Notes in the key of C

  Hijacked planes.  Pentagon targeted.  Towers fall.  Thousands die.  Terrorists celebrate.  America’s pissed. Find Osama.  Get Sadaam.  “Butcher” toppled.  Hussein nabbed.  Lengthy trial. Eventually hung.  Osama hides.  Inspectors sent. W.M.D.’s disappear.  Troops sent. President determined.  War rages.  Many dying.  Suicide bombers.  Lives lost.  Toll climbs.  Families weep.  No more. Get out!  More troops? ……No way!  Still determined.  Wannabe candidates. Majority party.  Cry foul!  President lied?  Who knows?

     Approval rate dropping.  Red, white, blue.  Colors don’t run?  Where IS Osama?  Democracy in Iraq.  Can it work? Are we dreaming?  Axis of evil.  Iran….our friend?  No, not anymore.  Major world power.  Cut and run?  Hide the flag? Celebrities weigh in.  Opinions like a..holes. Everybody’s got one.

     Voted for, then against.  Pulse of the nation.  Bring our soldiers home.   But what happens after?  Will peace really follow?  Sh-t hits the fan.  Bad guys take control. We say, “Oh,well”.  We run, they win.  What about the oil?

    Those of us who have an aquarium in their home will testify that there’s something soothing and relaxing about having watching fish swim.  I guess it’s a kind of subliminal experience where we become the fishes that we are watching.  What a life!  Swim back and forth from end to end, and eat twice a day.  No worries, no responsibilities.  But the catch is…..ya gotta keep swimming, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year non-stop.  Any way you look at it, that’s a helluva lot of swimming.  Stop and you fall over on one side and risk being ridiculed by all the other fishes.  Life in a 55-gallon world may not be as rosy as it seems.  Big fish chases little fish and if little fish swims just a little bit slower that big fish, little fish ends up in big fish. And if THAT wasn’t bad enough, a fish gets lunch and dinner served in the same water it relieves itself in.  How nasty is that!!  And yet when the food is dropped in twice a day, it’s feeding frenzy time.  By the way they attack that garlic-flavored veggie flake, you’d think it was a prime rib steak and a baked potato.  They can’t get enough of it.

     For all the enjoyment that comes from having an aquarium, one never really bonds with fish.  It’s not quite like having a cat that purrs and curls up in your lap or a dog that wags his tail, listens to your every complaint and doesn’t expect much more than food and water,  a little attention and an ocassional walk around the neighborhood.  Fishes swim around until they get tired, fall over dead and end up flushed down the toilet.  It’s a boring life with an unceremonial ending.

     Well, here we are, slipping and sliding in a winter wonderland.  The winter season has not officially begun, but we’re at the doorstep of December so I suppose  I should have expected this kind of weather.  Yesterday’s rain turned into snow last night and this morning what has accumulated on the ground covers a slick layer of ice.  Some of the unfortunate fools that still have yet to learn to adjust their driving habits to the changes in the weather have since guided their vehicles off the roads, into light poles and ditches all around town and the kids are all enjoying an extra day away from classes.

     But me??…..I’m whining and complaining to whoever is or seems to be listening.  I don’t like it, never liked it and I guess I should just pack up, sell the house and get the heck out of town.  Phoenix, Arizona or San Antonio, Texas or Honolulu, Hawaii,  three locales that have always been attractive to me are looking a whole lot better right now.  I bet there’s no one there scraping an inch of ice off their windshields today or slippin’, sliding and busting their butts on slick sidewalks, either.  No way.  Snow and ice are the furthest things from their minds.  Looking out the window, I can see that the wind-driven sleet that stung my face this morning has been replaced by snowfall.  Oh, boy!  Tomorrow should be twice as much fun!

     Usually, the day after Thanksgiving is just another work day for me but this year, thanks to a different place of employment and the good grace of the Powers-that-be, I got Thursday and Friday off.  Whoooohoooooooooo!  You know what THAT means!!!???  First, closely scrutinizing all the ads in yesterday’s paper and then, forming a rough game plan of when to get up and which store to hit first, based on the proximity to the house and which ones opened the earliest. Some stores even open ON Thanksgiving day.  How desperate for the consumer dollar can you get??? 

