YESTERDAY
"Yesterday, when I was young..."
"Yesterday, all my troubles were so far away..."
Well, yesterday was Thursday, March 23, 2017, and it was a kind of typical day for me and Elaine, so I have decided to write about it so that someday my progeny can look at it and see what a "typical" day in the life of an octogenarian was like in the reign of Trump. (Caution... this may get very boring.)
12:01 AM To bed.
02:00 AM Awake, unable to sleep until around
05:00 AM Finally to get some REM sleep until
07:00 AM Getting up. Usually our "Alarm Cat" gets me up. Not today. I wonder why.
08:00 AM Time to sit near a sunny window and do American Cryptic crosswords
08:30 AM Testing blood sugar... sticking a finger to get blood. Reading 101. Very good. Almost normal for a person without the pre-diabetes that I am supposed to have.
08:40 AM Testing blood pressure with a wrist tester. 143/63. Not bad. A normal person my age would probably be something like 140/70. Doing good.
08:45 AM Took my morning pills... only 6 of them. 1 of them has been on refill order for two weeks. I called the office of the original prescription orderer to tell them what Giant Pharmacy told me. When Giant called that office and mentioned the name shown as the prescriber in their records ... someone with a name similar to Ali Baba, MD, that office said that nobody by that name worked there, so they could not order a refill.
08:50 AM I called the office again and told them that somebody had to reorder because I had no pills left. Then they checked their records and saw that I was a patient of two doctors in that practice, they said that they would get one of them to authorize the refill.
(And, of course, Giant called me late in the afternoon to tell me that the refill had been finally authorized; however, Giant did not have any more of those pills in stock and had to reorder them. Ah yes!)
09:00 AM Retrieve the Carroll County Times which some kind soul has moved to between my front doors from the bushes where it was thrown. The headline tells me that a 2-year old boy has died in an attic fire. Probably playing with matches. Very depressing and sad. I'm checking the obituaries to make sure I am not there.
09:15 AM Ate a breakfast of cereal with blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, banana and milk, with a big cup of decaf on the side, while reading the paper and listening to CSPAN radio and the Trumpcare debate in the House of Representatives.(Trumpcare will not pass.)
09:45 AM Called the Dental One office. I canceled an appointment in downtown Baltimore to have a tooth fixed on my upper plate and this office was supposed to arrange for another one. I spent a bit of a time getting the receptionist to remember me. Unfortunately, she said, her memory has not been very well lately because she has to take care of a sick mother. Later, someone named Debbie called and said that she would look into my problem. Meanwhile, I must spend another day looking like an escapee from "Hee Haw!"
10:00 AM I did 30 minutes of German language study.
10:30 AM I did 5 minutes cleanup work in the basement.
10:40 AM I did 5 minutes of cleanup work in the front room.
(Little by little... I will get things under control.)
11:00 AM Brightview Landscaping Service has a contract with Carroll Lutheran Village and is now digging drainage ditches and filling in mulch, and at this time, it was our house that was under their attack. A cascade of wet mud descended upon our side porch, blanketing the floor, the formerly white railings, the window screens and windows, the siding up to the roof, and the glass part of the screen door. Quite a mess. I called Carroll Lutheran Village maintenance to complain.
11:30 AM I read a book on my Kindle about Inventions for 30 minutes.
12: 00 Noon I woke Elaine up and fried myself some scrapple and two eggs (over light, please). That, with a piece of buttered toast and a glass of Mocha Light Starbucks coffee was my lunch.
Elaine had a container of Wendy's chili and a glass of milk.
01:00 PM I listened to a podcast of the Rachel Madow show. (Trumpcare will not pass.)
02:00 PM Nobody had yet come to clean up the landscaper's mess, so I called and left messages on the answering machines of two maintenance employees. One of them called to say they had notified the landscaper and was told that it would be taken care of. They said they would call them again.
