Your Wife (talking to you):
"Why are you only getting on the computer twice a day now?"
You (talking to your wife):
"I was thinking that would gives us more time to have sex."
Your Wife:
"Keep on thinking."
RaisingDad
RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com
JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com. American Chimpanzee
@JimDuchene
My brother's family has a holiday tradition.
Every Christmas, they get together as a family and bake Christmas cookies to hand out to friends and family as gifts.
He's cheap that way.
Of course, I have to trash talk him about it.
You (talking to your wife):
"Sweetie, why don't we go upstairs and get frisky?"
Your Wife (talking to you):
"I've got a better idea, why don't we make Christmas cookies?"
You:
"Yay! Christmas cookies!"
RaisingDad
RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com
JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com
@JimDuchene
It wasn't my idea.
I was serving our father his gourmet enchiladas—now I get him the much more expensive Family Pack—and asked him, “What’s that?”Is the election over yet?
No?
But Fake News has already declared Joe Biden the winner.I called our father on Thanksgiving to see how he was doing and to wish him a happy holiday.
as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine
desertexposure.com
One thing I've noticed about the Coronavirus is it's given people a reason to be cheap.
Cheaper than they normally are.
Cheaper than me, even.
Actually, I’m not cheap. I’m frugal. When it comes to paying, I’m the first to put my hand in my pocket… and keep it there.
I’m constantly invited to party parades. Well... not me, actually. People know if they want something good, my wife is the one to invite. These celebrations include baby showers, graduations, even dog adoptions.
I invited my father to come along once.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“You don’t know what a parade is, pop?” I teased.
“Not the kind you’re talking about,” he answered.
I explained to him, “That's where you drive to the person's house, drop off a gift without getting down, and then leave.”
“No food?”
“No food.”
“I’ll pass.”
Sometimes they'll hand out cupcakes. My father’s not big on cupcakes. He’s more a steak and potatoes kind of guy. Me, too, for that matter. Maybe there’ll be a candy bag in it for you, but just one. So there's no food, no drinks, no socializing. If you ask me, a party parade is a cheap way to get a free handout.
At one of them, the mother of the little girl whose birthday they were celebrating wanted a headcount of who would be coming. My wife thought it was for them to be sure they had enough cupcakes and candy bags for everyone who was kind enough to take part, so my wife RSVPed with three: her, our daughter, and our granddaughter. When they drove by, the three of them were handed two cupcakes and a candy bag. I guess one of the cupcakes was meant to be split. Later, the mother Instagrammed pictures of the birthday girl opening her gifts and she thanked everyone who took part. "God will bless you," she wrote.
I told my wife, “‘God will bless you’ is a cheap person's way of passing the buck to the almighty."
This is especially true of my buddy Maloney's mother-in-law, who’s so cheap she won’t even give you the time of day. After she borrows a few bucks, she always assures him, "God will pay you back."
"She says that because SHE doesn’t plan to," I tell him.
The very first party parade my granddaughter attended took place on the other side of town. My daughter dressed her in her prettiest party dress, gussied up her hair in curls and ribbons, and then drove with my wife a total of an hour and a half for the ten seconds it took to hand over a birthday present.
“Aren’t we going to play?” my granddaughter wanted to know, not understanding why they weren’t stopping.
I tagged along to one for the six-year-old granddaughter of some friends of ours. They wanted us to meet them in the parking lot of a steakhouse.
“Think they’re feeding us?” I asked my wife.
“Maybe,” my wife said.
She was being hopeful, and there’s nothing wrong with hoping, but, as it turned out, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and a starting point is just a starting point. We could smell the beef grilling in the air.
“Mmm… that smells good,” our granddaughter said as we drove off like a happy funeral procession, following our friends who were leading the parade.
My wife and I just looked at each other.
Trying to sneak a peek at the festivities ahead of us, our granddaughter graciously said of the birthday girl, “I bet she’s going to be dressed so pretty.”
As we drove by the birthday house, I noticed our friends had parked, giving everybody room to drive by and away. I didn't tell my wife, because they're her friends more than they are mine, but I thought, "They're staying behind because, as soon as the rest of us suckers leave, they're going to go inside and eat."
And that's just what these parades seem like to me. The people who take time out of their busy day, spend money on a nice gift, and leave with disappointed children... WE don't get invited to take part in the actual celebration.
