Music in my head today: I listened to Mozart's Barber of Seville yesterday, and I am surprised to find that I don't have that music going around my head today. Also, last nite, I watched Fantasia on Netflix. Eight separate musical numbers with appropriate animation. I loved the ballet dancing hippos, elephants and ostriches. And.. of course, Mickey, the Sorceror's Apprentice.. very nice.
So, what is my head music then? A Scottish tune played on a bagpipe in a British military parade ground. How about that?
Today, I did really lousy on one of the word puzzles in the Sunday New York Times. Even though I solved one other in a very short time, and I finished the Acrostic, I still am a bit depressed over the fact that I found less that ten words out of the twenty-six that the NYT editors found in that one puzzle. Us puzzlers get depressed when we don't do better than others.
My First Trip as a Widower
I'm going to do something a little different today. While sorting old stuff, I found some notes about a New England Trip I took a short time after my wife died and I had a heart attack. I figured that a change of scene would help me with my grieving and help my heart to heal. I traveled alone. Here goes:
It's five am... I have to get picked up at six am. I get on a big bus and as I go down the aisle, I hear a loud woman's voice bellowing between gales of laughter. I wonder if she is laughing at me. I must stay away from her, at all costs.
We travel from Maryland to Delaware first, and eat a breakfast at Denny's. I had a piece of burned rye toast slathered with margarine. I sit alone for a few minutes, until a massive man with a cane squeezes into the booth next to me. He must weigh 400 pounds. His massive wife squeezes her fat butt into the booth across from me. I can see that she also has very large hands. I hear her as she yells across the room to her friend, the loud mouth lady. Her voice must be a signal, because three women suddenly appear next to our booth. Somehow, these three skinny ladies squeeze into the interstices between me and the big folks. These ladies travel together once a year. They are sisters. They are also single, I can tell why.
Back on the bus, I get into my seat, which is next to an "older" man. He has an ear piece and is listening to loud music. He'll be deaf before long. Me too.
Soon, we arrive at the Jersey Turnpike traffic jam. This tie up lasts for hours. I wish that someone would shut that loud mouth bitch up! There is a red and white cooler stuck into the overhead just above her head. Please, Lord, let us go over a nice big bump, so that the cooler can jiggle loose and decapitate her!
Oh, Damn! The fat guy just pushed the cooler in.
I will try to concentrate on my seat-mate's music and try not to hear all about the loud lady's bodily ailments. But, you know, when I think about it, she looks a lot like Peter Ustinov, but without the beard. He always had a loud voice too... maybe this is him, traveling in cognito!
The big fat guy has to pee a lot and travels from the front of the bus to the back quite often. As he goes, he assaults everybody sitting on the aisle. The poor guy can't help it. I wonder if he has had his heart attack yet.. so far, he's probably just suffering from Diabetes.
Well, it's noon time and we are only in Trenton. At one stretch, we traveled just 12 miles in two hours. We just saw the obstruction, a burned-out tractor trailer. Imagine that, an accident in Trenton, New Jersey caused a traffic backup to Wilmington, Delaware! The hostess just brought a snack around. Cokes and crackers. I wonder how many crackers the fat guy is eating.
(Remember, Joe, you have to live with these people for a fortnight, so be nice!)
To be continued
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