwell, who was one of the worst receivers in the league. If the offensive line gives Kirk Cousins the time he needs, the passing game could be a force to be reckoned with.

The Vikings appear to have a veritable herd of decent running backs. If Dalvin Cook can stay healthy for an entire season, their offense might be an absolute powerhouse this year.

Defensively, the Vikings appear to be solid, but historically they almost always have. Last year the defense seemed to play with a lack of intensity. And in more than one game they seemed to just not care. All accounts indicate they’ve got their goddamn minds right, and they are poised to dominate on that side of the ball again.

Might. Maybe. If only…  Every football season starts like this for me. Every year, this could be our year. But every fan of every NFL team is right there with me right now. If only — this might be the year — maybe…

I’m excited to see what happens. I’m another year closer to getting dead, so the clock is ticking, guys. I want to see you win a Super Bowl before I die. If it doesn’t, I’m coming back as the scariest fuckin’ ghost you’ve ever seen and I will haunt your asses until you do.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

* * * *

We’ve been busy here at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa. Todd, my lovely supermodel wife’s boyfriend, has finally arrived with all of his worldly belongings and has taken up residence in one of our guest rooms. He’s going to be our roommate for an as yet undetermined amount of time. I think of it as an experiment in communal living for all of us.

It’s not like we don’t have the room. Our house is huge, way bigger than anything we need for the two of us. And our kit-tens. Mika and Mollie turned one year old last month! I sang them the Happy Birthday song in Spanish. Our kit-tens are bilingual. That means they can ignore what we say to them in two languages.

Space here wasn’t an issue. The only concerns we had was how this arrangement would work in reality. If you exclude spouses and children, I’m pretty sure I’m the only one of the three of us that has ever had a roommate.

I’ve had a few people ask me how our new living arrangement came to be. I think it was my idea. Todd and Lea have known each other since middle school or something. They’ve been friends forever. Todd came down here to visit Lea a couple of years ago. That’s when I met him. We’ve been friends ever since.

We were fortunate when we moved here. We had a great network of people we could talk to. We didn’t have to endure many of the glitches that can occur when you move to a foreign country.  In my mind, having Todd move in with us seemed to be the best way to ease his transition into his new life.

Todd speaks no Spanish. I know the look that he gets on his face whenever anyone speaks to him en español. Lea and I have shared as much as we can with him about our experiences here. We’ll continue to help him as best we can until the deer in the headlights look goes away. After that, we’ll see.

As they say on TV, what could possibly go wrong?

* * * *

The Roommate is a 2011 cinematic psychological thriller about a deranged college freshman who becomes obsessed with her new roommate.

Okay. I guess there’s that…

Experiment IV is a song by the English singer Kate Bush. The song tells a story about a secret military plan to create a sound horrific enough to kill a lots people.

I can honestly say that this scenario had never occurred to me

* * * *

If you combine those two themes, this looks like unto the worst cohabitation idea, ever. Fortunately, Todd is not deranged, nor does he possess any of the intense, technological dental x-ray combat training that I received from the Army. He’s a good guy.

It should be fun. Todd loves to cook, so Lea will have some help in the kitchen. And, he plays golf. I love to eat, and I love to play golf. This appears to be a win-win-win situation for everyone, but especially for me.

And we still have the casita/guest house for anyone who wants to come visit. We’ve had a few people ask if they could come down, so we’ll see. We might eventually get some visitors here.

* * * *

Speaking of golf, I’m still getting accustomed to my new clubs. The fairway woods I bought have been nice additions to my arsenal. They haven’t produced any noticeable reduction in my score yet, but I attribute that to my other new club.

The chipper is unlike any other club I’ve ever had. It has next to no weight, so I’ve been struggling with the “how hard do I have to hit the ball to get it to the pin dilemma.” My results with it have been very hit or miss.

Mostly miss, so far.

In a few days I can start getting accustomed to my new putter. I’m waiting for it to be delivered from Amazon. I decided if was going to get serious about improving my game, I better get the right tools for the job.

In a recent interview, Brooks Kepka said this: “I’m putting pretty good. I’m just not making any putts.” It sounds like just about the most stupidest thing anyone could ever say, but it makes perfect sense to any serious golfer.

My new putter is red, and it looks like a spaceship from Star Trek.

See? I told you.

Once I figure out how to use it, I’ll probably never miss a putt again.

Lol! More lol!! Snort lol. Stop it, you’re killing me!!!

GoT Real?

Hey there, sports fans!

The NFL Draft was held last week. The Minnesota Vikings drafted a lots of offensive players, especially linemen. Hopefully, that works out for them. It’s hard to win many football games if you have a porous offensive line. There are sixteen games in the regular season. I think the Vikings will be fortunate to win half of them.

I might end up being a Detroit Lions fan before the year is over…

As a guy, I tend to mark the passing of the year by sporting events. The Super Bowl. March Madness. The Masters. The Triple Crown. After that, it’s just waiting for football to start. So, if I’m already this pessimistic about my team’s chances of success, well, that’s something I’m going to have to work on. At least until they start playing and prove that they suck.

* * * *

I went golfing last Sunday with the intention of shooting my best round ever. That lasted two holes. After that, I could settle down and hope I didn’t shoot my worst round ever. But I regrouped on the back nine.

That’s another thing I’m going to have to work on…

* * * *

I’ve had a few people question my theory about Guys versus Men. I think I can best explain it this way. Bryan Baeumler has a couple of home renovation shows on HGTV. Disaster DIY and Leave it to Bryan.

In the first show, a home owner started a reno project by demolishing a room or two, then realized that they had no idea how to put it all back together, and the house sat unfinished for months, sometimes years. Those are guys.

In the second show, home owners want to renovate their house, but they hire a professional to do it for them because they know they don’t have the skills to do it themselves. Those are men.

If you’re still confused after this, there’s nothing more I can do to help you.

* * * *

The final season of Game of Thrones has reached its halfway point, and it has not disappointed. Seventeen and a half million people tuned in to watch the season premiere, a record for HBO. Two weeks later, that record was shattered when almost eighteen million viewers sat glued to their seats to watch The Long Night, the epic battle of Winterfell.

Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, and the Armies of the Living faced off against the Night King, the White Walkers, and the Army of the Dead.

Everything I know about planning a battle I learned as a dental x-ray technician when I was in the Army. I think Jon Snow went to the same school of combat that I did. Prior to last Sunday, Jon had commanded two major battles. The Battle of the Bastards, and the expedition beyond the Wall to capture a wight.

* * * *

I always thought the idea to capture a zombie warrior was stupid. Until Danerys said that it was something you had to see in order to believe it. That was definitely true.

Jon Snow: “The real enemy isn’t the person sitting on the Iron Throne. It’s the Night King.”

Pretty Much Everyone Else: “And who is that, exactly?”

Jon Snow: “Remember the Snow Miser? He’s like that, except he can resurrect the dead, and he’s really good at the javelin.”

The Hound: “Shit. This guy is a fucking cunt, too.”

Pretty Much Everyone Else: “You know nothing, Jon Snow.”

However, once he captured a zombie warrior, Jon was able to convince his Queen/girlfriend/aunt that the threat was real, and everyone stopped wondering if he had stopped taking his Haldol.

* * * *

Back to Jon’s battles. He lost them both. I pointed this out to my wife, and she told me to shut up. She has kind of a celebrity crush on Kit Harrington.

Jon Snow was saved both times by outside interventions. The knights of the Vale rode in to save his ass at the Battle of the Bastards. Daenerys and her dragons flew in to save his ass beyond the Wall. And he was going down for the third time when Jon’s half-sister/niece saved everyone’s ass by killing the Night King, which killed his entire zombie army. And an undead dragon.

All I can say is there better be two women that are Knights of the Seven Kingdoms after this. And whose idea was it to shelter all of the women and children down in the crypts? 

Jon Snow: “We’re fighting against a magical king who can reanimate the dead as warriors in his army!”

Somebody: “Okay. We’ll send all of the women and children down into the crypts during the battle to keep them safe.”

Somebody Else: “What’s down there?”

Sansa Stark: “Nothing much. It’s a cemetery…”

Pretty Much Everyone Else: “Brilliant!”

