A State of Wait

 

Let me be the last to wish you a Happy New Year!

Hopefully.

I know…you’ve heard that before…but not from me; not for a couple of years.

Yep…time flies…unless it takes the train.

Okay, that one’s a retread, too.

Maybe a re-re-re-retread.

What can I say? After hatching these pithy pearls of wisdom for nearly a decade, all of the good lines are in the hopper, already.

And since the analytics tell me—chatty as they are—most of the Retorter Faithful resides in roughly the same age demographic as I do—give or take a decade…or two…sometimes three—I figure you can’t recall what I wrote 2 months ago, let alone 2 years ago.

Oh, right…I didn’t write anything 2 months ago…or 3 or 4, for that matter.

You remember the analytics. They were a great doo-wop band back in the 50’s…I think…. maybe. And If they weren’t, they should have been.

At least that’s what the numbers say.

Get it…a little advanced math humor, there.

What?

I thought you wanted new.

Math is new…at least for me.

Nevertheless, here I am, wishing you a Happy New Year…and Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day and all the other days I may have neglected.

So that’s another new slant on things.

But that can be fixed with a new pair of orthotics.

Ba da bump…!

Ha…how about that, looks like I’ve still got it!

But the doctor says it should clear up in a month or two.

Ka-ching boom…!

Ha…I’ve got a million of them!

Hey, you gotta admit it’s been worth the wait…right…right…am I right?

In fact, it seems as if waiting is all we’ve been doing these last 13 months or so.

Waiting, waiting, waiting….

In fact, we’ve been in a state of wait.

At first, we waited for this “thing” to run its course and disappear so we could get on with our lives…not to mention baseball opening day.

But that didn’t happen.

Then we spent a lot of time waiting for our take-out to arrive.

That half Peperoni-half anchovy should be here any minute; although anchovies might be a bit sketchy after 7 hours in the back of Yugo.

We waited for the toilet paper truck to return.

We waited for the numbers to peak, then plateau, then drop.

We waited for sports to return.

Thankful Thanksgiving

 

I guess 6 months is a bit of a stretch between Retorts…at least public Retorts. 

As Z will tell you—and anyone else in my close limited circle who has the misfortune on the rare occasion to “swap air” with me,  which is frowned upon under the best of circumstances, but especially now in these, the most virulent of times—I’m prone to verbally retort to every other sentence that passes as conversation amongst friends.

Which is why my circle is close and limited in the first place.

Plus, the fact I usually don’t remember most people’s names, no matter how long they’ve been ensconced in said circle, doesn’t help.

Okay, stop all the eye rolling. Don't you recognize a bit of humorous hyperbole when you see it.

 Of course, I remember all their names.

Just not the ones that belong to them specifically.

But why nitpick.

An asymptomatic super spreader by any other name is still a less than six-foot away social distancing threat.

Or, in my case, twenty feet—can’t be too careful—which renders most of my retorts unintelligible, anyway.

Not that distance matters when it comes to the lucidity quotient of my spoken witticism’s. Z says, I mumble and, for the most part, give the impression of someone choking on a peanut butter cup, which I think is so unfair.

I don’t even like peanut butter cups.

Milky Ways or Snickers, perhaps…but nothing with peanut butter, unless jelly’s attached, preferably on some sort of bread.

So, by now, you’re wondering…has it “really” only been six months? And wasn’t that a nice, peaceful six months…despite all the global doom and gloom.

It did seem to go fairly quickly.

Each day blending into the next.

Mondays morph into Thursdays with weekends signifying it’s only a couple of days until Monday…again.

And on and on it goes.

Onward We March

My banana annoyed me this morning.

Yep…that’s how it’s been, these days.

My fruit is irritating me.

And to be honest, it probably wasn’t the banana’s fault…at least not entirely.

I was just in my usual “Mandated Lockdown”bad morning mood, which, after nearly 2 months, is a bit more intense than my usual, every day, bad morning mood.

Because on those occasions, I almost never get angry at my bananas.

Peaches, sure, but not bananas.

Peach cups come with all that sticky peach cup juice which, if not opened carefully, can lead to a multitude of sticky peach cup juice incidents.

But bananas are pretty much incident free, sticky or otherwise.

Until this morning.

This morning, as I sat down to peruse the online morning news, I began peeling my banana—no differently than I do on most banana mornings—but found a few too many of those stringy banana peely thingy things hanging off said banana…and in some places in between the banana and the peel itself.