     Friday morning comes and I’m up “before the chickens” and the family, including those visiting from “out-of-town”.  With the usual three eggs poaching, wheat bread toasting and coffee brewing, I hit the shower. (fast forward>>>>>>>twenty minutes) and I’m backing the Jeep out of the garage and headed down the road to Target.  I swear that at least half of these people must have camped out in the parking lot last night because it was already full by the time I pulled in.  Walk through the front entrance of the store and it looked like a wall-to-wall feeding frenzy, shopping carts being manuevered like little race cars up, down and between the aisles, most of them loaded with clothes, toys, and other stuff, much of which will end up coming back after Christmas.  Long lines trailed from every cash register, Visa and Mastercards appeared and disappeared from and back into wallets and purses and after about twenty minutes, claustrophobia was kicking in and I got the heck out of there.  I should have turned towards home right there and then but Nooooooooooooo……..not THIS glutton for punishment! After a quick stop at Starbuck’s, I headed for the mall for more of the same scenario.  So THIS is what I’ve been missing all these past years when I had to work on the day after Thanksgiving.  It’s the official first day of the shopping season when common sense goes out the window and consumer debt explodes through the ceiling and up, up and away into the wild blue yonder. I lasted long enough to go through one store and then, out the door.  No shopping stamina today, I guess. Oh, well….tomorrow’s another day with Sunday to follow.  Two more days to fight the crowds and try to get more shopping done before it’s back to work on Monday.

     The beauty of living in relatively close proximity to one’s place of employment is that it only takes a few minutes to get there in the morning and back home at night.  In my case, it requires a whole ten minutes of driving, twelve if the traffic is particularly heavy that day.  So, if I allow myself at least fifteen minutes, it’s just a casual, relaxing cruise on the way to work each morning and  I get there early every time.

     Unfortunately, it seems everyone else but me is either running late, forgot to set their alarm, or has a job they love SO much that they can’t wait to get there!  To ME, when the highway sign says “Speed limit 55″ it means just that….speed LIMIT!!  But not for the others on the highway who consider it to be a “suggested” speed limit. Among them are the many who believe that even though the sign indicates the speed LIMIT, it’s okay to drive five miles to ten miles over. Until they get caught and stopped.  Until they get pulled over and cited, those signs only warn them to watch out for people like me.  So, for the few minutes I actually spend on the highway, it’s more like I’ve accidentally driven onto the local speedway in the middle of an ongoing race, with cars flashing by me, random lane-changing, horn honking, tailgating and the ocassional display of disapproval of my observance of the speed limit, expressed to me by threatening facial expressions and the upward motion of their middle finger as they go by. I just don’t get it!  If they would just plan to get up a little earlier and leave a little sooner, they just might consider driving a little slower.  Yeah, RIGHT!! I’m dreaming.

     What the hell was I thinking?  Well, last Monday evening, after a nice steak dinner,  I was doing the couch potato thing, letting my food settle while watching reruns of “Surivvor”.  I decided that getting up every morning and going to the fitness center for cardio and weight training wasn’t enough.  So, I tied on my running shoes, chose a route in the neighborhood and headed out to see how  much distance these old legs and lungs could take.  To my surprise i actually went further than I expected and I was pretty proud of myself, if you don’t mind my saying so.  For at least the first quarter mile I might have even been mistaken for someone who had been running on a reqular basis. I had the shoes and the running gear to look the part.  Now, the morning after……THAT was a whole different story.  I woke up feeling like I’d been used as a speed bump to slow down neighborhood traffic.  Oh sure, I expected my legs to hurt !  But not the rest of my body too.  I must have broken something! I checked. Nope, everything seemed okay.  With every muscle in both legs surely tied in knots,  I crawled out of bed about 5:45, reluctantly and very slowly. I confess that for a fleeting moment, I considered skipping the morning workout.

But I just couldn’t make myself do it.  I must be a glutton for punishment. I have to say that when the workout was behind me and I had the Jeep pointed toward the nearest Starbuck’s and the well-earned pumpkin spice latte, I felt pretty good. The scale at the fitness center had confirmed that indeed the pounds were slowly disappearing.  I was losing weight and gaining ground.