* * * *

Sadly, several of our favorite characters didn’t survive the Battle of Winterfell, most notably Ser Jorah Momont and his cousin, Lady Lyanna Mormont.

Ser Jorah was an honorable man who did some very dishonorable things, and was trying like hell to redeem himself. He kind of reminds me of me. Except he was tall. And handsome. And a great warrior.

Lyanna Mormont was ten years old. She was maybe four feet tall, but that kid was made of Valyrian steel. She definitely made the most of her brief screen appearances. Westeros will be a lesser place without her presence.

Anyone who knows me wouldn’t be surprised that I’m a huge GoT fan. Anyone who knows my lovely supermodel wife would be very surprised to find out that she is. But she has even been researching the series on the Interweb and listening to all of kooky theories about what happens next.

I don’t know about you, but for me, this is as good as it gets.

* * * *

One of the struggles of being retired is finding something interesting to watch on TV, especially during the day. There is seriously nothing worth watching 99% of the time. I rarely actually watch TV, even though I rarely turn it off when I’m awake. I’ve discovered that I need the noise to keep me from going crazier.

A couple of weeks ago I started watching The Good Witch, mostly out of sheer desperation. For one thing, it’s on the Hallmark Channel, so I’ve probably seen most of their Christmas movies. Another thing, it stars Catherine Bell. And I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen all of her Christmas movies. And there’s one more thing, I’ve kind of developed a celebrity crush on the fair Catherine.

For those of you who don’t know what this means, a celebrity crush is someone famous that you find immensely desirable/attractive/sexy and, if given the chance, would be more than happy to sleep with, or more accurately, have a lots of sex with.

As a result, I decided to do some research on my celebrity crush, you know, just in cases Catherine Bell decides she can’t live without me. And I was crushed. It seems my celebrity crush has been cheating on me. With her girlfriend. Yeah, my secret sweetheart doesn’t even like guys.

And there’s another thing. Catherine Bell is tall, like, 5′ 10″ tall. She’s a fucking Amazon Princess compared to me. If she ever tried to hug me, my face would end up

Yep. Right about there…

Given the fact that I’m a very happily married guy, and I’d hate to lose my lovely supermodel wife to a celebrity lesbian, I’m going to hold off inviting Catherine down here to visit.

Though that hug looks like it might be a lots of fun…

I Didn’t See That Coming

Another post? Dude, are you feeling okay?

I’m good. Thanks for asking. I will admit to looking for things to do of late. I got kind of caught up in doing stuff around the new house, and I have some excess energy that I haven’t figured out how to focus yet.

Give me a week.

* * * *

Hey there, sports fans. How’s it going? The two best games of the NFL season were played yesterday to determine which teams would play for the Lombardi Trophy in the Super Bowl.

Both teams were evenly matched, so I didn’t make any predictions about winners, but I did have preferences. Both games went into overtime, which shows you evenly matched the teams were. You guys all know what OT is and how it works, right? Because I’m not going to explain it.

The Los Angeles Rams kicked a field goal to beat the New Orleans Saints, 26-23. I can’t say I saw that coming, but I was rooting for the Rams. Many fans are upset about the defensive pass interference penalty that wasn’t called, allowing the Rams to tie the game and send it into overtime.

I have an extreme dislike of the Saints. I don’t care how many penalties don’t go their way. I hope they lose every Championship game they play in from now until the end of time. I think they’re a dirty team, and this is just the chickens coming home to roost. It’s karma, and they’ve accrued an outstanding balance.

The Los Angeles Rams are a very good football team, with an impressive history. Back in the 60’s and 70’s, the LA Rams were one of the best teams in the NFL, but they didn’t play in a single Super Bowl, mostly because they had to play the Minnesota Vikings, outdoors, in Minnesota, in the middle of winter, for the NFC Championship.

They never beat the Vikings in December.

The Rams moved from Los Angeles to St Louis in 1995. They were easily the best team in the league in 1999, and won their one and only Super Bowl that year. Two years later, they returned to the Super Bowl, but lost to the New England Patriots.

* * * *

In the second game yesterday, the New England Patriots scored a touchdown to defeat the Kansas City Chiefs, 37-31. I did see that coming. Anyone that knows anything about football did. Like most of the country, I’m tired of the Patriots being in the Super Bowl. I was hoping the Chiefs would win.

It’s a testament to Bill Belichick, the head coach of the Patriots. I think he’s the greatest coach in the NFL, ever. There are a few coaches that have won multiple Super Bowls, but they did so with rosters that stayed essentially unchanged during their championship runs.

Belichick has done it with wholesale changes in personnel from one year to the next. The only player who has been a constant for Belichick is his quarterback, Tom Brady. Under his tenure, the Patriots will have been to the Super Bowl nine times. He has developed a near perfect system, and he knows how to coach his players to thrive in it, no matter who they are.

Lea and I have been discussing having a Super Bowl party, of sorts. Invite our friends, have everyone bring a dish to share, and their own liquid refreshments. What could be easier?

Go, Rams. Beat the Patriots. Please.

Maybe Tom Brady will decide to retire…

* * * *

In other news, there isn’t really much to report. Our kit-tens, Mika and Mollie have been keeping us on our toes, and sometimes they’ve been keeping us up at night. I mean, who doesn’t love wrestling at 1:30 AM?

They broke my terra cotta armadillo into six pieces the other night. It took me half a day to glue him back together again.

What I don’t understand is how two tiny, adorable sweethearts can make so much noise? They might weigh two pounds a piece, but they sound like a stampeding herd of horses racing across our tile floors in the middle of the night.

* * * *

The Mexican gas shortage goes on, despite the government claims that everything will be back to normal “soon.” Time is a very arbitrary unit of measure in Mexico. Seriously. Ahorita, the Mexican word for soon can also mean never. I mean, how arbitrary can you get?

It hasn’t been a huge inconvenience yet. I hope it stays that way.

* * * *

If I were going to write an autobiography, the title of this post would be a good candidate for its title. It’s one of the hazards of not being a prophet. And being oblivious to a fair amount of the things going on around me.

Two of my retirement wives have used that word to describe me. I could probably argue with them, but I’m not sure I’ve ever won an argument with Lea. And I have no idea how she does that.

She’s like unto a superhero in the Marvel Universe, and that’s her superpower.

Ms. Right.

I know I didn’t see that coming when I married her. I used to be right about stuff before I married her. For the longest time I thought two people who were used to being right shouldn’t get married. I’ve gotten over that. In the Big Picture, being right isn’t the most important thing in a marriage.

Being at peace is far more important.

Besides, I really am oblivious to a lots of stuff. And I don’t see myself as being especially intuitive. Or empathetic. I might be those things from time to time, but it’s probably more by accident than design.

That would also be a good title for the story of my life.

* * * *

A funny thing happened to me the other day. I wrote a post that ended up being a political commentary on the United States and its current Commander in Chief. And one of my readers told me she thought it was the best thing I’d written.

It’s kind of like Mozart playing Die Zauberflöte for you, but you tell him, You know, I liked that Happy Birthday song better.

Let me clarify that. I’m hardly the Mozart of Writing. Weird Al Yankovic, maybe…

I think I’ve written some very good stuff. My last post wasn’t one of my best, in my opinion. It was one my least favorite posts.

Becoming a political commentator is something I know I never envisioned when I started writing my blog. If I had known it, I might have taken a different route. I am not politically savvy. You could ask any of my former bosses, they’d tell you. The fact that I’m writing about politics is probably one of the most egregious accidental things I’ve done in years.

What this person liked about my post was that I made my points without being ugly, or mudslinging, or name-calling. It’s not a tactic I would ever think about using. It’s something like unto the Golden Rule:

I don’t like people being rude to me. Therefore, I try not to be rude to anyone. I don’t know anyone who enjoys interacting with rude people. Rude people suck. It’s one of the things I don’t like about The Donald. He’s very rude, which is an unattractive quality in anybody, but especially unattractive in a President.

And then there’s this whole collusion with Russia thing, which I will freely admit I don’t understand at all, and have made no attempt to understand better.