“You’re just being grumpy,” my wife told me when I finally aired my observation to her later, but, wouldn’t you know it, the very next day her friends posted pictures on their Facebook accounts. Pictures of them having a very good time at a birthday party no one in the parade was invited to.
Just so you know, we're throwing a party parade for our granddaughter on her birthday. Consider yourselves invited. Knowing my wife, she’ll find a way to make it special for our guests. Especially the wee ones.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the necessity for parades rather than parties. This pandemic has been tough on kids. They can’t play with their friends. They can’t go to school, or, when they can, they have to sit in their seats the entire time, even eating their lunches there. No P.E., no recess, no games of tag.
My granddaughter was visiting us the other day. She and I were outside playing when she saw some friends of hers from the neighborhood riding their bikes in front of our house. They invited her to join them.
“I can’t!” she called back longingly. “I don’t have a mask!”
Another little girl rode by. This one she didn’t know.
“Hola!” my granddaughter called out in her best spanish, giving the girl a friendly wave.
“Hola,” the girl said, but kept on going.
My heart broke a little.
Playing with your grandfather is a cheap substitute for playing with kids your own age.
******************************
You know what else is cheap? Talk. Except when politicians do it.
JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com
RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com
@JimDuchene.
My brother likes to take his grandson hiking and camping, and occasionally he'll send me pictures of the two of them together on their adventures.
I like to repay his kindness with trash talk.
Hence, the following email:
Can't get over how big your grandson looks in those pictures you sent me, but who's that old geezer who’s in a couple of pictures with him?
I think I’ve seen him on the National Geographic channel.
He was telling the story of how he got his name.
“Where I'm from,” he said, “our children are named after something the father sees or does when their child is born. For example, my sister is named Moon Rises High because when she was born my father saw the moon high up in the sky. My brother is named Horse Runs Fast because my father rode his horse hard all night long to be there when he was born.”My wife and I had some friends over this past weekend.
They have a little boy our granddaughter’s age, so we had them over so she and their son could have a play date. They’ve been friends since they were three.
The dad is in the Army, is a few months away from retiring, and they’ve been stationed overseas, mainly in the Asian countries.
The reason I tell you all this is because they were telling us about the Juicy Girls in the Philippines. The Juicy Girls are women/prostitutes who hang around juice bars looking for GI husbands.
“Do they serve alcohol there?” I asked.
“No, just juice,” they said.
Before the soldiers arrive in the Philippines they get a warning to avoid these Juicy Girls and stay out of those juice bars. Some of the juice bars are even off limits to the military, just like the Mexican city of Juarez is to Ft. Bliss soldiers. Still, a bunch of soldiers end up ignoring these warnings, falling in love with a Juicy Girl, and marrying them and bringing them home. The main reason the soldiers did this, our friends thought, was because they were basically young kids inexperienced in the lure of the flesh.
A friend of theirs couldn’t get his Juicy Girl’s papers done so he had to leave her behind. Even when he got back to the states he continued to send her money. Five hundred bucks a month. She’d write him, “I love you and can’t wait to get married,” and then ask him for more money.
“She was a lot older than he was,” they told us. “She was no longer so juicy.”
“Yeah, she was a Dusty Girl,” I joked.
So many of these Juicy Girls get left behind that there’s a department in the Army to handle their claims and complaints. I got the impression that the GIs marry them and then leave without them when they get transferred out of the country. If any of them were pregnant, too bad.
”You know, my father was stationed in the Philippines during World War Two, and he had a girlfriend there,” I told them, then tried to legitimize our dad’s girlfriend by adding, “She was a singer.”
They laughed at that.
“They’re ALL singers!” they said.
Turns out all the Juicy Girls were singers with good voices and would sing in the various bars.
How ‘bout that?
Our dad was with the original Juicy Girl.
My brother wrote back:
"Somehow, I don't believe you about your having friends, but I might be wrong.
Which I doubt.
Reference the Juicy Girls in the Pacific Theater during World War Two, foreign women during that time of war would marry as many American soldiers as they could get their hands on, and then have their new husbands change the beneficiary on their $10,000 GI Life Insurance.
$10,000 buying power then is worth $175,000 to $190,000 today, and U.S. dollars were worth a lot more in foreign countries.
After the marriage and change of beneficiary, the women would sit, wait, and pray that the American soldiers would get killed.
Sex always has a price.”