(Fast forward…about a week and a half) The weekday runs in the evening and weekend morning runs continue and the muscle aches are about all gone. I’m just a little less winded on that last mile and actually considering stretching out and adding a mile or two to the route. With the fall season comes 5k races just about every weekend and while I have no false delusions of being competitive, I know I can finish, without being the last to cross the line.

    Things are looking up! It’s getting colder every day so at some point I may have to bring it back inside and return to the treadmill. But I’ll cross that “bridge” when I come to it I suppose.    

   Whenever an out-of-town trip shows up on the agenda at our house, my wife always comments on how “I’m not looking forward to the drive”, which means “We’ll be traveling hundreds of miles to our destination but I will be doing very little, if any, of the driving”.  Such was the way it went on our recent trip to San Antonio, Texas, to visit family.  Automatically, she takes her places on the passenger side and I get in, behind the wheel.  The sight of her carrying her favorite magazines out to the car is a clear indicator of her intentions. “I’ll help you drive”, she’ll say.  A few hours out on the Interstate and I hinted about switching places.  But that idea is only good for about forty miles or thirty minutes, whichever comes first because between the little things about the way she drives that bother me and the eventual “my back is starting to hurt” and “my shoulders are feeling  a little tight”, I always end up taking over and driving for the remainder of the trip. That’s the way it goes and I guess I don’t mind it too much on this particular journey.  The worst part of the trip if I can call it that would have been hitting Dallas as the wrong time of the day and having to fight the traffic through a city that goes on and on for miles and bumper-to-bumper cars, where everyone else is in a hurry but us.  Fortunately, we eventually reach the other side of the city limits, the open roads lies ahead, and along the way, signs warn of the Starbucks that line the interstate and provide a caffeine boost to the weary traveler.  Sweet!

Consider this fair warning.  If you ever have to go to “Emergency”, you’d better be sure it’s not a real emergency and minutes might mean the difference between life and death.   Whatever situation or medical condition causes panic, leading you to jump in your car, break every speed limit, run a few red lights and weave in and out of the traffic on your way to the hospital, it doesn’t prepare you for what awaits you once you get there.  The first thing you realize is that there’s twenty other people that showed up before you did.  Chattering in their little family groups or just siting in misery alone,  they all look worse than you feel. And they’re waiting just as YOU will be in what I like to call waiting room No. 1 because this is where you’ll sit until they lead you through those double doors to yet another room, waiting room No. 2. Think about it. Why would there be a television in the waiting room if they didn’t think you’d be there for any length of time?  So you sit there, watching a rerun of “This Ol’ House” or Martha Stewart and listening to others complain about their aches and pains, until you’re certain that in addition to your original reason for being there, you’ll also need to be treated for pressure sores on your okole,too. (Okay, for you haoles, that (okole) means buttocks, behind, booty, tush,the seat of your pants.)  Then, finally,  they lead you through those double doors to waiting room, No. 2.  No television back there but you do get to lie down while your wait continues.  They draw the curtains around and you think it’s for your privacy but it’s really so you can’t see the clock on the wall and the minutes ticking away, ever so slowly.  The oncall doctor FINALLY steps through the curtains and you desperately try to remember why you are there. “Doc, will you take a look at the pressure sores I have on my butt from sitting out there in the ER waiting room so long…….and, uh, oh yeah……I think my leg is broken”.

Want faster service in the ER?  Then, try this!  When you’re sitting across the counter and the triage nurse asks you what’s wrong, say, “Well, I broke my leg (or whatever)…ahh…..AND I have  (the magic “passwords”) CHEST PAINS!!