I did see something the other day that said Trump colluded with Russia to destabilize the United States, and I have to admit that it made me laugh. From what I’ve seen, he hasn’t needed any help to do that.

He’s been doing a great job all by himself.

Any person in a leadership position has an obligation to model behavior that is beneficial to the organization they represent. Encouraging people to act like assholes is hardly needed in this day and age. Social media has that well in hand.

A leader who acts like a bully is nothing more than a tyrant. Back in the 1700’s, our forefathers fought a revolution to free themselves from what they perceived as tyrannical rule.

Is it time for another American revolution? Possibly. I’m still not much of a prophet, so I don’t know if it’s necessary or not.

All I know for sure is I won’t be fighting it. That’s for the generations that follow mine. I chose the Millennials. There’s a lots of them, they’re socially connected, and they don’t seem to believe in anything meaningful.

They need to create their purpose.

My generation already played there part in changing the world, for better or for worse. Like it or not, it’s something a generation gets to do only once.

Home For The Holidays

¡Feliz Navidad!

My lovely supermodel wife and I want to take this opportunity to wish you a blessed and joyful Christmas season. Well, and probably any other season too, for that matter. Unless it’s football season. If you’re a Packers fan, or a Bears fan–all bets are off.

In that instance, we hope that your team sucks and that you, as a fan, are miserable every time your team plays our team.

Despite a mediocre record this year, the Vikings still have a chance to make it to the playoffs as a wild card team. I had pretty much given up on them, and didn’t even bother to watch their game last week. So they played their best game of the season and clobbered the Miami Dolphins.

We’ll probably watch the game today. They’re playing the Detroit Lions. Besides, we’ve already watched every Hallmark Christmas movie at least five times. I’ve written about the Hallmark movies before. Despite the fact that they’re all essentially the same movie, we’ve apparently become addicted to them.

I’ve had my heartstrings pulled a few times watching them this year. As predictable as they all are, it’s Christmas. And everyone loves a happy ending at Christmas. 🎄🎅

* * * *

This will be our third Christmas in Mexico, but it’ll be the first Christmas in our new home. It actually feels like Christmas this year. For one thing, it’s freezing inside of our cavernous abode. Lea and I are from Minnesota, and Christmas is almost always cold there. Like, below fucking zero cold. It’s one of the reasons we moved to Arizona.

We have a couple of portable propane heaters at the new house, and we’re getting good use out of them. They kick out a lots of heat, until their tanks run out of fuel. The propane guys who fill the two big tanks that supply the main house and the casita can fill the portable tanks whenever they’re in the neighborhood, but I hate to request a special delivery from them if I only need a few liters of propane.

There’s a place called Zeta Gas about a mile west of here. They have a drive through facility. You pull up to the pump, hand the guy your tank, and he fills it up for you. It’s a minor hassle in the Big Scheme of Life, but the last two times our heaters died, they died on a Sunday. The one day of the week that Zeta Gas is closed.

Back in the States, you don’t actually buy propane tanks. You more or less rent the canister, and when it’s empty you take it back to the store and rent another full one. And you can do that at probably a dozen different places any day of the week. Here, you buy an empty tank at the hardware store. It’s up to you to get it filled and keep it filled.

It was one of those “on the job training/This is Mexico” things for me. We didn’t have this issue at our last house. So I bought a backup tank the other day, and filled it right away. Take that, Sunday! I’m ready for you now.

* * * *

Second, our Christmas decorations are on display. We even have a Christmas tree, thanks to Al and Jane Castleman. They loaned us one of theirs. It even looks fairly festive. We set it up on the patio so our kit-tens, Mika and Mollie, can’t destroy it.

Kit-tens. I don’t remember our last kit-tens being so…mischievous. I struggle to find the right word to describe their antics. From their point of view, all they’re doing is what comes naturally to them. They’re smart, they’re curious, and they’re very good at jumping. And they like us, so of course they want to help us, no matter what it is we’re trying to do.

I’ve discovered I spend quite a bit of time talking to our growing furbabies.

“Mollie! Get off of the table!” 

“Mika! How the hell did you get up there?”

“Don’t make me get the squirt bottle!!”

I don’t like having to use the squirt bottle on the kit-tens, but it’s the most effective tool in feline behavior modification, ever.

* * * *

And thirdly, we have guests this year. Gwen and John Henson flew down from Austin, TX to celebrate the holiday with us. Gwen is Lea’s oldest daughter. She’s also our brilliant financial planner. John is her loving husband. He’s a very good man.

Historically, Gwen and John have always traveled back to Minnesota for Christmas. I’m not sure why they decided to come here this year; I’m just glad they did. And Lea is thrilled beyond words.

Other than Lea’s boyfriend, Todd, they’re probably the only people who actually like us. They’ve come to visit us more than anyone else.

* * * *

We’re finally settled in at our new house. It feels like home. We’ve been here about two months, but it seems somehow longer. Like, this is the place we were supposed to be when we moved here. All of the big things we wanted to do when we moved in have been crossed off the list. Pretty much all of the little things that needed to be done have been taken care of, too.

I can get back to resting on my…laurels…again. And playing golf.

I went golfing last week with the guy who painted our house. Francisco Flores Bernini is a caddy at Vista del Lago, the country club that I’m a member of. He showed me several of the houses he had painted out there. That’s why I decided to hire him to paint our new house.

Francisco is a very good caddy, which has been good for me. He’s also a very good golfer, which wasn’t so good for me last Thursday. I played the best round of golf I’ve ever played in my life, and Francisco still beat me by seventeen strokes. He gave me a lots of tips while we golfed, and some of them even worked when I tried them. I might end up being a decent golfer someday if all of his suggestions work.

But my favorite best memory of that day was buying coffee from Luli, the refreshment cart girl. I was paying for our drinks, and I gave Luli a nice tip. You know, it’s Christmas…

“Do you want to give her a hug?” Francisco asked me in English, but the way he said it made it more of a suggestion than a question.

“Sure. Why not.” I replied. Francisco told Luli that I wanted to give her a hug, in Spanish. She speaks some English, but I guess he didn’t want there to be any confusion about this. Luli giggled, and she hugged me. That’s when I figured out why Francisco wanted me to hug her.

Luli has what we call in America an epic set of tits.

“¿Puedo tener un abrazo también?” Francisco asked Luli, and she smiled and hugged him, too. “Man, I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.” Francisco confessed, as we drove to the next tee box. “When I’m caddying out here, she won’t give me the time of day. But today, I’m a golfer. After you gave her that tip, I knew she wouldn’t say no to hugging you.

“I was just hoping she wouldn’t say no to hugging me. I’m never going to forget this day. I’m going to remember this as one of the best days in my life.”

Because of Francisco, I’m going to remember it that way, too.

* * * *

Christmas, as every Hallmark movie will tell you, is a time for family. I can tell you it doesn’t always work out that way in real life. The last time my entire family got together for Christmas was 2006 when my mother was dying to death from cancer.

It’s not one of those warm, fuzzy memories for me.

Given the fact that Lea and I are now living deep in the heart of Mexico, it’s not likely that we’ll travel to the Great White North. Lea has sworn that she will never go back to Minnesota during the winter. To be honest, it’s not something I would look forward to either. It’s even less likely that anyone in my family would come down here to see us.

That’s the reality of life. Even so, if I don’t spend another Christmas with my family, it won’t be the worst thing that will ever happen to me. Or them. We still love each other. Well, most of us still love each other. I can always call them. Or at the very least, send them a deeply affectionate text.

Once you grow up, you realize that family is a word that can have multiple layers. There’s the family you were born into. There’s the family you make when you get married. There’s the family you make with friends, co-workers; pretty much any group of people you want.

Family, much like unto reality, can be anything you imagine it to be.

So, Merry Christmas to us. Merry Christmas to you. And as Tiny Tim so eloquently stated, “A Merry Christmas to us all; God bless us every one.”

The Year of the Cat

It’s Sunday. I usually reserve Sundays for watching football. But today, the Minnesota Vikings took the day off. It’s too bad, because they were supposed to play the Buffalo Bills.

