Geezuz shit it’s hot!  It’s going to be 100 degrees the next four days.  Take into account humidity and the heat index is 115.  To make things worse for me, I just got back from a ten day vacation in my home state of Wyoming.  It was 72 degrees and 20 percent humidity where I was.  I do this to myself practically every year.  Maybe I should start going to a nice place in the Arabian Peninsula or African Rain Forest for my summer trip.  Then I might look forward to returning home.

Cooling off in Jackson Hole WY                                            Cooling off in Omaha NE

A big part of my annual post vacation depression is the state of my lawn when I get back.  All spring long and into the early summer I am attending to my fescue and bluegrass, applying fertilizer and aerating, getting a head start on weeds with pre-emergence, applying fungus preventives, hand pulling the few invaders that happen to slip through my protective chemical barrier, edging, mowing at precisely a three inch height, and watering at appropriate intervals.  I have a rain gauge to help me determine when I should unwind my garden hoses, and I water only in the early morning, something I found by experience to be rather important if your lawn tends to develop fungus.

I am very proud of my lawn, and I think you would have to agree I should be considering all the fucking time I spend on it.  But then I come back from vacation and it looks like shit- a cheerless  brown spot here, some unsettling dead grass there. And it’s not that I totally neglect my lawn when I am out of town.  I have a very dependable neighborhood teen take care of it when I am gone.   I am sure some of the problem is related to all the strains of dreaded fungus I have battled over the years.  What I learned about battling various strains of fungus over the years is that it can become very expensive to battle various strains of fungus.  It gradually became apparent to me that it is more important to be able to buy groceries than it is to feature a pristine lawn.  So it is that time of summer again where I just say fuck it and let whatever happens happen.  You can battle mother nature for just so long.  I’ll re-seed in the fall.

That dose not mean I have given up to the point I would approve of your dog or cat shitting on my lawn.  If I see you walking your dog without a poop bag in your hand and your dog takes a dump on my lawn, you are a marked man.  By that I mean I will mark you with my Super Soaker that I have filled with urine.  Don’t ask how the urine ended up in the Super Soaker.  Just be aware that is is pumped and pressurized and ready to fire.  You might be jumping to the conclusion I hate dogs.  That’s not true.  I just don’t want to unexpectedly step on a dog-shit land mine or run over it with my mower.  I don’t think my interpretation of lawn etiquette is asking too much of anyone.  I have similar rules about dogs inside of my house.  I don’t care if you bring your dog into my house, as long as it doesn’t pee or shit on my carpet and stays off my furniture.  That can not be construed as discriminatingly unfair in any way since I have the same expectations for certain relatives when they pay me a visit.

Aunt Dora’s Well Trained Dog is Never                     When Uncle Bob Wanders into My House             a Problem in My House                                               I Prefer He Stays Off of the Furniture

Since we have touched on the subject, if you are planning on coming to town, let me know.  That way I have time to decide if I should break out the plastic furniture covers or my collection of single malts.

Ok.  A lot of you out there have been wondering where in the hell is that book I told you I wrote.  No shit.  A lot of people have actually been wondering about that.   What do I mean by a “lot'” you ask?  By a “lot” I mean more than two.  Six might be a little high, so it’s somewhere between three and five.  If I’m doing the math right, that’s an average of four, and that seems about right.  One of the people that keeps bugging me about my book is my neighbor Claire.  I always thought that was a girl’s name, but this is a guy.  That was really bothering me for awhile, so I looked it up and I was right.  It is a girl’s name.  Way back when it occasionally was a man’s name, but it was spelled Clair- no “e” on the end.  The Latin derivative is “clarus”  meaning bright, or clear.  Looks like my neighbor’s folks should have studied up on the name a little bit if you ask me.  Nothing too bright or clear about their thinking when they named their son Claire.  Why do parents do that kind of shit anyway?

