"Aunt Bea, Did you buy this cake at Wal-mart?"

"Why no, Andy, I baked it myself."

"Wow, what a novel concept.  The next thing you know we might be eating our meals together as a family."

"Don't get crazy on me, Andy.  Why do you think we bought those television trays?"

"But, Aunt Bea..."

"No buts about it, Andy.  Now Opie, you run upstairs and wash your hands, it's almost time for 'Fear Factor'. "

Musings -

I always keep paper and a pen around because I never know when I'll have a thought.  I had one once, and I forgot it.  I am smart enough to know, that if I don't write it down, these brilliant thoughts will go the way of my athletic skills.  Here are a few of my latest musings.  You should see the ones I don't share with you.  Those are the Shel-has-finally-gone-off-the-deep-end thoughts, and I would certainly deny them if you read them.

"When they get married, people still repeat after the preacher 'for better or for worse', but evidently about half of them are kidding."

"I tried lying to a woman about my age once.  I said I was ten years younger than I was at the time.  She wanted to know if I'd been in a wreck or something."

"Friendships are like fences.  You need to check them every now and then to see if they need any repairs."

"At night, when there's a scratching at my window... I'm glad I'm not an atheist."

"Something I thought was bad, can turn into something halfway good when something happens that's even worse."

"It's easy to be humble when you have friends like mine."

"Why won't they gossip about me when I've done something good?"

Guy stranded on a desert island for ten years... totally alone.  Finally, the U. S. Navy finds him and sends a small boat ashore to pick him up.  The Navy men notice three huts on the island and realizing he had been alone all these years, they ask him about them.
"Oh, that's where I live," he said, pointing to one of the huts. "And that's where I go to church," he added pointing at another hut.
"What about the third one," asks one of the rescuers.
"That's where I used to go to church," he answered.

I've been thinking too much again.  Here are some things I thought about..

“Definitions:  Airplane - something you can go on, but don’t try to take me.

                      Diet - See definition of airplane.”

“If we all want to be individuals, does that mean we’re all alike?”

“A guy said I was a coward, and I disagreed… but I was afraid to tell him.”

“It’s so much easier to be critical than to just shut up and do it yourself.”

“When I was young there were lots of things I wanted to change.  Now that I’m older, I just change the things I want.”

Fabolous

Fabolous got shot in a parking lot in New York City recently.  Who is Fabolous, you ask, I don't have a clue, but he got shot in the early morning hours.  Here's some advice to you seniors and to anyone else who is interested.  If you are hanging out at 3:30am, pretty much ANYWHERE, your chances of getting shot are much greater than when you're at home in bed. 3:30am is when the hoodlums, dope heads and criminals are out and about.  They don't like the light of day because witnesses can identify them, so they crawl out of their holes when it's dark and look for prey.  Usually, the victim is one of their own, but they do catch the occasional law-abiding citizen who for whatever reason is out at that unfriendly hour.  Here's my advice.  Stay home at 3:30am.  There is absolutely nothing you need so bad it can't wait until dawn's first light.  If you do have to go out at 3:30am, here are some helpful hints.
1.)Don't stop where you see people gathered on a street corner. 
2.)Don't stop where you don't see people gathered on a street corner. 
3.)Go home and go to bed.
 

I lay awake at 3:30am a lot because of arthritis pain and worries (some real, many imagined) and because my wife snores... like a buzz saw.  That gives me time to think.  Here are some things I've thought about.

"I want to live as long as I can.  I don't care if I'm bedridden and somebody has to change my diaper.  I just want to enrage those people at the Social Security Administration who think all that money is theirs."

"At age 63 I never worry about death or dying.  I don't have to.  Old Man Ralph Turpin lives at the end of my street.  He's 96.  The way I have it figured, the Grim Reaper has to get him first.  As long as he's still there... I'm cool."

"When I was young I resented old people.  They were always telling me how bad my generation was and how much better things were in their day.  Now that I'm old, I do the same thing.  It's more or less a hobby."

"When I was an infant and totally dependent on others, I feared nothing and lived in a perpetual state of bliss.  Now I am approaching being totally dependent on others again... but this time I'm afraid.  I'm afraid they'll smother me with a pillow."

"These days when I have to choose between two activities, I pick the one closest to a bathroom."

"The other day I was complaining that people aren't as nice to others as they used to be.  Ah, what the heck... neither am I."

"My wife told me that the older I get, the more she thinks I'm losing my mind.  I told her that the way things were going, neither of us would miss it very much."

