Just to Let You Know I'm Not Dead...Yet

My son has been sick for five days. Five long days. He's stopped with the 3 o'clock wailing that he's going to throw up. He hasn't stopped coughing the cough of a chain-smoking former lot lizard living on borrowed time at the local retirement village. Regardless, I said fuck all to the continued health of his classmates and sent him off to school. He--and whatever it is he's carrying--is the educational system's problem now. I'm at work, with the phone lifted off the hook, a light strain of "la la la la la I can't hear you" being uttered in the round to avoid mistakenly hearing the phone ring.

My wife finally went to the doctor yesterday after two weeks of suffering through some sort of pinched-nerve thing which affected both the continued use of her left arm and the ability to put out. The other side-effect has been that she finds it difficult to get comfortable at night in the bed...a bed which she shares with me. Some nights, she merely shifts around, sighs heavily, and then shifts some more. Other nights, she's flopping around like a marlin that's just been heaved onto the deck of a fishing boat and is about to be gutted and turned into steaks...or a former child star on the floor of her rehab cell when someone turns the lights on without offering the proper warnings.

She's been given prednasone, which can sometimes lead to "inopportune arousal", or so I've been told. I shan't hold my breath, for even if that happens, the Reds are scheduled to sweep into to town for a four-game series this weekend. Please ignore the bulging forearms, though I am tempted to draw crudely-rendered stick-figure anchors on them while I hum inappropriate sea shanties.

This past weekend, I had two birthday parties to go to. One, I had to take my daughter to and which involved lots of swimming. The other was for my friend Joe's son, Joe. Creative, no? I also go to meet his dad, Joe, his sister, Jo, and his mom, Joanne. He's scheduled to become the father of a girl in October, whose name I can only imagine will be Josephine.

Anyway, in my hurry to hang out with Joe, I left my daughter's towel and--this is a far more pressing tragedy--a half-dozen of her silly bands at the party. This means I have to drive back out to the birthday celebrant's house and reclaim the towel as well as the silly bands. Priorities, you know.

My dear friend, Elliot, who you might know better as the Displaced Cheesehead, is on the list of people who I must sit and enjoy a meal with ere shuffling off this mortal coil. If this should also involve beverages of alcoholic nature as well as some sporting even, then I should be happy, however I'm not one to look gift horses in the mouth. Nor am I to look gift photography in the mouth, and Elliot provided me with the above image (via the website Oddly Specific). It is grand, and I concur with the photographer of the aforementioned door, "I entered the wrong major."

Speaking of cheeseheadedness, He Who Must Not Be Named has announced today that he's retiring. For reals this time. Maybe. I'm not sure. Perhaps. 50/50 at this point. Should Purple Voldemort finally be gone, I can only assume that someone torched his Wrangler Jeans horcrux, that Aaron Rogers is now the best quarterback in the NFC North, and that John Madden and Peter King are somewhere shedding silent tears with one another and snoodling in order to work through their desultory sadness.



P.S. If you are unfamiliar with the term, do not look up "snoodling" while at work. This is something to look up at home, preferably with the kids nearby, because it will give them an education. We can all agree that kids need more education, and this will provide it, even if the education is only "why not to drink heavily in college".