Jupiter is another one of the overly resolute.  Kind of looks like there is some sort of pattern going on here, doesn’t it.  Jupiter is an old high school classmate who can’t blame his parents for his name because Jupiter thought that up himself.   His real name is Mike Jones, but  he started insisting we call him Jupiter in high school.  The reason for that is he was a pretty good athlete and he thought the name Jupiter Jones would stand out and provide an edge for him when he competed for athletic scholarships and professional roster spots.   As it turned out, Jupiter was only able to stand out in a variety of police line-ups as his dream of becoming a professional athlete quickly faded and the reality of funding his expensive substance abuse habit set in.  During an extremely awkward conversation with Jupiter at our 50th high school reunion last year, I mentioned my book and he seemed inordinately interested in it.  When I told him it was not quite ready for publication, he was sure I was lying about the whole thing and he became abusively incredulous.   As sometimes happens with many who unfortunately travel down the path of drug habituation, I suspect portions of the inside of his head must have short circuited, because I keep getting emails from him explaining how he is going to burn my house down if he doesn’t see my book on Amazon.

Jupiter Jones 1965- Working Out                               Jupiter Jones 2015- Flipping Out                           in High School Weight Room                                      at High School Reunion Dinner

I am pretty sure a couple of other people have expressed interest in my book, I just can’t remember for sure who they are.  Probably a couple of my relatives.  Anyway, you will now finally find my book on Amazon, Google, and Barnes and Noble if you are interested.  Or if you are like me and are apprehensive about exposing your personal information by using internet ordering, I suppose you can go to your favorite book store and order it.  But then you run the risk of exposing yourself to a nervous breakdown dealing with all the anxious anticipation of its delayed arrival.  But trust me it will be worth it.

This book started out as an autobiography, but I got tired of confronting the fact that I have accomplished very little in my life, so I mixed in a dash of proselytizing and a pound of self-help to spice it up.  Also,  I might have spiced it up by mentioning your name.  Maybe you’re not sure what I mean by “spice it up.”  For that reason you might be smart to check it out.

One caveat about my book.  I wrote it three years ago.   One of the things I could not restrain myself from doing while writing was interjecting an opinion or three.   I’m almost 70 years old, and pretty well set in my ways, and I thought these opinions I had at the time would forever be valid.  One lesson I learned from writing my book is that a lot of shit can change in three years.  Another lesson learned is it’s pretty difficult to retract an opinion when that opinion is published in print.  Overall I have to say I would still stand by almost everything I profess to believe in my book, but there is one glaring statement I made that I have to admit is a bit embarrassing.  Buy my book and see if you can figure out what that one mistake might be.

The title of my book is “Fishing with Bobby and Mike.”  So you have no one to blame but yourself for wasting your money should you ultimately decide to buy my book, I think you can take a peak at a sample for free on a couple of the above mentioned web sites.  Knock yourself out.

*I hope this is Exceptionally Exciting News for you Jupiter.  I would appreciate it if you would now stop with the threatening e-mails.  Please don’t be upset if you don’t find your name mentioned in my book.  There are  many others who will likewise be disappointed, and a few who will wish they were.

Roundabout

So, what do you think about roundabouts?  I kind of like them.  Well, I like the one that is in our neighborhood anyway.  My friend that owns my favorite Italian restaurant (Sgt. Peffers) hates it.  That particular intersection was formally a six way stop.  People in a hurry were constantly not stopping or not taking their proper turn, or the overly-cautious were forever paralyzed and fucking everything up by not even taking their turn to move along.  It was always a rush hour mind-dicking and you could count on a fender-bendered every other day.  It could get pretty annoying.  I mean how hard is it to pay attention.  Get off your damn cell phone!  The rule is if you’re first to arrive at a six way stop, you’re first to go.  If you arrive at the intersection at the same time, the driver on the right has right-of-way.  It can’t be more simple, although I have a good high school friend, Al, who honestly had trouble distinguishing right from left.  I suppose that could create some confusion. The person that rectified my friend’s problem was my high school football coach.  He got tired of watching Al run into me on our end sweeps and fixed everything with a permanent marker and scribing a huge “R” and “L” on the backs of  his hands, a technique I believe Al still implements to this very day.