    When spring gives way to summer here in the Bible Belt, you just never know quite what to expect as far as weather conditions are concerned.  This year is turning out to be one of THOSE…I mean,  the kind of summer where the heat  kicks in, it gets hotter and hotter and the rain is falling everywhere BUT here. I mean you expect the summer months to be noticeably warmer than any other time of the year but not like THIS.  DAMN!  This is that searing “face-over-the-open-flame” type heat.  How about 107 degrees in the middle of the day? That’s without figuring in the heat index which adds a few more degrees on to “burning hot” temperatures.  The death toll slowly climbs and the weather man says ” chance of rain”, MAYBE, on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Then in the days that follow, they show you how the storm system that was supposed to bring some relief is breaking up as it approaches our area.  The ferns and the “elephant ears” around the spa are starting to bow down, as all the drought-tolerant weeds thrive in the backyard.  All this  takes me back to days gone by when I was a kid growing up in the “Islands”.  The heat and humidity was very much like it is here right now but when you live on an island, surrounded by ocean, the beach, and cool ocean relief was never far away.  It’s only the beginning of August which means four to six more weeks of this heat before we begin to get some relief.   The birds are standing in line at the bird bath and Buster, my Shih-Tzu, gives my “can-we-just-skip-it-this-time” look  when it time to go for his evening “raise-the-leg” and “take-a-dump” walk.  Having grown up in a tropical environment,summer has always been my favorite time of year and I’m definitely not and never look forward to the cold temperatures that accompany the winter season.  But when the leaves start to turn from green to bright red, orange and yellow on the neighbors’ trees down the street and out in the country and the numbers on the thermometer start to head south as birds do in the fall,  all the perspiration and gallons of water I have to consume to keep from passing out, will fade to a distant place in my memory. My focus will be re-directed to the bone-chilling winds  and ice that await when fall colors give way to winter snowfall. Then……….I can complain about how cold it is, pray for an early spring and wish it was summer again.  It’s a vicious circle, isn’t it?

   I did it!!!  The BIG prize! I picked the right numbers, beat the odds and won the big prize.  I’m not even sure how much it’ll be after Uncle Sam trims off his share of the winnings but it’ll be in the MILLIONS.  Whoooo! Hoooooo! My life has been changed forever!

    Let’s see. I’m quitting this nine-to-six job first of all.  Instant retirement! No goodbye, no two weeks notice.  Hasta luego!  We’re outa here. Oh, oh. There goes my elgibility for re-hire.  Ha! Ha! Ha!  Who cares? I’ll pay off all the bills, sell the house, and we’re gettin’ the hell outa town.  I’m going to make a huge donation to the local university’s athletic scholarship fund, spread some of the wealth to family and friends and go shopping for that “land yacht” so we can cruise, coast to coast  in style and never have to worry about when we come back.  And the cost of gas? Who cares if it’s five dollars a gallon. I don’t. Not anymore. That’s peanuts, as far as I’m concerned. It’s Easy Street from this day forward.

     Persistence has paid off again.  Play the same numbers.  Keep the faith. Don’t give up. And then…..BANG!!…when you least expect it….it happens.  All the numbers match and life’s path is instantly re-directed. I must keep our name out of the paper.  Low profile.  Take the phone off the hook. Leave town for a couple of weeks and don’t tell anyone where we’re going.  Our mailbox will be full of letters from “charitable organizations”seeking a donation, lawyers, and investment experts offering their services.  They’ll be knocking on our door at all hours of the day and night, people with their sad stories and outstretched palms, wanting just a little piece of the “pie”.  Waaaaaaah!  Cry me a river! Go get a job!

     So many different thoughts swirling around in my head and in the background, I hear the soft sound of whimpering that I’m trying to ignore. More plans to be made. Do I keep the Jeep or trade it for that Hummer3 or Porsche Boxster? Maybe I’ll get both of them! Hawaii!  We’re taking an extended vacation in the “Islands”.  A month, maybe two. More whimpering coming from somewhere and it’s getting a little bit louder.  There’s things to do before we slip out of town.  Gotta organize my thoughts. Too may decisions to make at one time.

     The whimpering turns to barking……….and…..just THAT FAST……it’s all gone.  The winning lotto ticket,……the millions……the land yacht, the Porsche Boxster, the Hummer, the early retirement,….all of it.  And all because that damn dog had to go out, at THREE THIRTY in the friggin’ morning, snatching me out of a deep sleep and taking ALL of it away in an instant. Damn!!  All that cash…gone in a flash!  Beautiful dream…….rude awakening!