Way back in the day, professional football was something a select few guys did for a few months, then went back to their real jobs when the season was over. Nowadays, professional football is a year-round endeavor. For the coaches and players, it’s their only job. It’s not just a job, it’s a career.

From that point of view, there’s no excuse for a football team that’s allegedly this good to look so bad against a team they were supposed to beat by sixteen points. There’s no doubt that there’s a lots of talent on the Vikings roster, but you didn’t see any of it on the field today.

In an upset of epic proportions, the Vikings lost to the Bills, 27-6. The Bills, who lost their first two games this season by a total of fifty five points. I don’t know how to explain this, except it’s possible that the Vikings thought they were already in the Super Bowl. Then their performance is easily explained.

They haven’t looked this bad since the NFC Championship game last year. The only good thing about this game was the new Vikings kicker didn’t miss any field goals. As far as I know, he wasn’t even given the opportunity to attempt one. Anyone who knows anything about sports will tell you there’s a name for good teams that don’t beat bad teams.

Losers.

It’s nothing new for my team. They’ve played like this for as long as I can remember. Look like true Viking warriors one week, then look hungover drag queens the next. It kind of sucks. I am a big fan of professional football, and the Vikings. This NFL season is only three weeks old, and I’m already kind of over it.

If this truly is the Year of the Cat, the Jacksonville Jaguars should win the Super Bowl.

This year’s football roller coaster ride went south in a hurry.  My lovely supermodel fanatic wife was so disgusted she didn’t even yell at the TV once. She just quit watching the game and went out on the patio. I quit watching, too. I changed the channel to the PGA Championship.

Tiger Woods won! It was an amazing comeback for him, and for his sport. He’s clearly the most popular golfer in the world.

I could say something about my golf game, except I don’t have any meaningful updates. I haven’t even been golfing much. It’s been tremendously wet down here, in terms of water. I guess it doesn’t matter who says that line, it still sounds stupid.

* * * *

Year of the Cat is a song by Al Stewart. It got a lots of air time on the radio back in 1976 or so. It’s about a guy who’s taking a guided bus tour through the Middle East. During one stop, he and his fellow tourists go out to look around at a local marketplace. The surroundings remind the guy of scenes he saw in the movie Casablanca.

As he wanders around the bazaar, he sees a beautiful, “mysterious” girl. She’s not a local, but has been living in the area since the Year of the Cat. I guess that’s what makes her so mysterious. She leads him back to her room where they make love for hours, of course. When he wakes up the next morning, he finds that the tour bus is gone. So are his luggage, his clothes and his money.

It’s a very pretty, cautionary song about the hazards of leaving your group when you’re a tourist in a foreign country, apparently.

* * * *

My lovely supermodel wife and I retired to a foreign country, but I doubt either of us will ever have a misadventure at any of the local bazaars like unto the one outlined above.

Neither of us are in the market for any random hook-ups at this point in time of our lives. The only thing we have been in the market for since we got back from vacation, is a kit-ten. Or two.

We used to have a kit-ten, Samantha. She lived with us for twenty years. Sadly, we had to put her down in February of this year. I figured Lea would last about six months without a cat. I was more or less correct in my timeline. When Lea started her search she said she would be willing to take two kit-tens if they were from the same litter.

I don’t think I predicted that, but I can’t say that I was surprised to hear it.

Lea went to the nearest kit-ten rescue shelter a couple of times after we returned to Mexico and checked out the kit-tens, but she didn’t find the right one. We went to a place called Casa Miau, another cat rescue shelter in Jocotopec, the westernmost town in the Lakeside Area. It’s run by Don and Anita. They own a house in Joco, and rented another house just for their twenty-some-odd rescue cats.

There was only one problem. Anita seemingly didn’t want to part with any of her cats, even though she said all she wanted to do was to find good homes for them, and get her life back.

“I’m here everyday. I had to hire helpers because I can’t keep up with it anymore. That’s Chola. She’s not the right cat for you. That’s Paco. He’s not the right cat for you either. That’s Chance. He’s not going anywhere.”

We didn’t come home with a cat, but we accidentally heard about some orphaned kit-tens while we were at Casa Miau. We had taken a friend of ours named Randy, who has done a lots of animal rescue work, when we went to visit Anita’s herd of cats.

Anita mentioned the kit-tens to Randy because she didn’t have the time nor the energy to take care of any more cats. So Randy went to see the couple who were suddenly raising the three kit-tens whose mother had vanished. And that was how we met Rob and Pat.

They also live in Joco. They’re artists, quite good artists, in my opinion. Roughly eight weeks ago, a stray cat wandered into one of their art studios and decided it would be the perfect place to have her three babies, two females and one male. She would go hunting every day, but always returned to take care of her babies. Until the day she didn’t.

Rob and Pat knew nothing about about being kit-ten foster parents, but Randy did. She taught them how to bottle feed kit-tens, and all the other stuff you need to do when you’re a pet foster parent. Rob and Pat have four or five dogs. They like cats, but didn’t feel they needed more pets. Mostly what they wanted was to find good homes for their orphaned kit-tens.

And that’s how we met Mika and Mollie. They’re sisters, the two females in the litter. It was love at first sight for both Lea and myself. We had to wait nine days before we brought them home, but there was never any question in Lea’s mind whether she had found her new kit-tens or not.

That’s Mika on the left. She has the cutest little kit-ten face. And that’s Mollie on the right. She’s fuzzier than Mika, and a bit bigger than her sister. The fuzzy fur is the easiest way to tell them apart. They look remarkably similar.

I’m not sure what their mother looked like, but our kit-tens almost look like Himalayans. Maybe they’re Semilayans? Whatever they are, they’re so little, and so cuuuute! They’re maybe eight weeks old at the most. They’re just learning to eat solid food. And run. And jump. And do kit-ten stuff.

They are seriously darlingpreshadorbs!

I’ve never been the parent of small  children. The only thing I’ve ever raised in my life is hell, and it’s probably the last qualification that anyone would look for in a foster parent for anything. Luckily, Lea has raised children, and kit-tens before. I’ve been counting on her expertise to get me through the first few weeks or months until the kit-tens don’t need constant supervision.

My duties so far have been cleaning the litter box and cleaning the floor. I’m okay with this. I have experience in those fields. The other thing I’ve been doing is buying things, like, cat condos, scratching posts and play toys. I think the kit-tens will eventually grow to like the play toys more than they like crumpled wads of paper, or my toes, someday…

I might grow to appreciate their help with writing my blog someday, too. I’ve had to stop writig multiple times today when they’ve climbed on top of my lap to edit what I’ve been writing about them. If I ever get tired of doing this, I might let them take over. They might be better writers than I am.

I will never get tired of watching them play. Kit-tens are kind of like furry, little wind up toys. They run around at manic speed for as long as they can, then sleep for an hour or so. They make me smile like unto a

A Football Wife

Hey there, sports fans.

Today is Día de la Independencia in Mexico. There’s a band playing in the eventos right below our development. There will probably be a band playing there almost every night from now until Christmas Day.

I call it Fiesta Season. Bands. Cerveza. Music. Más cerveza. Singing. Tequila. Fireworks. It’s basically a four month party. I don’t mind the loud music. Most of the time I think it’s really cool, and it adds to the charm of our retirement lives.

I am not a fan of the fireworks. Mexican fireworks are essentially sky rockets made out of sticks of dynamite. That first one always catches me by surprise, and I always have to check if I shit my pants. After I crawl out from under the bed.

The following explosions aren’t as traumatic. You tend to get used to them. Or you leave.

* * * *

And, another American football season is underway. It’s basically a five month roller coaster ride for most football fans. My lovely supermodel wife is starting to believe it’s true for her. I don’t usually brag about myself much, but I won the Grand Slam of Marriage when I married Lea. Spooky-smart, beautiful, great cook, and she loves football.

I’ve been a Vikings fan since I was a kid. Lea has been a Vikings fan since she married me. She didn’t know anything about football when we got married.

“I wanted to know something about the game, but my dad and my ex-husband wouldn’t explain it to me. They said it was too complicated and I wouldn’t understand.”

Yeah, right.