Anyway the roundabout was supposed to correct the traffic confusion.  But my friend Tim that owns my favorite Italian restaurant thinks there have been even more accidents since the roundabout was installed.  I guess he should know.  His restaurant is only a half a block away.  He might be right.  I can’t give you any statistical info about it.  I suppose I could do some research and get back to you, but if you think that’s going to happen you have your head up your ass.

My neighborhood roundabout is a little atypical.  Those of us in the neighborhood call it the “peanut,” because it has a figure 8 shape to it.  It sort of looks like the picture at the left, only it’s a lot bigger, and then instead of eyes and a mouth there are a bunch of plants.  Ann, one of my good friends in the neighborhood, takes care of those.  I don’t know how she keeps all that stuff looking so good.  I mean the flowers there are surrounded by concrete and they bake in the hot sun, but they always stay amazingly perky.  There really is no convenient way to supply water that I know of.   When I was driving through there one night last summer though I remember seeing some guy standing in the middle of the “peanut” urinating on the begonias.  Maybe he makes a watering visit every night.   That could be.  As well as my friends restaurant, there is a bar just down the street.  The clientele of that establishment are the fervently loyal kind is what I’ve heard.

Merry-Go-Round

Another of my neighbors who is kind of a senile old coot got one of his grandchildren all confused because he kept calling the roundabout a merry-go-round and when the little bastard found out the merry-go-round was never going to materialize, he went berserk I guess and threw the Tonka truck he was playing with through a living room window. That’s the story I got from Mr. Nostrum down the street anyway.  We all call him Mr. Nostril because he’s always sticking his nose into other peoples business.

What I really like to do is slip away and drive through the “peanut” in mid-morning or mid-afternoon when traffic is minimal.  With no one to interfere, I often cruise around and around several times.  It reminds me of driving curved roads in the mountains.  I love driving in the mountains.  Not a fancy interstate through the mountains though.  I like a nice curvy mountain road with lots of hairpin turns and switchbacks, the kind that scare the shit out of my wife.  For that provision it’s hard to beat the Bighorn mountains just west of my hometown of Sheridan Wyoming, and the Snowy Range in southeastern Wyoming works out nicely too, but I only get out there once a year or so.  So I just have to make do with the “peanut.”  If you’re ever in town, I’ll hang a  fresh pine-sented air freshener from my rear view mirror, and  while we listen to the long version of John Denver’s “Rocky Mountin High” I will show you how I put my SUV through its paces swerving back and forth through my neighborhood roundabout.  It will be fun.

It’s only because of my extremely sensitive conscience and sense of honesty that I am going to tell you this.  I have been unfaithful.  I could have gotten away with it.  I mean my wife doesn’t have pictures or video or anything.  She can’t prove a thing.  But I could never live with myself, so I came out and admitted it.  So she knows now.  I feel like shit, yet having an open discussion with her I think has cleared the air, and it certainly provided me with a profound sense of relief.  I just hope our marriage is still salvageable.

Things started unravelling the day she found those two spots on some clothing.   Paradoxically the spots weren’t anywhere to be found on my clothing.  No sir.  They were on her clothing.  That sounds kind of weird to you I suppose, since I’m the one who traveled down the path of infidelity.  Normally if you find two spots on your spouses clothing, that’s the person that should be seated under the hot, concentrated beam of interrogation.  The thing of it is the spots were actually more than spots.  They  were raised spots.  I think you would have to call them lumps.  That seems more accurate.  I’ll go with lumps.  And they were brown lumps, and they were stuck on the outside of my wife pants, pretty much right where her ass resides.  I know what you are thinking.  You think there’s a good chance my wife had some sort of “accident.”  But no, like I said, the two brown lumps were on the outside of her pants.

