For many of us-you and me, Christmas can be one of the most painful times of the year. Funny how, in the Christian experience-this holiday, which is filled with nothing but niceness, can be so damning. Even Easter, the Super Bowl for Christians, doesn’t hold a candle to the pain one can feel during Christmas. CHRISTMAS CAN BE A PAINFUL TIME If you’ve lived much, you have life scars and those scars are reminders. I’m sixty-three, almost sixty-four and there... Read more
I have learned over the years our maladies don’t define us, but they are a part of us. We can or sometimes have to, rise above them sometimes just to live, especially the serious ones like the cancers and chronic illnesses or the death of a partner or the loss of a job. The not so serious ones, like snoring, can be mildly unsettling, unless it’s your dog who is doing the snoring then it’s kind of therapeutic, especially when... Read more
I’M NOT A BAD DANCER! I feel I am a pretty good dancer. After all, my parents sent me to Junior Assembly when I was eight or ten or something. I can’t really remember because I think I blocked it out, psychologically speaking. The class was fine for my brothers and sister. They were nine and thirteen years ahead of me in age and it was cool to go to such a class to learn the foxtrot and other ballroom... Read more
WHAT AM I GOOD AT? Look, I can ‘wrap’ presents. I simply don’t want to. It is nowhere close to my gifting. It’s one of those things in our lives-my life, I don’t like to do. Whoever came up with ‘gift bags’ deserves a medal. I don’t go and buy them, let me be clear. I keep the ones I receive, or I use a nice Target grocery bag. You can’t see through those like you can a Fry’s bag.... Read more
HOW IS IT DONE? I am not sure how people do this widow/widower thing without God. Let me say I am not sure how anyone does life without God, job loss, illness, anything. Now, maybe this year, you find yourself alone, maybe for the first time in decades. I was widowed in 2018, twenty-seven days short of our thirty-eighth anniversary and looking back to that dumpster fire of that time, I really cannot see how people experience it without any... Read more
TURKEY OR HAM OR CHEESEBURGERS? Tomorrow, well, I like Thanksgiving. I am not, necessarily, a turkey person. I know, and I am sure you do to, know people who LOVE turkey. I’m not a real big fan. Cheeseburgers are my friends I’m more of a ham fan. I am really a cheeseburger fan. I’m a fan of turkey sandwiches the next day or week later, slathered in mayonnaise and cheese on some good bread. I like dressing... Read more
ARE WE REALLY ‘TESTED’ BY GOD? I walked around a ‘C’ student in my high school math class-and not a solid ‘C.’ Math and I as well as Chemistry did not get along. Come to think of it, my German class was even worse. Apparently, I had a moment of stupid when I registered. I can only remember one line in that language from two years of study, ‘how are you’ in the formal form. Don’t ask me to spell... Read more
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JOY AND HAPPINESS There’s a difference between joy and happiness. Yep. At least I think so. At my seasonal age, in my situation-a retired widower, I find myself kind of making things up as I go. Like if I’m delivering Easter eggs to my grandchildren-er-any children for that matter, in the early morning, I probably should dress up like the Easter Bunny. Maybe a version of the Easter Bunny who might have served time in prison or did... Read more
HAS THIS EVER HAPPENED TO YOU? Has this ever happened to you? Did you ever have an epiphany you are really the age you are and not that twenty-three-year-old, ten percent body fat, six-minute miler with a propensity for math and language, the guy or gal people laughed with, bought drinks for, and just wanted to be around? Aside from most of that being a fabrication for myself, I discovered this within the past year—or maybe it was two? IT... Read more
WHAT’S WITH ALL THE DIETS? What’s with the ketosis diet? I couldn’t even spell the word without Google. Is that a trade name or a scientific name? I think there should be a contest where people name, document, list the diets they have been on, heard about, and eventually failed over their lives. All of them. Like the Birch Bark Diet or the Smoked Oysters and Kale Diet, or the ever and always effective- Air and Ice Water Diet. This... Read more
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