Another of the Great Themes: the annual bathing suit purchase. I know I should look at my work through a professional lens, and for the most part I do. However, sometimes it’s depressing to behold the product of my “imagination” and realize just how much my own experience has evolved with age. The days are far behind me when a pretty young woman with a stunning figure could not wait to come home and show me her new swimwear purchase. I probably shouldn’t have said that. There’s no fool like an old fool.
Old Foolin’ Around
By Jimmy Johnson
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79 responses to “Old Foolin’ Around”
Wow. Bating suits and a beach. Wouldn’t that be a great idea?
joe: You were going for “Baiting suits and a beach”, right! I always thought those lovelies were baiting us on the beaches!
Sorry – should have been BATHING
Baiting fits the context nicely!
Thank you for your nuanced observations about the humor and pathos of the married state. So funny, and it is always amusing and helpfultoo see ourselves in Arlo and Janis:)
Why, thank you! (Pathos, huh? Same root word as ‘pathetic?’)
Re “that’s your answer to everything”. For close to 40 years, MY husband’s answer to pretty much everything has been “boys are boys”. Bathing suits and anything else, for that matter. I think he was right!
I heard rumors that “boys will be boys” is no longer an acceptable excuse. Neither is, “There’s no fool like an old fool.” Especially the latter.
I’ve always been especially fond of the swimsuit theme. So much emotion, so many undercurrents, so good a reminder of the passage of time and the way the past is both lost to us and yet still out there somewhere. Where are you right now, yellow bikini?
Alas, the yellow bikini.
“What’s YOUR yellow bikini?” … “Never stop. Never settle.” ~Hennessy Cognac
I wish it was warm enough for a bathing suit this morning. It was 32° When I started my marathon at 7:00 a.m. Then it got a little warmer but the wind picked up so it was about as cold as it was when I started.
I had a wonderful day. I took 10 minutes off by best time with a replaced hip! It’s still almost twice as slow as my best time, but I am very very grateful.
I’ve had some issues losing weight since the quarantine started. I am eating less but for some reason I’m not burning enough off. Of course today is a weird day as I’ve burned about 3,000 calories! However I’ll probably gain about three to four pounds just from the inflammation for at least a couple days.
Steve, you are an inspiration for us all!
Definitely perspiration…maybe a candidate for the Crazy Nation!
Obviously I enjoy it. Today I am moving around pretty good for a 63 year old. That’s better than the 103 year that I have felt after prior marathons!
Elaine’s favorite, “All men are prancing, leering, billy goats,” is probably also no longer PC. How about emb’s value judgment, “More than a handful is wasteful”?
Good news is that I copy-edited a therapist’s short submission yesterday [details HIPPA]; she had mastered the use of 3rd plural [they, their, their’s, them, etc.] as singular. Brava! Bad news is COVID-19 house arrest is not getting any less dull. Speelczech doesn’t allow their’s. Even before PC, “Whose fatigues are those? They’re their’s.”
Peace, anyway.
Always remember:
“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, ‘A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!”
Sorry, emb, spell check was right in this case. It’s simply “theirs” – no apostrophe in possessive pronouns.
Bob: Thank you. I knew better, but not yesterday evening. Not everyone on this blog welcomes friendly corrections. Take care.
Rick: I fear not, but the best was before my rotator cuffs rotted out.
The other bad news is that [unless the website is playing games], there were 2 eggs being actively incubated in this nest yesterday.
https://explore.org/livecams/birds/osprey-cam-chesapeake-conservancy
Peace,
Good one!
Browning would be proud.
Some thoughts on beauty and the passage of time:
First – I am thoroughly enjoying growing old with Her (though when I told Her I wanted to, decades ago, I didn’t realize it would involve, you know, GROWING OLD………………….) Yes, it would be nice if we could still look (and move) like those kids in the 1984 photo that is my desk top wallpaper – but then again, they had no idea what a joy grandkids are, and so forth. (But when I look at Her, my brain ignores the evidence of my eyes, and still see that girl in the photo.)
Second – On the other hand, (and this will take a bit of exposition, so bear with me), in ’82 my friend Bob & I went to Alpine Valley for a Grateful Dead show; of course we got there early, and wandered around the parking lot, um…preparing for the show, if you get my drift. Just as we were were getting in a proper GD show mindset, we wandered back to the car – as another car pulled in beside us, and a young lady got out; medium height, willowy, almost-waist-length shampoo-model-quality honey-brown hair, exquisitely lovely. She was wearing a plain white T-shirt, jeans cut off as high as you can cut them, then split up the side seams to the waist, fringed knee-high suede moccasin boots – and, on her right hand, a purple satin opera glove with the fingers cut off. Quoth Bob, “The glove is too much”, to which I retorted, “No – the glove just enough!” He concurred. There was no argument as to which of us was going to hit on her, as both our jaws were way too dropped to allow speech.
Now, 38 years later, we will still occasionally raise a glass to her – and I’m glad that was the only time I saw her, so she will live forever as she was that day.
Happy Mother’s Day to three great Southern ladies…Clara, Julia and Florence (my mother, my maternal grandmother, and my paternal grandmother). I miss y’all every day.
Our live-in pest, a cockatiel given free range of the place by my MBH, did her part to celebrate the day. While perched on the top curve of a kitchen chair, she laid an egg onto the maple floor some 3.5′ or so lower. It didn’t survive the altitude change. If in the wild, she’d be doing her part in culling the herd.