I didn’t have any problems explaining it to her. Football isn’t that complicated.  It’s not like cricket, which makes no goddamn sense whatsoever. Even people who understand it can’t explain it. Lea has a very good grasp of football. She can hold her own with any guy on the planet when it comes to talking about her team. She can break down a game with the best of them.

Somewhat oddly, I think I become a little less of a fan as each year goes by and my team fails to win the Super Bowl. Again. Plus, I’ve just about had it with the NFL. Between the rule changes and the controversy over the national anthem, I’d give up on the game entirely. Except it’s football, and there’s nothing else like it.

Equally oddly, I think Lea becomes a little more of a fanatic each year. Somehow, balance is maintained, and that’s always a good thing.

Last year the Vikings made it all the way to the NFC Championship game. Some people think they’ll go all the way this year. They have a good team, but making it to the Super Bowl requires far more than just a good team. In every football season there are at least ten good teams, or more, that don’t play in the Super Bowl.

The Vikings had the best defense in the NFL last year. I don’t know what happened over the off season, but there appears to have been a dramatic drop off in their performance from what I’ve seen so far this year.

I have one theory about this, and I’ll get to it a little later.

To enhance their chances of winning it all this year, the Vikings added some key players through free agency and the draft, most notably, Kirk Cousins at quarterback. He might be the missing piece of their championship puzzle.

The Vikings thought they were missing just one puzzle piece before. In the end, they didn’t win the Super Bowl, but the trade they made allowed the Dogass Cowboys to win three of them.

There are a few NFL teams I don’t like. The Patriots. The Steelers. The Eagles. But I hate only one team. If Dallas never won another game, I’d be okay with that.

Elite quarterbacks in the NFL make a ridiculous amount of money. Kirk Cousins signed a three year contract with the Vikings worth $84 million US dollars. That’s something like unto a ga-zillion Mexican pesos.

But football is the ultimate team sport. One guy probably isn’t going to make your team great. I wasn’t convinced this was a personnel move that the Vikings needed to make. Until today. The Vikings played the Green Bay Packers and almost won a game they absolutely should have lost. And the reason they almost won was Kirk Cousins. He completed 35 of 48 pass attempts for 425 yards and four touchdowns.

One of the reasons the Vikings almost lost was because of a guy named Laquon Treadwell. He’s a wide receiver. He was the Vikings number one draft choice in 2016, and signed a four year contract worth almost $10 million. In two years, he’s caught 21 passes for less than 300 yards, and he scored his first NFL touchdown today.

That comes to roughly $476,000 per catch. In football terms, he’s been an absolute bust so far. In football fan terms, he totally sucks. He might have caught his first TD pass today, but he dropped at least four passes and deflected one pass directly to one of the Packers’ defenders for an interception that almost cost his team the game.

I think Lea stopped breathing when that happened. I have never been a fan of Laquon Treadwell, and I’ve been wondering why he’s still on the team for two years.

It was at this precise moment that I kind of fell in love with Kirk Cousins. Laquon looked like he was ready to kill himself, and Kirk came up to him and said, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get ’em next time.”

That was a class move, and was probably worth $10 million all by itself. If Laquon Treadwell ever becomes a decent NFL receiver, he’ll probably owe it to Kirk Cousins.

As it turned out, the final score was a tie. 29-29. And the reason it ended that way was another personnel change. The Vikings released their veteran place kicker and signed a kid from Auburn named Dan Carlson. In football terms, he has a monster leg, and signed a contract worth $728,000 for this year.

Dan missed three field goals today. One attempt was 35 yards, a distance a guy with a monster leg ought to be able to hit even if he only had one leg. Two of his misses were in the overtime period. My lovely and fanatical supermodel wife didn’t take that well.

“You have one fucking job! ONE!!” she screamed at the TV three times today. I don’t think Lea likes any kicker, and she sure as hell doesn’t like Dan Carlson right now. She is just too cute for words as far as I’m concerned.

I’ve come to realize that everyone has a bad day, and this was clearly the worst day of young Mr. Carlson’s life. I’m sure the Vikings will him a chance to redeem himself, but he should realize that NFL stands for Not For Long if you’re a field goal kicker that can’t kick a field goal.

* * * *

Will the Vikings win the Super Bowl this year? Based on what I’ve seen thus far, I don’t think so. On paper, the Vikings have a great defense. But this game isn’t played on paper, and the defense I’ve seen has had moments of greatness, but they have not been consistently great.

Part of this is an attitude thing. The Vikings seem to think their opponents should fear their greatness. If they looked at the tape of the games, they should be able to see that none of their opponents have feared them yet, and they aren’t going to find many teams that do.

Not the way they’re playing right now. So it’s probably a very good thing that the Vikings spent a couple of truckloads of money for a guy who can throw a lots of touchdowns.

My lovely supermodel head coach wife agrees with me on this issue. She is far more anxious about how this year’s team is going to perform than I am, but I have a twenty year head start on her when it comes to being disappointed by the Vikings.

This year’s roller coaster ride is going to be a whole lots worse than last year. I better stock up on my blood pressure medication because I think I’m going to need to double my dose on Sundays.

🎼Turn Out the Lights,🎶 the Party’s Over🎵

Hey there, sports fans.

I went to my first golf lesson today. My instructors were…impressed. Kind of. But I think what impressed them most was how bad I was at times.

“Señor, you have two swings. One swing is muy bonito. One swing is no muy bonito.”

They’re so polite here. It’s actually kind of cute. Well, they didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. What I’m not sure of is where my ugly swing came from.

However I acquired it, acquire it I did. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get rid of it. Hopefully, the lessons will help with that. The lessons cost 75 pesos, around four bucks. Life here so incredibly… economical. Among other things.

Last week, my golf wife, Phyllis, came up with a plan for world golf domination. Now that we’re both members of the Chapala Country Club, were going to play nine holes on Monday. I take golf lessons on Tuesday, she goes on Wednesday. Play nine holes on Thursday, and eighteen holes on Saturday.

We’ll see how that goes. My scores right now vary anywhere from the low fifties to the low sixties for nine holes, depending on how many times I utilize my very ugly swing, I suppose.

If I actually get any better at golf, you’ll be the next to know.

* * * *

Well, in case you weren’t aware, the Minnesota Vikings ended their run to the Super Bowl last Sunday by playing their worst game of the season against the Philadelphia Eagles.

Final score: 38-7. The Eagles scored 38 points, not the Vikings.

It wasn’t the best way to finish what had been a pretty remarkable season for them. The Vikings scored on their first drive, and that was probably a good thing. I don’t think they came close to scoring for the reminder of the game.

On the bright side, it wasn’t a nail biter/heartbreaker kind of loss. You know, where the game was tied and Philly scored late to win. This game was probably over before halftime. Vikings fans had a lots of time to come to terms with the fact that their team was going to get its ass kicked. Soundly.

That part does kind of suck. If only the best teams make it to the playoffs, how does a really good team get beat by 31 points?

Good question. Watching the game, I noticed a couple of things. The Vikings were out of position on most of the plays in that game, and the Eagles weren’t. Minnesota couldn’t do much right, and Philly didn’t do much wrong.

It’s rare, but sometimes it happens, and you never want to be the on the wrong side of that equation, especially in the playoffs. I look at it as good incentive for the Vikings next year. That loss is going to stick with them a long time. Far longer than it will with me.

I’m not a football player, or a coach. I just love watching the games.

My lovely supermodel wife and I used to attend Vikings games when we lived in Minneapolis. The Metrodome was five miles from our house. We went to one of their games when we lived in Arizona. University of Phoenix Stadium, home of the Cardinals, was eight miles from our house.

By the way, the Vikings clobbered the Cardinals that day. By the start of the fourth quarter, almost all of the Cardinals fans had left. When we walked out of the stadium at the end of game, it was all Vikings fans.

That memory still makes me smile.

* * * *

Being a sports fan in Minnesota isn’t easy. Minnesota has at least four men’s professional sports teams. The Vikings in football. The Twins in baseball. The Wild in hockey. And Timberwolves in basketball.

Additionally, Minnesota has a professional soccer team, I think. I suppose I could look on the Interweb and find out, but I’ve never been a big soccer fan. It is very popular here in Mexico, so maybe I’ll start watching it. Someday.