So my wife confronted me.  She wanted to know what the fuck those two brown lumps were doing on the outside of her pants.  At first I thought she had some medical question about them, since I am a retired pharmacist and she thinks I have all the answers to problems involving issues of personal health.  She insisted that I feel them, and although I was a little apprehensive, I did as instructed and to my amazement the brown lumps were immovable. Stuck to her pants like two small mounds of amber contact cement.  I was at that moment perplexed, and thought maybe she had been nosing around in my shop again and somehow backed into some construction adhesive or something.  But she said the brown lumps smelled like caramel.  So I stirred up enough courage to scrape a sample of one of the brown lumps with my fingernail, and took a whiff, and sure enough it smelled like caramel to me too.

I told her that was really curious.  What the heck could those two brown lumps on the outside of her pants be, we both wondered?   But I knew what they were.  At that very moment I knew but did not, at that very moment, have the balls to admit it.

My Wife and I in Happier Times

I often pick up a package of candy, like Mike and Ikes, or cherry Nibs, and then surprise my wife with it during one of our special nights watching a movie on our big screen TV.  It’s a routine I’ve followed for quite some time now.  My wife is especially fond of cherry licorice, but appreciates my clever ability to keep our marriage interesting and spontaneous by randomly selecting different items for our special movie night treat.   I scramble off and retrieve it from where I have been hiding it and pop it open right after all the annoying FBI piracy warnings.  Like I’m going to actually want a copy of this shitty movie.  Come on!  You think I want to sit through this garbage twice!  The only reason I rented it was because I wanted an excuse to eat some candy.

So we planned another of those special movie nights and in a Pavlovian response I picked up a box of candy to enjoy during the film, ever hopeful that the candy would not be the only thing offering enjoyment for the evening.   Milk Duds.  That was my selection.  But then that night my wife decided she had some stuff to do and couldn’t watch the movie.  I saved the movie for another day, but not the Milk Duds.  I succumbed to temptation and ate half the box-  HALF the box.  While I was eating them I laid the open box down on my wife’s side of our very comfortable reclining loveseat that we sit on  whenever we watch our big screen TV,  and I guess a couple of the Milk Duds must have escaped unnoticed.  So now you probably figured out what the two brown lumps were that later became stuck to the outside of my wife’s pants. Mystery solved.

But as mentioned, at the time I was reluctant to admit my weakness.  Don’t be so smug you piece of fly-infested horse dung.  You know damn well you would pull a big stall yourself.  Guys just don’t like to reveal their deficiencies.  But my wife kept pounding at me.  She was certain I had something to do with the two brown lumps on the outside of her pants and she was unrelenting in her determination to break me.  As I suspected, when I finally did admit my selfish betrayal,  the ridiculing I received was even worse.   After two hours of putting up with her jabs at my heartless soul, I retrieved the remaining half box of Milk Duds and made it clear I had saved the half box just for her and therefore should not be considered to be a total asshole.  I think what transpired in the way of reconciliation on her part was half of one.

But the topper is she won’t admit it but I probably was doing her a favor.  That half box of Milk Duds is still sitting on our kitchen counter untouched.  You know why?  Because as we all know a Milk Dud has the capability to all on its own yank a healthy molar right out of its socket, not to mention how quickly it can remove a partially missing dental filling, which my wife, as of this very point in time, has an appointment with her dentist to repair.  And dare I ask about all the boxes of candy Dots she availed herself to on her solo, four hour road trips to see family in northern Iowa?  Do you think I tasted so much as one of those tasty fruit flavored treats?  Think again bucko!  Who’s the cheater now?  In light of that shocking information  I think you would agree that I could  easily retaliate with some barbed, accusatory remarks of my own.

But no, as usual I will take the high road and leave it alone.  That’s mostly because  I have an even darker secret I just as well admit.  You’ll find out sooner or later anyway.  The box of Milk Duds I bought for our movie night.  I actually bought two boxes.  I saved one box and I ate the entire contents myself.  Now I am sick of Milk Duds.  A similar thing happened to me with Bit-O-Honeys.  I know I am weak, but at least I’m honest and forthright.  I just hope I don’t have to be honest and forthright about Charleston Chews.  I love those things.  I can’t imagine the havoc overindulgence of those delectable delights inflict on relationships.