On a happier note, a belated birthday gift was delivered this morning: five delicious pounds of Claxton fruitcake! YUM!
The thing is, is that they still look sexy and desirable to us. Bikini or not. For some reason they don’t see it or believe it.
Like the strip where Janis is bugging Arlo about finding younger women more attractive than her. And she says something like, “Admit it, the older you get, the more attractive the younger women are to you!” And he calms her down, while thinking, “No, but the older ones do.” And I feel that way these days.
My dad the college professor decided, after one Parents Weekend, that he was getting old, because the mothers were looking better to him than the daughters.
I have a better understanding of Steely Dan’s song, Hey Nineteen, now.
Guys, others can sometimes tell that person with you is the lovely creature you still see. Have mentioned this before. At 2009 UMC Summer Theology Workshop, Koronis Assembly Grounds, Paynesville, MN, it got mentioned that I was 79. Later, when I was off somewhere, a younger woman [50ish?] said to Elaine “I hope my husband looks at me like that when I’m 79.” Perhaps the sweetest thing that’s ever been said about me. Elaine actually turned 79 the following month, and may have already been in the early stages of the leukemia that killed her 28 Dec. 2010. Perhaps she still remembers, and now understands more than any of us. Don’t know, but hope so, and think it likely.
Peace,
Two brand new Great Spirit Bluff peregrine hatchlings.
https://explore.org/livecams/birds/peregrine-falcon-cam
Explore has a new wolf webcam nr Ely, MN, outside a den. Have no idea how many or how old pups are; mostly we’ll be viewing a well placed den entry among rocks.
Peace,
Here ’tis. That den entrance looks too good to be true. There is a Wolf Center at Ely. That may be where we are.
https://explore.org/livecams/zen-den/wolf-cam-1?utm_source=Socials&utm_medium=wolf%20cam&utm_campaign=general&fbclid=IwAR2YCCbJFRk7GrAnKrlHA1Q0mwM-oh83FVqt75I4ahI7I-q2WfyvHBLyCbc
Peace,
Just heard that daughter does NOT have the covid-19 crud, thanks be to God! Results came in earlier this morning and she emailed promptly. She does have something generating some coughing, but it isn’t the baddie. [She has been secluded and home-teaching her brood for about 2 months, so had no obvious source of viri.]
Good report, sir!
Jackie just got word a couple of days ago that a close friend of hers had been discharged after about three weeks in hospital recovering from COVID-19. Between his age and the fact he spent a good part of the three weeks on a ventilator (which in some cases apparently damages the lungs as much or more than the disease), he truly beat the odds.
When I was about 51 I developed a dry, hacking cough and had to pull off the road for 36 hours before I felt safe to drive again. That turned out to be pertussis… the vaccine I’d received as a kid had worn off. Turns out you need a booster every few years.
I’m looking for information, not trying to start an argument:
Back in March we were treated to news stories and videos of young adults on spring break ignoring all the social distancing rules and frolicking on the beaches. Have any of you seen any followup accounts of their contracting COVID-19? Of their dying of it? Of their relatives back home getting it from them? Or could it be that the virus doesn’t float around beaches in the bright sunshine? Maybe THAT was the place to be to avoid the virus, not shut up in our homes?
I haven’t heard anything about that particular cohort, but I suspect that at least some of the things that were decided to do or not to do, six to eight weeks ago, will turn out to be less than optimal ways to deal with The Rona. Primarily because so many of them were based on modeling, and modeling is only as good as the data and the understanding the modeler has of the underlying processes…neither of which was all that great when the decisions had to be made.
At least, we have perhaps learned some things that will help deal with the next CV pandemic when it comes along. Which, unfortunately, it most likely will.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/us/coronavirus-texas-austin-spring-break-cabo.html
Re 5-11-20 real-time cartoon: Once again, I’ll eschew doing the math on Janis’s two-piece swimsuit. Other than to mentally calculate that the bottom half of it is not quite small enough to qualify as a “bikini”. (Although I will admit that these days there’s not much difference between the two.) I do wonder, however, what she would be wearing to “lay out”* had she worn a mask AND gloves for her mailbox trip. 😉
*What Southern college coeds called getting some sun back in the day.
We’ve heard various comparisons of the 1919[?] flu epidemic & COVID-19. Mechanisms of contagion were probably much the same: don’t cough on people & such. Means & ease of travel were different: 747s? Term “social distance” is new, & so is lots of medical/public health knowledge & public communication.
But nobody has said much re world population. Largest city was London, NYC close second: 7M or so. Mexico City [+ burbs?] = now some20 B, Shanghai ? = In terms of mobility & contagion, there are several urban clusters similar to Boston-Arlington, a crowd many leagues long.
Total world then: 1.9 B; today, approaching 8 B. There are over 4x as many of us, on about the same total habitable surface with maybe somewhat less available fresh water, & a temporarily much larger & better refrigerated food supply. If nothing else, we’re simply more crowded, & many nations have military means to change the whole picture for the worse. But, this is the Village.
Peace?
Peace,
2nd Peace simply a typo. Peace,
One takeaway at this point: Avoid extremely crowded places, like a subway car. About 25 years ago I was riding each day an antiquated bus bought by some employees for their version of “car pooling.” After the first month, I decided my health required spending more money and going it alone. There was entirely too much coughing and sneezing going on for my peace of mind.
Just for the fun of it, here’s a video my ex made of our dog playing with a balloon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-382M7r67y0 There is some excited barking, so adjust your volume accordingly.
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