My mother-in-law, my late wife’s mother, has died. Her health faded
quickly, and in the course of a year or so, she went from her vibrant,
wiseacre self to shuffling off a mortal hospice. I’m sorta wrecked about
it, and my father-in-law is, of course, far more wrecked than me.
It’s useless and it’s piffle, but I
offered him the the closest thing I have to wisdom, a lesson that took a
long time for me to learn. Stephanie’s parents were lucky (“blessed” is the religious
word) to have had so many years with each other, and ‘the end takes nothing
away from those years.Most people never have that. They live alone, or
worse, they fake it with someone they can barely stand until the divorce.Steph’s parents beat the odds, same as me & their daughter. Even
now, more than five years after Stephanie’s death, any time I’m smiling
it’s because of her.
Monday morning, I was getting ready for work, and felt a poop is approaching. I tried squeezing something out, and got something but not much, not all of it.
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| CRANKY OLD FART #428 [archive] JUNE 6, 2024 |
My body is a wonderland, but it’s changed with old age, so this situation brings peril. These days, when it’s time for a poop, I get about two minutes warning and need to promptly seat myself on some nearby porcelain.No worries if the time comes while I’m at Seattle Sprocket, 88 steps and I’m in the men’s room. But if the time comes while I’m waiting for a bus or riding on a bus, or during the 15-minute walk from the bus stop to work, well, things could get more unpleasant than merely a day at work.So many things could go wrong…But now I’m home from work, pleased to report that pooping was not an issue. Peeing was, though. I’m a dribbler, and sometimes if I’m not paying attention the dribbles drip onto my pants instead of into the sewage. It’s happened before, so I try to be careful, but after a few minutes of filing in the file room, I smelled myself. Nobody else comes into the file room, so maybe it wouldn’t have been a problem, but I walked to the men’s room, and lathered a handful of soap into the inside of my pants. Better to smell of restroom soap than to smell of pee.
The same lack-of-poop struck again, all day Tuesday, Wednesday, and now Thursday morning. Seems all my seams have been sewn shut until the weekend, same as during my first week at Haugen & Dahl. It’s not my body any more. I just live in it.
Yesterday, Wednesday, was the first day I didn’t hurt a lot from lifting boxes and bending over, filing papers all day. It still hurt, just not a lot, and I didn’t end up walking like an old man, from the bus stop to home.All day every day, filing thousands of pieces of paper into a thousand folders, I have happy daydreams of retirement. If all goes well, that’s a month, maybe a month and a half from now.
While half the people pretended it wasn’t happening, and the other half was shouting that we should do something about the coming climate change, the climate has changed. There’s still plenty more changes to come, and the changes will never stop, and none of it will be good.
Here’s a fairly good summary of the Republican response to 34 guilty verdicts against Donald Trump. What’s noteworthy about the article, the first link, is that it’s not labelled as an editorial; it’s simply news analysis, but it’s accurate about the basic bullshittery of everything Republicans are saying.News, not editorial. This is the kind of news coverage media should’ve been offering years and years ago.
Oh what a turd Joe Biden is, flushing away immigrants’ lives to score political points, hoping to get a second term on the same single issue that won him his first term — not being Donald Trump.And fuck yeah, I’m voting for the bastard and hope you are too. Joe Biden sucks, but he’s still not Donald Trump.
He didn’t confess it, of course, for that might indicate some small smidgen of integrity, but it comes out after the fact that Arizona State Rep Alex Kolodin (R-Of Course) used AI to write his proposed legislation reigning in AI.Other than that, all I know about the legislation is that it’s Republican-backed, and that’s enough to make me suspicious.
⚡ LINKS FOR THINKS ⚡ What one man learned living alone in the wilderness for 40 years 50th anniversary of 10¢ beer night Google’s AI Overview search results copied my original work The whitewashing of Black music: Five singles made popular by white artists Welcome to Bilderberg, 2024
♫♬ MUSIC YOU SHOULD HEAR ♫ Ballad of the Landlord
by Langston Hughes and Margaret Walker I Am a Rock
by Simon & Garfunkel Last Day of Our Acquaintance
by Sinéad O’Connor Sittin’ in the Rain
by John Mayall & the BluesBreakers Watermelon In Easter Hay
by Frank Zappa
⚰️ DEAD PEOPLE ⚰️ Janis Paige
actress, Silk StockingsWilliam Russell
actor, Doctor Who
6/6/2024 Cranky Old Fart is annoyed and complains and very occasionally
offers a kindness, along with anything off the internet that’s made me
smile or snarl. All opinions fresh from my ass. Top illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Comments & conversations invited. Tip ‘o the hat to the AVA, BoingBoing, Breakfast at Ralf’s, Chuff, Dirty Blonde Mind, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, Lemmy.world, Looking for My Perfect Sandwich, Mr Souza’s Happy Place, Voenix Rising, and anywhere else I’ve stolen links, illustrations, or inspiration.Special thanks to Linden Arden, Becky Jo, Wynn Bruce,
Joey Jo Jo emeritus, Jeff Meyer, John the Basket, Dave S, Name Withheld, and always extra
special thanks to my lovely late Stephanie, who gave me 21 years and
proved that the world isn’t always shitty.
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