Well I’m off to Quick Trip to purchase a make-up package of cherry Twizzlers.  Do you know if that place does any gift-wrapping?

ALFIE

You know how they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?  Pardon me but I beg to differ.  My son and his wife decided what was missing in their lives was a dog.  So they went and got one.  A Corgi puppy.  His name is Alfie.  He is unmercifully cute so you can’t help but love the little guy despite what a pain in the ass he can be.  I know because at times my wife and I are called upon to doggy sit and the little shit gets into everything, as most puppy’s do I suppose.  He is constantly sniffing and licking and inserting anything that is remotely possible into his mouth.  The stuff that ends up there absolutely begs the question how can that possibly be appealing in any way?   But make no mistake his perplexing sense of taste is more than made up for by his overwhelming cuteness.  And with him cute does not stop with heartwarming facial expressions and whimsical antics.  He seems to be pretty intelligent, and I believe will keep tracking that way as long as he stays clear of anything coated with lead paint.  Which brings me to my original point.

If you are as perceptive as Alfie you have gathered that this blog will be discussing something about teaching an old dog new tricks, because I happened to mention that right off the bat.  I’m  not here to fuck you over.  I am about to reveal a trick that I learned.  You might have thought since I am mentioning a dog here that Alfie was the one that learned a new trick.  But he’s a puppy for Christ sake.  He’s not old at all.  So that wouldn’t make sense.  So if you are reasonably intelligent you have surmised it was i, an old person, that learned a new trick.  I know some of you out there are all confused because I’m not a dog, or possibly you think I am a really, really smart one that can type.  To clear things up for you, this is just an old saying that has been around for a long time.  I’m not sure what’s up with the dog analogy.  I mean I bet there actually are some old dogs you could teach a new trick to.  I’m just repeating what I heard, so fuck off and don’t make such a big deal out of it.   Here is the trick if you are interested.

Ok, you have a dog, so naturally it’s going to take a shit on your lawn, and I am pretty sure that is THE trick you teach your dog before all others.  It is the primo trick, trick number one.  Well number one and number two go together.  They’re combined into trick number one.  You don’t want your dog to pee or poop in your house, I am pretty sure, at least not on your carpet or sofa.  So I assume your dog is well familiar and accomplished with trick number one and does his business outside.

So there it is, a messy turd on your lawn.  You could wait a few days and let it dry out and then take your 9 iron and chip it over the fence into your neighbors yard.  But then there’s the risk your dog or five year old twins will roll around in it and track the mess all over your house  before you take the time to go find your golf bag.  So really the best resolution is to get it off your lawn asap.  Most people do the thing where you take a plastic bag of some sort and try scooping the stinky stuff up with that.  But what happens is you likely make a bigger mess by smearing everything all over the place.  Now you should really go get your garden hose and wash that slippery brown spot off your green grass.

The solution is to get yourself a big box of surgical gloves.  Put one on and slip your fingers underneath the turd.  The trick is to get way down below that tootsie roll.  Create some space for your gloved fingers to glide under it, letting them comb the grass that supports the butt brownie.  Then you are in complete control.  You’ll be clutching the entire mass and have it confined within a protected environment and you can do whatever you want with that chocolate banana.  That’s what I just learned.  In fact I’m going to go out and pick me up some more surgical gloves today, and then call my stock broker and have him dump some money into Becton Dickinson.  I think my method is really going to catch on.

Now that I’ve figured this out,  best of all I don’t have to worry that little Alfie will tumble into one of his keister cakes and be all stinky while I hold him in my lap.  That’s what I’m doing right now.  He’s so damn cute.  You just can’t help but want to cuddle up with the little tyke.  Isn’t that right, Alfie?  You’re just so cute!  Yes you are.  Yes you are.  Yes, yOWW!!  The little fucker bit me! God damn it those tiny teeth are sharp.  Son of a bitch I’m bleeding all over my carpet.  I bet this is one of those new tricks my daughter-in-law taught Alfie.  She’s had it in for me ever since I made fun of her goofy looking shoes. God damn it I wonder if I need stitchers.

Turns out I needed stitches