But that, in and of itself, is no reason to incite banal banana bashing.

In the past, this sort of issue was easily addressed by simply grabbing hold of said stringy banana peely thingy thing hanging off the banana, and placing it to the side.

Except, in this case, with these particular stringy banana peely thingy things, they were somehow removing themselves, with no apparent stringy banana peely thingy thing rhyme or reason. Just falling free, before I could grab them, and dropping onto the floor, or my knee or foot or whatever happened to be in the way.

Hunkering Down

Like the rest of you, no matter where where is, we’ve been biding our time, staying inside, hunkering down, waiting for the world to hit the reset button.

But it looks like it’s gonna be a while.

And despite my last post of 2019 “Meet The New Year”s, somewhat prescient theme…I obviously had no idea any of this was coming.

I had a much more mundane form of calamity in mind for 2020. The kind of things we’ve all become numb to over the past few years.

But this is what we’ve got, which kind of makes all the other stuff seem like a safe harbor in the midst of a storm.

So, as I said, we’ve been hunkering down for the last month, minding our P’s and Q’s which…you know... tend to get a little rowdy in times of global crisis.

P more so than Q, who tends to take things as they come, good times and bad.

Frivolous February, We Hardly Knew Ye….

What happened to February?

February, we hardly knew ye.

Except for some silly Valentine cards, flowers and candy—be you so inclined—and some oft overlooked federal holidays, Frivolous February has pretty much served as a place holder bridging the gap to Maddening March, when we can actually start smelling spring wafting in through the back-porch door.

Even if it’s only my neighbors very fragrant dryer sheets wafting across the driveway…and then in through the back-porch door.

But at least you can open the back-porch door in March…sometimes.

Not that February has been unkind; nope, not this year.

Around these parts, it’s made nary a whimper; not even a hint of snow or icy temps that I can recall.

Which, I suppose, is why it’s pretty much slipped our notice.

So, there’s that.

However, since I wanted to get an early start on the Retorting, this year, I disappointingly find myself knee deep into 2020 with nothing to show for it…as some are apt to rudely point out. Especially since I pulled that “here’s something under the wire” caper, at the end of January.

Some people were not very happy about that, having gotten themselves settled in for some full-fledged belly rolling retortage only to fall prey to some lazy, smart ass slight of verbiage.

Sorry about that; it seemed like a good ide at the time.

Still, the new federal guidelines in regard to excessive belly rolling content is scheduled to take effect, sooner rather than later, so I thought I’d better cut back.

Here’s Something!

I told myself I would post something in January, this year.

Especially since, last year, I didn’t get the Retort off the ground until Mid-March.

But, as you know, there’s been A LOT going on in January.

So I’ve been a bit distracted.

How could I not with all thats in the news, lately.

BIG BIG stories like these, banging on the door, demanding my attention, every day.

Firefighters rescue deer from backyard pool in Ohio

 

Escaped cow leads police on chase through Texas neighborhood

 

Large snake rescued from storm drain grate at side of road

 

Kansas resident finds 6-foot boa constrictor hiding in couch

Which may or may not be the same snake rescued from the drain.

Right? 

So, since I hate to disappoint myself, which to be honest, I really don’t…I’m posting something tonight... just under the wire.

Ready?

Here goes….

 

SOMETHING

Stay tuned…more to come in 2020…promise…sort of…maybe…who knows…?

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Meet the New Year….

So, another calendar is just about gone.

Right now, 2019 is packing its bags, more than happy to get out of Dodge before the preverbal sh…stuff…hits the fan.

2019 can’t hide that goofy grin on it’s face as it folds the last of August and the brrrrrrrr months into tight little squares and packs them away.

In the meantime, 2020 is out back, pacing, already looking the worse for wear; already a little grey showing around the temples, and a few too many wrinkles around its eyes…at least for a fresh new baby year, which hasn’t even gotten its feet squarely on the ground, yet.

Yep, I guess it knows, like the rest of us…this is going to be one mixed up, screwy year.

Except 2020 is in charge of keeping it all together, in one piece; however it pans out, folks are not going to forget 2020. 

Nope…not for a long long time.

If you listen closely, as the winds of change rattle through threadbare trees, it sounds very much like…“Meet the new year…same as the old year”.

You know the tune…everybody knows the tune. 

Of course, now, you’ll be humming it the rest of the day and probably night.

Maybe tomorrow too.

Which annoys 2020, to no end.