Tag Archives: excitement

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Doctor!  Doctor!

This growing old shit is not for the faint of heart.  Even just Stayin’ Alive can become a full-time job.  I recently read a post from a young woman who complained that she had two doctors’ appointments in one day – and then she went for a workout at the gym.  It is possible, but not likely, that they were both with the same doctor.

Damned amateur!!  For those whose idea of excitement is perusing a long list of medical appointments and whines – Read on Mac Duff!

MONDAY – The worst
I took the wife to see her GP.  I insist on using that term.  Clinics and medical labs use the term ‘Family doctor.’  She has one.  The son and I have another.  They both treat “Families,” just not this family.  This visit was not medical.  It was administrative.
The polyp in her duodenum that was removed two years ago, has regrown.  We hadn’t heard anything from the specialist in Toronto who was going to operate, until we got a Sayonara Suckers email from him, telling us that he’s moving to Vancouver to practice.  Since it’s been precisely located and identified, the less-than-specialist in Cambridge feels that he can handle it.  We await an appointment.

Her dentist found a lesion on one side of the wife’s tongue.  A local Oral Surgeon snipped out enough for three stitches, and a biopsy.  It might have been Hyperkeratosis, a callus-like thickening of tissue.  (Insert shrewish housewife joke here.)  It was Dysplasia, a modification of cells that isn’t, but could become, cancer.
We were sent 75 miles to an Oro/Fascia/Maxillary Surgeon.  He felt that it extended too far back into the throat and ligament, and suggested an ENT.  The GP referred the wife to a local one who is probably the best in the Province.  We hadn’t got an appointment, so we asked the doctor to check.  The computer file showed that the ENT had declined, because his wait-list is 4 years.  He suggested 3 or 4 other names.  The GP wanted to know, if she couldn’t contact a local one, would we be willing to travel 75 miles east again, to Hamilton, or 75 miles West, to London.  As long as somebody does something, soon.

TUESDAY
We both had an appointment with our new Osteopath, because our last one decided to practice from her home, 20 miles away.

WEDNESDAY

We both had appointments with our Optometrist.  They already had to be delayed and rescheduled three weeks later.  The wife had her lenses with cataracts removed, and new, plastic lenses inserted about six months ago.  An emergency visit later showed that, as often happens, not all the organic matter was flushed out of the sacs, and it combined and grew like ivy, clouding her vision.  Only last week, she spent a half a day at the hospital, having it burned out with a laser.  Both her sight and mine are better than they were a year ago.

THURSDAY

Both the wife and daughter put their best foot forward, and I took them to their Podiatrist.

FRIDAY

It was the car’s turn for a service visit at the dealer.  The son dropped it off at 8:00 AM after work, and was Uber-ed home.  It was both his, and the driver’s, first Uber trip.  I was Uber-ed back to pick it up in the afternoon.  I have ridden in a few electric cars, although not a Tesla, yet.  Even including Toronto taxis, this was my first ride with a dash cam – front-facing, cabin and audio.

The week was so busy that neither of us had time for a workout at the gym.   😳

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Money For Nothing – And The Kicks For Free

Sticking my nose into other people’s business became profitable again; not Retire To The Riviera profitable, more like a hot chocolate and apple fritter at Tim Horton’s.

I stopped at a local grocery for chocolate milk.  As I do every time, I checked out the coin-counting machine on my way out.  I don’t know why anyone would use these things.  The percentage rate of payout is lower than most casinos, without the excitement of the bells and lights.

I leaned over and inspected the overflow chute, and was rewarded with the gleam of coins – two handfuls – half a shirt-pocketful.

As always, I waited till I got home to count the loot – $9.80, plus a couple of minor treasures.  4 Toonies = $8, plus a bunch of quarters, dimes, and nickels.  One dime was pre-1965 silver, worth three times its face value.  The rest filled my dime bank, to produce a roll that I will deposit in a bank account that I had hoped would help finance a trip to visit John Erickson, but which Trump et al’s insanity is making less and less likely.

The other prize was what probably caused the log-jam – an 1870 Canadian, silver, five-cent coin, as thin as a dime, and about half the surface area.  In 1922 it grew to its current size, and it was called a nickel, because it was made of nickel,  Other than the Copperpenny – a local band who had a couple of hits, riding on the British invasion – this was the first Canadian coin that was not made of silver.  Surprisingly, my coin is not terribly rare, and is only worth about $2, but my little Silver Surfer is mounted and placed in my coin catalog.  

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Ever Take It In Your Head To Do Comedy?

A groom waits at the altar with a huge smile on his face.
His best man asks, “Why do you look so excited?”

The groom replies, “I just had the best blow job I have ever had in my entire life, and I am marrying the wonderful woman who gave it to me.”

The bride waits at the other end of the aisle with a huge smile on her face.

Her maid of honour asks, “Why do you look so excited?”

The bride replies, “I just gave the last blow job of my entire life.”

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Bill took his dog to the vet.
“Doctor,” he said sadly, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to cut off my dog’s tail.”
The vet stepped back, “Bill, why should I do such a terrible thing?”
Bill replied, “Because my mother-in-law’s arriving tomorrow, and I don’t want
anything to make her think she is welcome.”