And, Minnesota also has a professional women’s basketball team. The Lynx.

Professional sports are a big deal not just in the US, but worldwide. If you doubt this, take a look at the salaries some professional athletes make. They’re outrageous! Be that as it may, it’s part of the world we created.  And without the presence of these teams, Minnesota would essentially be, you know, Iowa.

Minnesota sports teams have historically let their fans down. Not just once. A lots of times. All of them.

It’s so bad that all of the Minnesota teams have nicknames denoting their high level of mediocrity. The Vikings/Viqueens. The  Twins/Twinkies. The Timberwolves/Timberpups. The Wild/Mild.

I outlined the Vikings history of falling apart in the playoffs in my last post, and I don’t have the heart to repeat it again. If you’re at all interested, you can read about them there, or on the Wikipedia.

* * * *

The Minnesota Twins were a small market, mediocre team for a good part of their history. They did make it to the postseason a couple of times in the Sixties and Seventies, but they lost in the ACLS at least twice. But then there was a magical three year period from 1989 to 1991. The Twins won two World Series, beating National League teams from St Louis and Atlanta.

The Twins haven’t performed all that well in any of their subsequent postseason appearances. They haven’t been back to World  Series since. Be that as it may, the Twins have given all of Minnesota something we don’t have to be athletically embarrassed about, and for that, I will always love the Twins, even if I’m not a big baseball fan.

I always thought baseball was kind of boring, especially on TV. Lea and I went to several Twins games back when they were really good. The Metrodome wasn’t the best venue for baseball. It probably wasn’t all that great for football, to be honest. I was very happy when the Dome was destroyed and both the Twins and the Vikings now have new stadiums.

We’re planning a trip back to Minnesota later this year. I definitely want to see the new stadiums. I’ve heard they’re both beautiful.

* * * *

The Minnesota Wild, our professional hockey team, has a history much like unto the Vikings. They play good hockey, sometimes even great hockey, during the regular season. Once the playoffs begin, they become mediocre at best. I don’t think they’ve ever made it to the Stanley Cup Finals.

I like hockey, but I’ve never been a huge hockey fan. It’s fast paced, and the puck goes about two hundred miles an hour. You really have to keep your eyes open to follow the game. There’s one strange thing about Canadian TV. We can see every Vikings game here in Mexico, but the Wild are almost always blacked out for some strange reason. If not for that kooky fact, I might be a much bigger hockey fan now.

I don’t watch much baseball or basketball. I might watch more if either the Twins or the Wolves were broadcasted by Canadian TV, but they aren’t. And there’s my lovely supermodel wife. While she does love football, she doesn’t love all sports equally.

I’d probably watch any sporting event, even knitting, if it was in an arena…

Lea and I used to go to hockey games when we lived in Minneapolis, and in Surprise. Arizona also has a hockey team, the Coyotes. Their arena is across the parking lot from University of Phoenix Stadium. I think I loved hockey fans far more than I loved hockey. Those guys were fucking hilarious.

Minnesota used to have a different hockey team, the North Stars. Much like the Wild, they tended to fall apart in the postseason, until they moved to Dallas and finally won the Stanley Cup. However, by then they were no longer a Minnesota team.

* * * *

The Timberwolves are the NBA team. They were a very bad basketball team until roughly 1997, when they made it to the playoffs several times, but never advanced to the NBA Finals. Ever.

They have a good, young team now. They might become a force to reckon with. Someday. Hopefully, soon.

I used to take my nephew, Michael, to Timberwolves games. He liked basketball, and their arena was maybe seven miles from our house. I can’t remember how many games we went to together, but I never saw the Wolves win a game in person.

Minnesota used to have another basketball team. From 1947 to 1959, the Minneapolis Lakers were a great basketball team. They were the one of the best teams ever in the NBA, and because they were so good they clearly didn’t belong in Minnesota, and they moved to Los Angeles. Where they have continued to be a very good basketball team.

The bastards.

* * * *

The Lynx are without a doubt the most successful current professional sports team, male or female, in all of Minnesota. The Lynx have qualified for the WNBA playoffs nine times. With four championships, the Lynx are tied with the Houston Comets for the most titles in WNBA history, and they have won more Western Conference championships than any other franchise.

Those gals are good, so they’ll probably move to New York. Or Florida. Or anywhere but Minnesota soon.

* * * *

Yah, and that’s about it from here regarding the Minnesota sports scene. The Vikings can practice their golf games, much like me, until August when their season starts again. Maybe they’ll win it all next year.

Basketball and hockey seasons are in full swing. I have no idea how either the Wild or the Timberwolves are doing. If either of them make it to the playoffs, I’ll probably watch their games, and cheer for them.

Baseball season probably starts in a couple of months. The Twins had a pretty good team last year. They might make some noise this year.

The Lynx will probably win their conference, and they might win another championship.

You never know. This might be the year for one of those teams, but they are Minnesota teams. And almost every sports season in Minnesota ends with these words:

There’s always next year…

Divine Intervention

Hola, amigos.

I’d apologize for not writing more often, but I have no regrets about not writing, so I won’t. I hate receiving insincere apologies, so I hate giving them, too. I’ve been busy working on my golf swing with my golf wife. Judging by our scores, we’ll both be busy refining that aspect of our games for awhile.

If you thought this story was going to be about the miraculous hole in one I shot the last time I played, you’re going to be disappointed. Not as disappointed as I was, but still…

I’m not sure why I love doing something I’m so mediocre at, but life is full of mysteries. Golf is but one of them. I might feel the same way about bowling, but there aren’t any bowling alleys here, so I can’t fall in love with bowling.

I broke down and joined the Chapala Country Club a couple of weeks ago. I was spending roughly the amount of my monthly dues there anyhow, so it seemed like the thing to do.

I hear membership has its privileges, but I have no idea what they might be. I got a membership packet when I joined, but I haven’t read it. I figure if there’s something important, Phyllis will tell me. Phyllis is my golf wife, and she reads instructions.

And there’s our Spanish lessons. I think I’m picking up Spanish about as quickly as I’m improving in golf.

There are basically three types of gringos here. The ones who spoke Spanish before they got here. The ones who have no intention of learning Spanish, and act like fools when they go to the Telmex® office. And then there’s the ones like us who feel they have an obligation to learn the language of their new home.

We’re probably the minority of those three.

Poco y pinche poco. It’s a slow process, and frustrating at times. But it’s not like I have all that much on my schedule anymore. And the money we pay to learn Spanish is donated to help pay medical expenses for needy children.

As Lea says, at least someone is getting something out it.

* * * *

How’s everyone doing?

Life is still pretty sweet down here south of the border. It’s been chilly enough for us to use the fireplace, but seeing how someone who reads this might have actually frozen their ass off this winter, I’m not going to make too big a deal about the weather.

I’m still not sure how we ended up here when we did, so I tend to attribute wondrous things I can’t understand to God. If I didn’t believe in God I might attribute them to our cat, but I’ve never seen her do anything I could remotely call miraculous, so that’s too much of a stretch even for me.

I’m not sure I’ve ever outlined the chain of events that led us here in my blog. I’ve told the story a lots of times, and I’m too lazy to go back and read through my previous posts to find out…

I’m pretty sure all of this started when we moved from Minnesota to Arizona in 2007. My lovely supermodel wife became Phyllis’ boss. Phyllis, as in my current golf wife, Phyllis. Lea and Phyllis worked together for several years and eventually became good friends. In 2012, Phyllis and her husband, Max, were getting ready to retire. They were thinking about North or South Carolina because they were big NASCAR fans, and there’s a lots of race tracks in that part of the country.

Max has a brother, Rick. Rick was living in Ajijic, and he suggested Max and Phyllis come check the place out before they moved to either of the Carolinas. And that was the end of that plan. Max fell in love with Mexico. When Phyllis returned to work, she put in her notice, and my wife just about had a heart attack. Six weeks later, Max and Phyllis jumped in their car, and their retirement days began.

