Day 67-SIP-Best Day Yet

Posted on 24/05/2020 by Grumpa Joe

Clearly this is by far the best day of 2020 from a weather standpoint. The sun is shining, the temperature is approaching 80 degrees F, and there is a slight breeze. Because of all the rain last week the high humidity is the only downside. Because of the RH indoors I had to actuate the AC.

My day has been quite normal, only broken by a phone call I made to my step-daughter. She and I have not spoken for several weeks and it was my turn to spend the dime. We had a nice chat, and since then I have not had any human contact other than that which I encountered along the bike path. There was a time, back in the nineteen nineties when I owned the bike path. I couldn’t be out there for more than a few minutes when I met someone I knew or someone who became an acquaintance from our daily passings. Very often they were people from Folks On Spokes bike club. If so, the chat would turn into an ice cream or a pop followed by a side-by-side ride.

After Barb died, I spent hours along the path riding to forget my grief. There was one one lady, a member of FOS whom I have known for many years who became a regular rider by my side. Even though she worked a full time job, she managed to meet and ride with me several times a week. She and I took longer rides along Lake Michigan and she also showed me haunts in her part of town. We began dating off the bikes. She introduced me to Second City an impromptu comedy club known for spawning many famous comedians,  including Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, John Candy, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Del Close, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Nia Vardalos, Ryan Stiles, Mike Myers, Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Stephen Colbert, and many others. The performance we saw that night included a skit about the Chicago Cubs and their failed attempt to win the World Series because of a questionable foul ball, and a fan interference The cast blamed it on the infamous goat from the Billy Goat tavern.

Second City Comedy Theater

Bike Riding Friends

It wasn’t long before we became more than friends. An evening in front of the TV watching movies turned into what most would euphemistically refer to as an affair. For me, an older man, it was a great time to be hooked up with a woman fifteen years my junior. It all ended when I left town to spend the winter in Arizona. We have not seen nor spoken to each other since that time seventeen years ago. It wasn’t long after I returned from the three month hiatus in Arizona that I met and began courting Peggy.

Peggy and I hit it off because we had a common denominator, we were both widows, she for four years, and me for two. We were both Catholic. She lost her husband just a few weeks short of their fiftieth wedding anniversary, and I lost Barb just shy of our forty-second anniversary. Our politics were the same, she loved to talk, and I loved to listen. I loved going to parties and shows, and she loved being with me even when she didn’t like the program. We both had kids who we learned to love as our own. We spent two years courting before we married and began a new life together. Our marriage ended just three months away from our fourteenth anniversary on June 29, 2019 when she died from Alzheimer’s disease. I call it dying ugly.

Maybe these recollections are part of my grief process and writing about them is cathartic. Hopefully it is. I need the world to reopen to be able to live the life I want to lead. Although I enjoy being an SIP hermit, I can only take it for a short time before I need to associate with people. Actually, the only thing different about my life during SIP and before SIP is the complete isolation without the knowledge that I can go out if I want when I want. Under SIP, I have felt it my responsibility to avoid being a carrier.

I anxiously await next week when Illinois officially goes into Phase Three of reopening. Another side of me keeps whispering into my ear not to rush into society so quickly. The virus is still out there waiting for people my age to pounce on and take out. My experience with polio tells me that I should be very wary of contact. Yes, I will social distance, and I will wear a mask and I will not go near sick people. I did the same thing in 1957, the year I got the polio virus. I stayed away from crowds, I didn’t swim at the beach, I didn’t do swimming pools, but I got the virus anyway. Looking back on it not a single friend or relative that I associated with got the virus, but I did. I am special, and COVID-19 might see me that way too.

Filed under: Aging, Biography, family, grief | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

Day 63-SIP-Fun Again?

Posted on 21/05/2020 by Grumpa Joe

The big news today is Illinois’ move toward phase three COVID-19 policy. The news is buzzing about things opening up, mainly restaurants. The hook is that they may allow only outdoor seating and must provide social distancing. That means in Frankfort we will have about a half a dozen restaurants available for some thirty six tables. Outdoor venues in our town are available, but in very limited numbers even when there is not need for distancing. Regardless, plans are being formulated by businesses for opening again.

Frankfort has a rather unique venue just outside the village limits which has become a popular place over the last ten years. CD&ME opened as a place to have catered events. Realizing that the business of catering large events leaves them with a very expensive venue 5-6 days a week they dreamed up various ways to make it busier. One of the things it has become popular for is their Thursday night concerts through the summer. They have several buildings that open up around a beautiful patio area and several outdoor stages. You pay to get in and then buy drinks or food to your hearts content.

Rumor has it that next Thursday, 4 June 2020 they will open with a parking lot concert. Limit 100 cars parked in every other parking slot. A band will play and a food vendor will have a rolling cart with food available. Drinks are BYOB. Cars will be limited to four occupants. That can make for four hundred people in one big party, or rather one hundred separate car parties. What ever, the town is buzzing with anticipation. I just want to be able to get a haircut.