My elderly father refuses to admit it, but his daily walks are taking their toll on him.
And me.
Mainly me.
He no longer walks as far, he no longer walks as long, but he's still determined to get out there and worry me to death.
"I don't feel like going," he'll sometimes say, but before I can encourage him not to torture himself, he's grumbling his way out the door. He's so stubborn, he even aggravates himself.
If it's hot, I'll tell him to wait until it's cooler. He'll refuse. Sometimes he'll even put on a light jacket. I'm positive it's just to irritate me. When it's cold, he'll head out the door in shorts and a t-shirt.
"At least put on a sweater," I told him.
"It’s not cold," he argued.
"Pop, it’s so cold even Miley Cyrus is wearing clothes."
“Who?”
I didn’t bother answering.
“It’s cold,” I said.
"It feels warm to me.”
"That's because we're indoors.”
"I'll be alright," he said, but what he meant was,"Nobody tells me what to do."
When he got back, his cheeks were bright pink, his nose running. He was briskly rubbing his hands together, trying to get the blood circulating.
"Man, it's cold," he growled as if it was something I didn’t know.
Meanwhile, my beautiful wife was simultaneously making him a warm tea and giving me the stink eye for letting him go.
Yikes!
Suddenly, it was colder inside than it was outside.
When it's hot, he comes back looking as if he's just had a stroke.
"Why didn't you tell me how hot it was?" he complained to me back in July, gulping down the glass of water my wife always has waiting for him. Room temperature, in case you’re wondering.
“I TOLD you how hot it was,” I answered him. I didn’t know if he was serious or yanking my chain. “CHICKENS are laying OMELETTES, for goodness’ sake.”
Later that night, he was sitting in his favorite chair watching his favorite sport on his favorite TV. His favorite team was playing. The score was tied. It was a good game. Even his dog was interested. Out of the blue, my father called it a day and shambled off to bed. My wife and I had been talking quietly in the kitchen. We just looked at each other.
Sooner or later, Father Time catches up with all of us. No matter how much we exercise. No matter how healthy we eat. We all get to the age where it’s our doctor telling us to slow down, not the police.
For example...
I've noticed the older I get, the more noises I make. Sometimes I grunt when I sit down, but mainly I grunt when I get up. My father grunts too. When he does, he blames it on the dog.
When I go to bed at night I must clear my throat about a dozen times. I don't know how my wife shares a bed with me, because it must drive her nuts. And thank goodness for my CPAP machine. You know the saying: “Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Snore, and you sleep alone.”
“Why is it that men who snore always fall asleep first?” my wife once groused.
“Which other men have you been sleeping with?” I groused back.
My father, on the other hand, drives ME nuts with all of his lip smacking, ooh-ing and aah-ing, and massaging of his front teeth with his tongue. I've tried to sit down with him to watch TV, but, after a while, the only sounds I hear are the ones he's making with his mouth. Modern Family’s Sofia Vergara could be jiggling around in one of her tight outfits and I couldn't enjoy it. I have to get up and go someplace else. Someplace where I can't hear the neverending Smack! Smack! Smack!
Yesterday, the “Ah, ah, ahhhs,” “Oh, oh, ohhhs,” and “Hee, hee, heees” were so loud I could hear him all the way in my bedroom upstairs.
"Sorry, Sofia," I told the TV, "I just can't give you the attention you deserve."
The noises were so loud, my wife even asked if my father was okay.
"He really likes Modern Family," I told her, not really explaining anything.
My lovely daughter came into our bedroom and made the mistake of asking me why I never sit with my father when he watches TV. She couldn't help but notice I was watching the same program upstairs in my bedroom that my father was watching downstairs in the den.
She shouldn't have asked.
I told her the story.
The WHOLE story.
She thought I was being mean and went downstairs to keep her grandpa company. A while later, she came back and moaned that I never should have told her about her grandpa's noises.
"That's ALL I hear now," she wailed. She had a bowl of cereal in her hands. "I can't even eat in the kitchen, because all I hear is the smacking."
She shook her head sadly.
"Poor grandpa," she said.
Poor grandpa, indeed.
True, it's sad, but life is sad.
And old age is a road we'll all have to travel one day.
If we're lucky.
***************
These days, my back goes out more than I do.
RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com
Fox News: "Over one hundred straight days of rioting and looting.”
You: “Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...”