And that was almost the end of this story, except Phyllis sent Lea an email at work long after she moved away, I think it was 2014. A lots had happened in a couple years. Max had died. Phyllis missed her friend, and really wanted Lea to come visit her. After multiple invitations, we decided to check the place out in September of 2015, and flew to Guadalajara.

Phyllis had a little party for us while we were visiting. We met all of her best friends, and we listened to the promotional speeches they gave about why we should move to Mexico. We liked the Lakeside area. It was as pretty as a picture. However, at that time, neither of us were thinking about retiring, not for several years at least. And neither of us had even remotely considered retiring in Mexico. But it was certainly something to consider.

And then a whole lots of kooky things happened in rapid succession. In February of 2016, Lea’s company went through a major reorganization, and Lea found out she was going to be reorganized out of her job.

Just. Like. That.

Thanks for all your hard work and dedication. Please clear out all of your personal belongings by the end of business today.

Lea called her daughter, Gwen, who just happens to be our financial planner, and Gwen crunched some numbers. Gwen told her mother based on our savings and our Social Security income, Lea didn’t need to work anymore if she didn’t want to. And by virtue of that fact, neither did I. That memory still makes me smile.

It was at that precise moment that moving to Mexico started looking like a very real possibility.

Lea called Phyllis and they would have a lots of conversations over the next several months. Phyllis was instrumental in helping us navigate the obstacles of moving to a foreign country. Additionally, our landlord, Planet Janet, and all of Phyllis’ friends have been a great resource in assisting us in our transition. We haven’t had to face most of the pitfalls many expats run into when they move here.

Getting back to my story, we put our dream house in Surprise on the market and sold it in seven days.

Lea flew to Mexico and found a very spacious rental house three doors down from Casa del Phyllis. And she met Janet, who has become one of my favorite people.

The Mexican Moving Company came and packed up all our stuff, and headed south.

We rented a condo about five miles from the hospital I worked at and stayed there for three months until I retired at the end of September. Our furniture was waiting for us in our house when we arrived.

Everything that happened in this process fell into place so neatly. If we had planned it for years, it still wouldn’t have happened so perfectly. It was that slick.

Some might say it was nothing more than a series of coincidences. But I tend not to believe in coincidence. I’m more of an everything happens for a reason kind of guy. Besides, it’s more romantic when there’s a reason.

And that’s how we ended up in Mexico. I had a vague feeling something devastating was going to happen, you know, like unto a natural disaster. The Yellowstone Supervolcano was going to explode. That’s why we needed to get out of the US as quickly as we did.

Yeah, that didn’t happen. See? Still not a prophet…

Also, the fact that nothing terrible happened has left me wondering why we needed to get here so quickly. Well, Trump was elected President…  And however tragic I might view his election, it still wouldn’t have added up to anything equalling imminent danger to myself or Lea.

I’m not complaining about being here. I’m merely curious about the why.

Lea says that God is blessing us with this time together because we worked hard and we’ve been granted some peace and relaxation time.

It makes more sense than the volcano thing…

* * * *

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that almost everyone that believes in God has a Divine intervention story, and if it weren’t for God, they wouldn’t be here right now. We have, all of us believers, certainly prayed for divine intervention for any number of reasons.

Health. Illness. Love. Relationships. Life. Death.

The Bible is full of stories about God interceding for his people. There’s a lots of stories about prayers being answered by God and lives being changed for generations. I might write more about those someday. I spend more time thinking about that kind of stuff than anything else.

Lea’s not a big fan of my spiritual/ religious ramblings. She thinks it makes me appear, you know, crazy.

When I was a nurse, I used to pray for my patients. I used to pray for personal patience, understanding, and wisdom. When I was drunk I used to pray for a life changing intervention. Or death. And then I realized that’s one prayer that will always be granted, eventually.

It just never happens at the moment that you’re praying for it.

I see a lots of divine intervention in my sobriety. I doubt it’s an achievement I could have done on my own. Something greater than myself or my addiction came into play, and without that, I shudder to think what my life would be like now.

You can think what you like. For me, God saved my life, though I often wonder why He chose to do so.

* * * *

If you know me personally, or follow me on Facebook, you know my lovely supermodel wife and I are Minnesota Vikings fans. The Vikings had a very good season and are in the playoffs this year.

If you know anything about the Vikings history, you know the Vikings haven’t had the best results in playoffs. I have drowned many gridiron sorrows back in my drinking days, and celebrated scores of regular season wins. The Vikings have been to the NFC Championship game ten times. They’ve been NFC Champions four times. In their four Super Bowl appearances, they’ve come away with exactly zero Lombardi Trophies.

Divine intervention hasn’t been on the Vikings side in the playoffs. Miraculous plays always happened to the other team. But all that changed last Sunday night when the Vikings came from behind to beat the New Orleans Saints by scoring a 61 yard touchdown with ten seconds left on the clock.

The Vikings played a perfect first half, scoring seventeen points and shutting out the Saints. The Vikings defense was stellar, intercepting Drew Brees twice and keeping two of the best running backs in the game out of the end zone.

The second half was another story. The Saints scored twenty four points. The Vikings only six, and with twenty five seconds left in the game, the Vikings were down by one, and their season was about to end.

Lea and I were devastated. I was trying to figure out if we had enough medications to successfully overdose.

And then came the Minneapolis Miracle.

For once, God decided to favor the Vikings. For a brief moment, Jesus wore a Vikings uniform, and as Stefon Diggs trotted into the end zone, there was surprise and disbelief, then jubilation! Even the players couldn’t believe what happened. You can Google® it if you haven’t seen it. It really was incredible. And beautiful.

On Sunday, the Vikings play the Eagles for the NFC Championship. The winner goes to the Super Bowl, which will be played in Minneapolis this year. The Vikings might be the first NFL team to play a Super Bowl in their own stadium.

It could happen. Hopefully, they won’t need any miracles to beat the Eagles because there were at least three miracles involved in the winning touchdown play last Sunday. It was kind of an Angels in the Outfield thing. Seriously.

I’m not sure how much more miracles they have left.

I don’t know how much God has to do with the outcomes of football games. Personally, I’d think he’d have bigger fish to fry. But if God truly orchestrated a miracle or three to beat the Saints, then please keep the miracles coming for two more games.

I’ve never prayed for something as trivial as a football victory before. Like I said, I think God has better things to do, but I’m going to pray for not one, but two more wins for the Vikings this season. Let there be any number of miracles, and let the Vikings win just one Super Bowl, before I die.

Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed to any of us. Just because the Vikings had a great season this year doesn’t mean they’ll have an equally impressive season next year.

I’m not getting any younger, so they might as well do it now.

Work Related Polygamy

Trepaliare is a Latin word that the Spanish word for work, trabajo, is derived from. It means to torture, or inflict suffering or agony.

Ironic that I’m writing about my many work wives, isn’t it?

I had never had a work wife until I moved to Arizona, and then I had so many of them if I had to pay them alimony, I couldn’t quit working until twenty years after I got dead.

Debra Goral was my first work wife. It was her idea to be my work wife. I was incredibly flattered. No one had ever wanted to be my work wife before. I’m not sure my lovely real wife wants to be my wife most of the time.

Deb is in my Top Five Greatest Nurses, ever. She knows her stuff and she gets stuff done. She’s better at following rules than I am, but Hannibal Lector is probably better at following the rules than I am.

We worked together on AP 5 at St Luke’s, or as we liked to think of it, Hell on Earth. When Deb and I started working the evening shift together, it was the worst shift–in terms of personnel–in the entire building.

We had one objective, fix that. And we did. We fashioned together a team of awesomeness. I told all the BHT’s they had been chosen to work with us because they were the best BHT’s in the building, and they performed like they were. I started calling them the A Team, and that’s what they became. I loved them all. I eventually left St Luke’s because that team dissolved.

Here’s how totally fucking awesome those guys were. We had eleven open beds at the beginning of our shift one evening. When the shift ended, there was one. We did ten admissions on top of all the other stuff we always did, in eight hours. When the night shift came in, the eleventh admit was searched and his belongings were inventoried.

Those guys were really good.

I’m from Minnesota. Deb is from Wisconsin. I’m a Vikings fan. Deb loves the Packers. So, it was a mixed marriage. Despite our inherent differences, we made a strong team.

