New Routine

It’s Friday the Thirteenth, and I’m busy establishing a new retirement routine. So far, it looks a lot like my previous routine. I’ve returned to write a Friday blog post now that I’ve regained use of my right arm (function was severely restricted following removal from my VERY long driveway , via shovel, of record-level Thanksgiving Day snow). Our Thanksgiving Day meal went on as planned with the added requirement of guest-provided massage to the host’s serving arm.

I’ve decorated the house for Christmas. I’ve cut back from my usual five to six boxes of Christmas decorations to about four boxes. I experienced a moment’s sadness when I realized that the decorations had been up for almost a week and I was the only one to have seen them. Happily, the workers from Gas Appliance Repair dropped by on Thursday and only charged me $110 to admire my decorations (and let me know that my gas fireplace would not result in my death from carbon-monoxide poisoning). Life is good!

This week, my friend Shari, her sisters, sister-in-law and I lamented our increasing loss of neck function, with a coinciding increase of neck-related tingling and pain. This threatened to discourage the “life is good” mantra, until Shari’s sister-in-law, chartered the DUDS (“Drink Up Degenerate Shriners”) club which is advocating wine consumption as, if not a cure for degenerative disc disease, a very effective distraction. We all immediately submitted our names and MRI results for membership consideration. This brings me back to my new routine activity and its similarity to previous routine activity.

For years, lacking the creativity to write original song lyrics, and inspired by the success of Weird Al Yankovic, I’ve changed a word or two in well-known songs to arrive at lyrics more in keeping with my day-to-day experiences. My most well-known (sung to the tune of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”) is: “Smoke on the Pop Tart; a fire in the toaster.” I’ve never got past two lines as that was all the flaming Pop Tart in the toaster inspired. The pervasive neck pain of my fellow Baby Boomers inspired the following (sung to Joseph J. Lilley’s tune and building on Frank Loesser’s lyrics for the song “Jingle, Jangle, Jingle”) :

I’ve got spurs that don’t jingle, jangle, jingle (because they’re on my cervical spine; with a few on my heels). As I go riding my mobility scooter along. And they sing, ain’t you glad that you’re a senior? As you wish you could move your head from left to right.

And that, my friends, is why I’ll never be a famous writer.