Meanwhile the COVID-19 confirmed cases in Will Township is still at 104 and growing. The virus lives among us. I am curious to know just how this virus spreads so quickly and what mechanism does it use to jump. I am sure a lot of scientists would also like to know the answers. A new report today suggests that the virus doesn’t spread from surfaces as easily as we thought. That points more strongly toward human to human contact, but how does it do it? I can see the obvious like coughing and sneezing, but I haven’t seen another human coughing or sneezing, no matter where I am.

If anyone spreads this thing it will be health care workers who touch people while attending to them, Taking temperatures, blood pressure, swabbing, drawing blood, etc. What I don’t see is how normal day to day activity of shopping is dangerous. Another thing I have trouble understanding is why is it so much dangerous in nursing homes? What are they doing in those places? I’d also like to know the death rate for people in th seventy-eighty age group that are not in nursing homes.

Even though I am in my eighties, I don’t feel or think like I’m eighty, in fact I feel like fifty, so does that makes me less vulnerable? Nature is an amazing process. If we ever figure it out we will be transporting from planet to planet with Star Trek’s transporter beam.

I just want to get a haircut.

Filed under: family, health care, Science, Seniors | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

Day 62-SIP-Stupid Fun Makes Dollars

Posted on 20/05/2020 by Grumpa Joe

This stay in place business has made me light headed. very morning is a hangover. I must be enjoying the wine by consuming more than usual. The hangover gets me going much later in the day. It seems like I drag my sorry ass behind me like an anchor.

Yesterday, I finally accomplished a new goal, I cooked another one of Mom’s favorite dishes, toltutt kaposta with umlauts over the o’s and an accent over the a. In our language it is simply stuffed cabbage. I watched my mother roll these beauties out in the kitchen too many times, but when it came time to remember what she did, I drew a blank.

As usual, I watched videos of my favorite cook Oma making stuffed cabbage. Oma is currently ninety-two years old and reminds me of my mother. She concentrates on Hungarian and German recipes. What a piece of cake this is, I thought. Wrong! I never handled a cabbage before and got into serious trouble with blanching. The pot I used for this gimongous head of cabbage was just a tad too small. Blanching is a pretty simple process, but since this was the first time I was doing it I made it hard to do.

Mixing the meat with rice, and spices was easy, but when it came to handling the cabbage leaves I was all thumbs. Mom’s recipes leave out all the basic stuff you need to know when cooking. Like how to trim the main rib of a cabbage leave to make it more pliable. The next thing she left out was stuffing the leave and closing it around the meat. That is a practice thing. Mom had been stuffing cabbage leaves since she was twelve, and for her it was an automatic process. Here hands and fingers were so well conditioned from repetition that it was automatic. For me it was a comedy of errors, I was all thumbs. I managed to make about twenty rolls and learned my next mistake was also my first mistake, the pot was a tad too small. I had cabbage rolls stacked to within a half inch of the rim.

Miraculously, I completed the job and ate stuffed cabbage for supper last night. It is not 100% KETO, but it is close. The only non-KETO ingredient is rice. The whole process got my mind off the COVID-19 b-s for a few minutes while I struggled with stuffing and wrapping the rolls.

The kitchen was a mess after I finished as it always is after making something for the first time. Lucky me, the dishwasher was broken and the repair man didn’t come until today so I had to wash all the stuff by hand.

At my Tuesday Night At The Stray Bar Club Zoom meeting yesterday I learned about two things:

1. CD&Me a local entertainment venue is going to open under strict guidelines the first week of June. It will be a parking lot event limited to one hundred cars spaced one car apart. There will be a live band entertaining and a roll out bar for food by the Dancing Marlin. Adult beverages will not be sold but will be permitted (bring your own). Admission is by ticket bought online.

2. One of our group told us a story about her great grandson who is making a ton of money off videos on Youtube and Tik-Tok. I searched Youtube for him and found his videos. They are stupid of course, but he is a very energetic and out-going personality and pulls off his stunts with his girlfriend Mariah. As an example the video I watched had 39,000 likes. As another example this blog GrumpaJoesPlace is lucky if a post gets ten likes. I guess I’ll have to start doing dumb stuff if I want to make some money doing this. The funny thing is I feel like I am doing dumb stuff when I write these posts. Another example is my own grand daughter who writes for a blog called Fan Fiction and gets 5-10 thousand views per post. While my daughter-in-law in Michigan has a blog about her horse hobby and will get hundreds of views for a post. On my best day if I get fifty views and two likes I feel I’ve reached the pinnacle of success.

Making money in the digital world is for the very young. We old folks will only shake our heads in wonderment as to how it can be. I see it happening, I believe it is happening, but I’ll be damned if I can make it happen.

Filed under: Aging, Cooking, Food, Seniors | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Day 57-SIP-Volunteer to Serve

Posted on 14/05/2020 by Grumpa Joe

There is no question but that the COVID-19 is still very active in my county. Today’s report added 77 new cases of confirmed Corona virus. That brings our total to 3,973 cases. I’d like to see it coming down, but there are a lot of other things I would like too, but never seem to get my wish.