There are a lots of things I love about Deb, but what I loved most about her was her candor. She has no deceit in her. She doesn’t beat around the bush. She just tells you how it is, and you better be grown up enough to handle it. It was so refreshing!

All good things must end. Deb decided to transfer to the day shift.

Enter Rhonda Dolatshahi.

I’m not sure Rhonda ever formally became my work wife, but she brought me coffee every time we worked together, and if that doesn’t say work wife, I don’t know what does.

Rhonda is also in my Top Five Greatest Nurses, ever. She’s the Original Rockstar Nurse. Rhonda’s from Pennsylvania, and she’s a Steelers fan, so another mixed marriage.

Rhonda and I had worked together at Del Webb. I was one of her managers. I loved Rhonda because she was so easy to work with. She showed up when she was scheduled. She picked up extra shifts all the time, and she didn’t bitch about stupid stuff. Working the floor with her was a breeze. She also knew her stuff and knew how to get ‘er done.

And then she left. And then I did. It’s the people you work with that make the suffering and agony of employment bearable, and I could not work with the crazy bitches that replaced my first two work wives.

On to Aurora. Enter Tara Grant Molden.

Tara was my one and only Wonder Twin, ever. She was also my first work wife at Aurora, so technically, I married my twin sister. See? I told you my relationships were complicated. Well, if it was good enough for Mausolus and Artemisia, who am I to disagree?

Tara was a Broncos fan, so, yet another mixed marriage. She once confessed to me that she would totally suck Peyton Manning’s cock. I spent the rest of the day saying, “Omaha! Omaha!” But I couldn’t convince her I was Peyton Manning.

Tara was a relatively new nurse. She hadn’t reached the plateau of greatness my previous work wives had, but you could tell she was going to be great someday, and she was easily the most fun to work with–not that Deb and Rhonda weren’t. They were. Maybe it was because it wasn’t AP 5, which was not a fun place…

My buddy at the MVAMC, Paul Anderson, made me laugh a lots, but I know he wouldn’t want to be considered as one of my work wives. Tara was a blast.

She also had a totally hot bod. I called her Tits McGee. You talk about cups running over…

My time with Tara was brief, maybe a couple months. She transferred to the second floor, then transferred one of the Banner hospitals to hone her Med/Surg skills. Now she’s a Travel Nurse, no doubt breaking hearts all across the country.

Enter Adina Boros.

Adina was from Romania. She was my Melania Trump. She could care less about football. I once asked her which she would rather have: brains, or big tits?

“Brains. Then I could make enough money to buy big tits.”

Smart, and pretty. That was Adina. I think she’s an NP now. And I know what she’s buying herself for Christmas.

My time with Adina was also short. You know what? I must’ve been hell to work with!

Enter Alison Aveson.

Ali looked like Dora the Explorer–if Dora were pregnant–because Alison was totally knocked up when we started working together. I don’t think Alison cared much about football either. Another really good nurse. Another heart wrenching break up for me, although that whole taking time off to be with Baby Nimrod was a pretty compelling excuse.

I was reunited with my first work wife, Deb Goral, after Alison. Deb came to Aurora as a House Supervisor. We didn’t technically work together, but it was great to have her back, my first ex-work wife.

Enter Michelle Warren.

Two L Michelle would be the last of my work wives. Yet another really awesome nurse to work with; knew her stuff, got it done, didn’t put up with any bullshit.

Michelle was also a lots of fun to work with. I have been blessed beyond anything I ever deserved to work with those women, those incredibly talented rockstar nurses/work wives.

Thank you Deb and Rhonda. Thank you Tara and Adina. Thank you Alison and Michelle. It was mostly sweet, and y’all were really sweet to work with. I miss you all, and hope all is well.

The guest room is ready whenever you are.

A Football Life

I love football. My favorite NFL team is the Minnesota Vikings. They were one of best teams in the NFL three short weeks ago. They were the only undefeated team in the entire NFL. Last night, they lost to the Chicago Bears, a team that has been one of the worst NFL teams all season. Honestly, after the way the Vikings have performed over the last two weeks, they look like they’ll be fortunate to win another game this year.

The Vikings have been in the NFL since 1961. They’ve fielded some impressive teams over the years, most notably on the defensive side of the ball. Marshall, Eller, Page and Larson–the Purple People Eaters–were one of the best defensive lines of all time.

The Vikings have been to the Super Bowl four times. They have yet to win a Super Bowl. It’s like a friend of mine once said, “Oh yeah, the Vikings. Man, you know they’re gonna tear it up in the regular season, but they’ll break your heart in the playoffs.”

Ahem. Did you hear that guys? You have roughly nine weeks of not sucking left! Jaysus, Mary and Joseph!! Saints presarve us!!!

For those of you that don’t watch football, it’s a violent, contact sport. It’s a game of big hits–torn ACL’s, torn MCL’s and concussion protocols. Injuries are part of the game. They are a given. You have to prepare for them.

Last year, the Vikings were an young, upstart team that came out of nowhere to win the NFC North division. This year, they were an early pick to be in the Super Bowl. I was really excited about this team. If they can just stay healthy, I thought…

You can’t make excuses, but injuries have been the one thing this year’s Vikings haven’t been able to avoid. And they have been almost catastrophic. The Vikings lost their starting quarterback before the season even started, then lost arguably the best running back in the game in Week Two. Well, all I can say is those are going to seriously alter your game plan.

The Vikings did go out and get a replacement starting quarterback. Sam Bradford looked like he was going to be more than a stopgap solution. He looked freaking awesome–until the Vikings played the Philadelphia Eagles, Sam Bradford’s former team. And that’s when a glaring weakness in the Vikings lineup was revealed.

Today’s NFL has evolved into a precise, high tech game of complex offensive formations and big plays. The passing game has eclipsed the running game in terms of importance and fan approval. It has become an exciting game to watch, most of the time.

However, in order to achieve this finely tuned aspect of the modern game, you need at least one throwback fundamental element from the old school game of the ancient 1930’s. You still need the big guys on your offensive line to block the big guys on the opposing team’s defensive line.

And this is the glaring weakness that has been revealed in the last two games, the Vikings apparently don’t have an offensive line.

I know, right! How the hell does that happen? Well, the injury bug has been feasting at that buffet this year, too. And so, a year that started out with such promise has suddenly become a season that cannot end too soon, and I love football! I never want the season to end!!

I haven’t been this disappointed since 1998. That was a year that will live in infamy for every Vikings fan.

In 1998, the Vikings unleashed something that had never been seen before. The Vikings had a high powered offense. The Vikings could seemingly score at will, from anywhere on the field. They tore up the regular season, coasting to a 15-1 record. They were easily the best team in football that year. They were the odds on favorite to win the NFC title, and they were a shoe in to win the Super Bowl. It was the greatest season ever to be e a Vikings fan because this was our year! 😄👍😄👏

I’m not sure I can finish this without needing to be on suicide precautions. To make an incredibly heartbreaking story very short, the Vikings got beat in the NFC Championship game by the Atlanta Falcons. By a fucking field goal. And the big story the next day wasn’t that the Falcons won, but rather that the Vikings lost. I lost one thousand dollars on that game. It was the last time I ever placed a bet on any football game, let alone a Vikings game.

I howled like a dog for three days. I cried like two toddlers that had dropped their ice cream cones. I think the only thing that hurt me more, in terms of heartbreaking anguish, was when my high school sweetheart and I broke up.

My lovely wife finally bitchslapped me back to life with these words, “If you want to kill yourself, I’ll drive you to the IDS Center and push you off myself! For the love of God, snap out of it!! Be a man!!!”

I’ve tempered my passion for football since that year. You have to do that, especially if you’re a Vikings fan. I try not to get too high, so I can avoid having to fall so very, very low. And despite that, I’m still disappointed when the Vikings don’t play well.

I guess that’s why they call us fans. We vicariously live and die by our respective teams. It looks like it’s gonna be another year of death for Vikings fans. Too bad we can’t request a bullet to the head, instead of having to watch while someone eats our livers in front of us before we bleed out.