The Heart Problem

Don't get old.  Oh, that's right we already are. 
       A  couple of years ago, after my first physical in almost thirty years, something came up on my thallium stress test and the doctor told me to go to a cardiologist.  I didn't do it. (I never claimed to be too smart.)  A few weeks ago, I went back to the doctor because I had taken my blood pressure (I hadn't been feeling well for a few months) at a drug store and it was 169/109.  He put me on some BP medication which made me feel better, but I was still having the fluttering in my chest, and he scheduled another thallium test.  The next morning he called my house and said to come to his office right away.  That's when I almost had the "big one".  I rushed to his office, making pitiful pleas and apologies to God for not taking better care of this body he loaned me.  I also made promises, but realized that these were the same promises I made two years before when I did NOT go to the cardiologist.  Lord, why is it you set such severe limits on my wisdom, but no limits at all on my stupidity?  My doctor had the cardiologist at his office when I got there.  Now I was really scared, and I just shook my head like a ventriloquist's dummy when he said he was scheduling me for a heart cath (whatever that is).
        Three days later, when I got to the hospital, the nerves finally set in. I wanted to cry like a little girl and beg like a convicted murderer for his life.  Instead I just sat with 20 or 30 others (patients like me, and their loved ones) getting more frightened by the minute... until my pal, Bob "Hoghead" Bush showed up.  In a loud voice he announced to me AND the gathering of frightened sheep, "I took it on myself to call around and get pall bearers in case you didn't make it." I almost let the now-hostile crowd have him, but since I was laughing, I decided to tell them the truth.  "He can't help himself. He's just stupid."  Bob went on, "I thought I might have some trouble rounding up pall bearers, but EVERYBODY volunteered, even some old ladies.  I got about fifty... some offered me money.  So don't let them down.  Give up on the operating table.  Go to the light." 
        Eventually I was called to the back, made to strip naked and put on a hospital gown that had been originally sized for a little person (I'm 6' 4").  The gown looked more like a bib, but the nurse assured me that I would only have to wear it for six or eight hours.  Then Jennifer, my beautiful 20 year-old nurse, prepped my groin with her handy dandy razor and stuck some iv's in my arm.  An hour later, still laying in a room full of people with my bib on, another nurse wheeled me into the operating room.
        This nurse hooked up the iv's to some of the best stuff on the face of this earth and I was soon ready to do the operation myself.  I don't know what was in those tubes dripping into my arm, but I do know that I didn't much care what was going on. If the doctor had told me I was pregnant, I would have laughed and told him not to tell Bob Bush.  They should give that stuff to people before they visit the IRS office... Any hooo... an hour later and the doctor told me I had one artery completely blocked which needed a stent and two more needing angioplasty.  After I stopped laughing, I told him to go ahead.  Another hour later and somebody rolled me back out to Jennifer, who told me she was going to remove the tube they had surgically implanted into a major artery in my groin, and that I couldn't move for a few hours.  Then she clamped me to my little bed... still wearing my little bib. Two hours later the bleeding was under control and Jennifer said goodby as they took me to my room. A wonderful nurse, Alma, took over and checked my wound.  She said it looked good, but that I couldn't move for a couple more hours. No problem.  As soon as Alma left, the phone beside my bed rang.  It was behind me and to my right.  I twisted ever so slightly to reach it and popped the wound back open. Who was on the phone, you ask?  A lady with an Oriental accent who asked if this was the hospital.  When I said yes, she said, "Go find out the main number."  I assured her that I couldn't get out of bed and she added, "You not a nice man.  Now get up and go find out what de main number."  Two hours later, and Alma had the bleeding under control... again.
        There's no need to tell you about the iv alarms and the 4:30 am fire drill which kept me up all night.  The next day I went home... but I would like to say this.  Everything was my regular doctor's fault.  He should have made me go to the cardiologist two years before.  Couldn't he tell I was retarded and that I would never go on my own?  Didn't he know that once I had gone through the procedure I would feel like a new man?  It's amazing how well this God-given body works when blood and oxygen is flowing to the whole package. If I die tomorrow, these last 10 days have been the best I've felt in years.
        The moral of this story is simple:  If a doctor tells you to go to a specialist... What, honey?... Bob Bush on the telephone?  He wants to get a blizzard at the DQ?  Tell him I'm on my way...  Sorry for the interruption, dear website readers.  What were we talking about?... Must not have been important.