02:30 PM I read the April 2017 edition of the Funny Paper. I especially was interested in these four items:
Harper's Index sez:
83% of the U. S. apartments now under construction are unaffordable for almost everyone except the most affluent. (Russians are "rushing" to buy condos in Trump tower for millions of dollars... or so I'm told.)
Hitler's Mein Kampf was on the German bestseller list for 35 weeks after a ban on its publication was lifted. (Sadly, it's been available in the U.S. for "nutballs" to read for many years.)
Chuck Shepherd sez:
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has now allowed a Lakeland lady to keep her 6-foot long alligator, Rambo, at home with her. She and Rambo have been a couple for over 10 years.
W. Bruce Cameron sez:
"I've read that an average dog possesses a vocabulary of 200-300 words, which is enough for him to have his own Twitter account."
03:30 PM Time to take a shower and remove fine tons of dirt from my body.
04:00 PM It looked like the Landscaper was getting ready to finish his day. Nobody showed up to clean up our porch area, even though workers were going by off and on throughout the day, working on neighboring houses... blowing leaves and dirt from their houses. Come on, guys... let's have some fairness here!" I tried to call Maintenance again... all of them had gone home... except for a nice guy named Larry, who was working in our Health Care section. Larry was interested in what I was saying and rushed over. Two minutes before he arrived, a landscaper showed up and blew most of the mud off the floor and, satisfied, he left as Larry arrived.
Of course, all of the mud was still on the siding, the screens, the formerly white railings, and the windows. Larry was appalled, as I was and promised to get someone to finish the job tomorrow.
(Future note: they finally did... almost... I guess they don't do windows.)
05:30 PM Time to leave for our monthly SWORD supper. You may remember, SWORD is the social organization for Single, Widowed OR Divorced Catholics, or anybody else of any religion. This is where I met my pal, Elaine. She was divorced and I was widowed.
06:45 PM This month's supper was held at the Dragon Best Chinese Restaurant, on Route 140 (Reisterstown Road) right across the street from the Levinson Jewish Funeral Home.
One problem with the SWORD group is that men hardly ever join in, so it probably is frustrating for the lady members to always see me and Elaine at these functions. Several of these ladies are quite good looking and it amazes me that they have no men in their lives. Of course, that is their business, not mine.
Elaine and I ordered eggdrop soup and a pupu platter. I would say that the soup was the best I have ever had and the platter was pretty good. I drank lots and lots of Chinese tea... and yet (another future note.. I had a good night sleep). For dessert, we asked the very pretty young Chinese waitress what she had. We both thought she said "Banana Ice Cream," and ordered it. It turned out to be "Vanilla Ice Cream." But that was OK. Our fortune cookies flattered our egos and the price of all of our food was unbelievably low. I would highly recommend the restaurant. Bring your own bottle, please.
08:45 PM Home again. Time to check out our Liberal Media Outlets to see what crazy things have transpired while we were out. Elaine took a small nap and I watched a little Frasier on Netflix.
10:00 PM Elaine watched "Survivor something or other" while I washed clothes, folded dried towels, cleaned the kitchen and read about the Food Network.... I had bought a "remainder" at the Dollar Store. I learned that the Food Network was born soon after the Big Dan fiasco in New Bedford, Massachusetts, by Providence, Rhode Island TV network folks who turned viewer excitement over the televised court trial into "Court TV." The "Food Network"soon followed. Interesting story, I wonder why the book didn't sell.
11:00 PM You know how fast you get hungry again after eating Chinese food... so... I ate a dish of cole slaw, took my nightly 7 pills, and drank my glass of wine and a can of beer. (The cardiologist said I had to have two alcoholic beverages each day.. so stop looking so judgemental.)
11:59 PM Elaine and I were now exhausted and went to bed after another typical day in our life at Carroll Lutheran Village.
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(Future note: We learned later the next day that, as we had predicted, Trumpcare "was toast! The President and Speaker of the House are now probably singing: "Yesterday when I was dumb...")
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