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Airman Jones was assigned to the induction center where he was to advise new recruits about their government benefits, especially their GI insurance.
It wasn’t long before Captain Smith noticed that Airman Jones had almost a 100% record for insurance sales, which had never happened before.
Rather than ask about this, the Captain stood in the back of the room and listened to Jones’s sales pitch.
Jones explained the basics of the GI Insurance to the new recruits, and then said: “If you have GI Insurance and go into battle and are killed, the government has to pay $200,000 to your beneficiaries.  If you don’t have GI insurance, and you go into battle and get killed, the government has to pay only a maximum of $6000.”
“Now,” he concluded,” which bunch do you think they are going to send into battle first?

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’22 A To Z Challenge – G

 

 

 

 

 

 

I dropped a bag of Scrabble tiles, and picked up seven of them at random.  They spelled out

GLUDDER

Is that a real word??
Not only is it a real word, it is a Scottish word.  Like the multiple meanings of Flag in the last A to Z post, my thrifty Scots ancestors wanted to get as much out of a word as possible.

The way to tell an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman in a bar pub, is to serve them a drink with a fly in it.  The Englishman will push the drink away, and order another.  The Irishman will shrug, dip the fly out, and consume the drink.  The Scotsman will dip out the fly, give it a bit of a squeeze, and shout, “Come on, give it up, ya wee sot!”  Hell, he’d probably down the Englishman’s first, if he could get away with it.  Which drunkenly brings us to the many meanings of a word which sounds like it was coined after several drams of Glen Fiddich in the local.

If you are north of Hadrian’s Wall, the word Gludder can, and still does, mean
a glow of heat from the sun;
a bright and warm period of sunshine between rain showers;
the sound of a body falling into the mire;
to do dirty work or work in a dirty manner;
to swallow food in a slovenly or disgusting way.

Scotland has never been the entertainment and excitement capital of the world.  My Ancestors had to have something to do besides count all their sheep, because they kept dozing off.  They tried tossing large rocks across the frozen surface of ponds and rivers, and invented curling.  They practiced knocking smaller stones into gopher holes with their walking sticks, and invented golf, which is just flog, spelled backwards.  Some time before they were forced to go home to the Missus at closing time, they dreamed up words like gludder.  May the banks and braes forgive them.  😳

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WOW #62

Television

I suffer from tinnitus.  Oh, my wife actually has it, but I must endure the consequences.  She cannot sit quiet in the living room, reading or knitting.  For her, it is never quiet.  To drown out the internal whistles, squeaks and crackling, she has the TV on constantly, as background noise.

Her constant quest to play something inconsequential, leads to this Word Of The Week.

HINTERLAND

Often hinterlands. the remote or less developed parts of a country; back country: The hinterlands are usually much more picturesque than the urban areas.
the land lying behind a coastal region.
an area or sphere of influence in the unoccupied interior claimed by the state possessing the coast.
an inland area supplying goods, especially trade goods, to a port.

Several years ago, before we cut the cable, Canadian TV stations sometimes added a little PSA between one show and the next, called Hinterland Who’s Who.  We would get a little 30-second introduction to loons, ruffed grouse, or brown bears.

I have been involuntarily exposed to subtitled shows from Iceland, which was settled by Norway, and from Sweden.  While trying to do crossword puzzles, or read, myself, I’ve been exposed to 4 seasons of a show titled Bordertown, which I thought might be Detroit, Bellingham, WA, or Laredo, TX..  Turns out that it’s Saint Petersburg, Russia, with half the dialog in Russian, and the other half in Finnish.  It’s hard to figure a 4-letter kitchen appliance in the middle of a United Nations debate – with gunfire.

My reading was distracted by 5 seasons of Shetland, a British police procedural set on an island off the west coast of Scotland, where the sheep outnumber the humans, 500 to 1.  I thought that the most likely illegal offense might be bestiality, but the already meager population was reduced by at least one, in each episode.  The wife drooled over the many gorgeous knit sweaters worn by the plodding hero.

I thought that my life wasn’t particularly interesting or adventurous, but Shetland attracted enough viewers to lead BBC-TV to follow it with Hinterland, an attention-grabber Yawn set on the rocky Scottish peninsula that projects toward the island of Shetland.  Here, the ratio of sheep to people is only 400:1, and folks speak English almost as well as those on Iceland.

The son has acquired a set of Dr. Dre Beats headphones.  I often try to speak to him, only to realize that he is listening to audio for something that he is watching on his tablet.  The muffs disappear into his shaggy hair.  Maybe I could wear them, disconnected, as sound-deadeners.  I’d use the ones that I wear when I mow the lawn, but she would be somehow disturbed and insulted.  Silence is golden – but I get the brassy alternative.

Please quietly return soon, for my next whine and cheesy party.

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Flash Fiction #185

Ferris Wheel

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

GOING NOWHERE FAST

Why is a Ferris wheel like the workaday world?

The word ‘wheel’ implies progress. On his Day Off, with the wheel Ferris Buehler invented, it achieves no progress. It lifts you up to see vistas of productivity. Then it lets you back down to the mundane.

It spins you around several times. There are exciting lights and sounds that make you think that something is actually being accomplished, but when it comes to a stop, you’re right back where you started, ready to get taken for another ride tomorrow. And, you’re surrounded by geeks that would make any fair proud.

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Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Friday Fictioneers