Every year at this time I would like to see so many people step up and want to be leaders in our local Lions Club that we have to turn people away. That hasn’t happened yet. Why is it that whenever a person is asked to take on a leadership role he/she shirks the responsibility? Only a very few special people want to lead. The remainder are satisfied being led.

My experience with volunteer groups spreads over a span of fifty years and many organizations, and it volunteering to lead hasn’t changed. Even worse yet, I have still not learned the secret of recruiting successfully. One thing I did learn however, is that people want to belong to an active moving club with a positive attitude. Nobody wants to join a negative, sorry-assed, dead club, and I don’t blame them. Why would I join a club whose reputation is for doing nothing. When I join something it is because i believe in the activities and function of the club. When I joined a bicycle club I joined because I wanted to meet bike riders who I could ride with. Riding alone most of the time is boring. I joined the Boy Scouts of America because i wanted my son to have a decent Troop to join into. I joined the Garden club because I was tired of killing plants and wanted to learn how to make flowers grow. I first joined the Lions because I needed something to deflect the grief I suffered from my wife’s death. Then, after I joined and learned what a great organization they are I dedicated my life to helping our club to serve the community.

As President of the Frankfort Lions I conducted a survey to determine how to make the club serve more. One of the things I learned was that most people join because they want to ‘give back.’ They feel so blessed with their own life that they want to extend that same gift to others within their community. My philosophy has always been that serving the club as an officer is serving the community, and qualifies as ‘giving back.’

An organization that is over a hundred years old and still growing has to have something going for it. Lions are pushing 1.5 millions members in over 200 countries, and in 45,000 clubs. We all follow the same goals, the same ethics, the same constitution and by-laws. Only our languages, customs, and ethnicities differ.

When I first joined I learned that Lions were challenged by Helen Keller to become the Knights of the Blind. At the time I didn’t know a single blind person and thought that perhaps the need for helping the blind has diminished since 1925 when she made the challenge. I was wrong. The number of people who are blind is growing. As the population ages more and more of us is affected by age related macular degeneration. The longer one lives the better his chances of losing vision becomes.

A detailed macro shot of a blue woman human eye.
Lions Of Illinois Foundation Mobile Hearing and Vision Screening Vans

By a process of evolution I have become involved in helping the blind. First by manning our specially equipped mobile vision screening van. We schedule a date for the van and invite the public to come and get thier eyes screened for diseases like diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration and more. More recently, I helped initiate a children’s vision screening program within our village. Lions purchased a special camera to measure the eye. The camera compares measurements to what is normal. If a measurement is out of the normal range it alerts us to send that kid to get his eyes examined by a professional. So far, we have screened two thousand kids and we’ve alerted two hundred. Many of those 200 kids now wear glasses to make their vision better.

Lions learned that pre-school aged kids have problems that can be corrected before a kid starts kindergarten. Yet, most school districts will not require testing until a kid enters first grade. Lions believe that if a pre-schooler is screened and found to have a problem that his eyes can be corrected by the time he enters school. All kids should have the same advantage for an education. If one of them has a problem seeing the materials he is at a disadvantage.

Frankfort Lions Conduct a Vision Screening at Movie on the Green Where They Also Distribute Free Pop Corn

Since COVID-19 we have put our screening programs on hold, and we hope there is some way to get them rolling again soon. Stay tuned I’m working on it.

Filed under: Aging, family, health care, Lions Club | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

Day 57 a.m.-Traffic

Posted on 13/05/2020 by Grumpa Joe

This morning I had to attend to a number of errands which I have been putting off until such a time it was worth risking a trip into the public forum; Post Office, Accountant, Bank. One thing I noticed was the greatly increased traffic since my last venture out. This can only mean that people are beginning to lose interest in COVID-19 and are giving Governor Pritzker the finger for his directives.

Otherwise, it is a beautiful spring day in Illinois, the sun is actually shining. This will bring out people en-mass to the walking paths. The dogs in the community seem to be losing interest in their owners sudden burst of energy for exercise. Many are no longer leading on the leash, but rather lagging and requiring a tug to move forward. Although the dogs navigate on scents, and with so many dogs marking the same routes there are many new and interesting chums to check out.

My Tuesday Night Stray Bar Club meeting on Zoom is also beginning to lose members who opt to do other things. It just isn’t the same drinking as a group within without social distancing rules. Pouring your neighbor more wine is not possible, so the ability to get a hot lady high is just not happening. Not that the group is so crazy as to cohabit, but the conviviality, and bawdiness of the conversation makes for more fun.

As soon as I hit the post button I will descend into the bowels of my home to the wood shop to make dust on my new project. I began with a burst of enthusiasm, but over the last couple of days I have faltered and ignored the project, the same has happened with my garden goals. Sunny days should be spent in the garden and rainy days in the shop. The prediction for today was for rain, therefore my desire to grind wood, and not transplant perennials. The ground is still cold and the plants will be healthier if I leave them alone for another week.

Filed under: family, Hobby, Seniors, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

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