SPF and WTF or Perhaps WTF and SPF

Faithful reades will surely have no trouble translating my cryptic title and for all of you unfaithful readers....the hell with ya'.

I was hoping that by this time I would be back to my revoltingly cheerful self, but it ain't so.   I am still struggling with the damned sciatica and my failing vision and alternating between cursing, groaning, whining and kicking the furniture and the dog.  (no, there is no dog).  All of this has fiercely addled my brain so be unsuprised by whatever odd things come out of my mouth or, more precisely, dribble out of my fingertips.

I am only here because I promised you all I would utter a few noises from time to time to let you know that your earnest blogger was still alive and kicking......well.....kicking anyway.  So here I am.

There is no way to describe my mood.....not even this word fanatic can come up with the proper words so I will simply say that I am doing my damndest to cope.  Not very graciously, I am afraid......hence all the Shitpissfucks.  

Well, anyway, the good news is that, while I am unable to find a pain free position in a horizontal orientation like the bed, sitting upright on my  hard dining chair at my computer is relatively comfy (???).......I have seriously considered closing the Laptop, putting a pillow on the lid and trying to get a nite's sleep sitting right here....that would also save me from having to transport my ungainly self  from the bedroom to the computer each morn as I rise from my bed of nails lurching creepily like the Creature from the Black Lagoon and scaring the cat, so I guess I should think about taking the idea seriously.  If I could see better I could spend my upright hours blogging endlessly for your amusement or edification, but correcting all my typos is too laborious for that to work out well.  Sigh.  I guess we all simply have to keep slogging (or lurching) forward and see what happens.

Of course my mood was not improved in the slightest on Friday when I watched a phenomenon occur on Wall Street and missed profiting from it only because of pain, laziness and a weakened spirit.  On Thursday the Google we all know and sometimes love reported their quarterly earnings.  This act often makes the reporting company's stock go up or down mightily and I had intended to position myself to take advantage of any bounce that might occur if Google beat estimates, but failed to do so because the market closed before I was able to enter my transaction.  I could have bought a single call option giving me the right but not the obligation to buy 100 shares of Google at $900 or so per share  (yes  very pricey as they say in New England).....said option only costing me a couple of bucks.  Imagine my consternation when, upon arising and lurching in on Friday morn, I discovered that Google had jumped up 60 points at the market open and showed no signs of ceasing to rise even further as the day wore on.   In plain English, had I wisely invested the $200  on Thursday, I would have been more than $6000 (yes, thousand) richer on Friday.  Sob.  I think this may be the perfect moment for me to utter my last Shitpissfuck of the day.

Stay tuned for the next chapter, folks.  No one including me knows what will happen next, but when I find out I will be sure to let you in on it......should you really, really want that.........

Love, Lo

All the News That's Fit to Print ??!!

That means that this will be a short blog.......my mutterings these days are mostly epithets of the unpublishable kind and lots of shitpissfucks which become ineffective with too much repitition.  I am checking in to reassure all you lovely people that I am still here.  The reason for my foul utterings is the damned sciatica which is stubbornly hanging on making it impossible for me to get my bod into a painfree position of the horizontal persuasion.......that means hardly any sleep for days on end.  

Actually,  "on end" is about the only way I have been at all comfortable but on a comfort scale of 1 to 10 that still only rates about 1/3 if not less.  Oy.  I have been lurching around here like an afflicted Quasimodo pausing only between "Ouch" and "Oy Veys" to intersperse a few SPF's.  Not only am I not a pretty sight, but offensive to the ears to boot.  I will cautiously venture a bit of optimism though because I only counted a half a dozen of said shrieks last nite and I think I may have actually gotten 60 consecutive minutes of sleep several times between dusk and dawn.

However, on the bright side, the weird sore throat I was experiencing for several weeks has finally  mostly abandoned its position and that is a Good thing.  I always used to say you can only feel one severe pain at a time.  Wrong.  I have discovered that one's throat and ones ass can both hurt excruciatingly at the same time, a bit of knowledge I really could have lived my life out without knowing.  

Since you all seem to be willing to have me cry on your shoulders, I must report that the death toll continues.......the husband of one of my dearest friends lost his battle and checked out a week after my cousin Lee......I never even I had a chance to rid the floor of all the soggy Kleenex before I started adding to the pile.  I cry not for him but for her.  His pain is ended, hers is not.......I can do nothing but send sympathy and love and I feel helpless as well as sad.  I did send some Lindt Chocolate Truffles  last week and she told me that he was able to eat one before the end and I am somewhat comforted by the idea that, if one must die,  doing so with the lingering taste of a Truffle on one's tongue may be the best way of all.  I hope you do not think me revoltingly insensitive.......the fact is, we all gotta go and, for myself, I would hope that I could depart licking the last heavenly crumb of Lindt from my lips.

Oh, yes, the Stock Market, which is my main entertainment these days (think of it as the snob's Las Vegas) has suddenly tanked and I am busily engaged in learning to play the short side of the down market.  As my sainted Mama used to say, "Never a dull moment"........she also used to say "It's always something....."


and with that I think I will quit my blubbering and go tease, tantalize and tickle a cat using a pink feather tied to a string.  That always makes both of us smile, and maybe tomorrow will be better.  My Puts on the NASDAQ could begin to pay off.

As my buddies and I used to say back in our youth, 
"See ya' later, Alligator !"  And "Twenty-three skidoo too".

MY COUSIN, LEE

                                                                                                  

 My beloved cousin, Lee, died on Thursday, a day after his 87th birthday.
t
He was a remarkable man, an amazing human being, a beautiful soul.

He was wise, warm, loving, compassionate, caring,  creative, brilliant, sensitive, funny..... with a heart so big he must have had an invisible sidecar because it could not possibly have fit into that lanky body.......and I am already missing him like crazy.

He was my only real first cousin, the son of my dad's wonderful sister, Esther whom I called Aunt Es and he called Nonnie.  My other precious cousins are really my first cousins once removed since they were my mom's first cousins and, since she was an only child there were no first cousins for me on that side of the family.

He was also my last relation who was a contemporary of mine.  Now there is no one left to reminisce with about childhood in the 1930's, about the great old songs, the Big Bands,  the real Movie Stars, about Grandma Lena, Grandpa Izzy and Uncle Willie who was so stingy he used to tell my father to not waste butter like that.....just put a little bit in the middle of the piece of bread and eat all around the slice so you get a taste of the butter with each bite.

I will no longer get to laugh at his jokes, even the ones he has told me a hundred times before.   No more salivating over the vivid memory of Grandma Lena's Sweet and Sour Cabbage Rolls, no more doubling up with laughter over the time my dad tried to unstick the glass stopper in Esther's 4 ounce bottle of Shalimar perfume. (he called Carnegie Tech Science Dept. and got their best advice about tying a string around the neck of the bottle, setting it on fire and being able to lift the top neatly off.  Yeah, sure.  What really happened was the bottle disintegrated dousing my dad's trousers in 4 ounces of Shalimar which was really a good thing because the  burning string fell on them and who knows what mighthave happened....and, I have hated that perfume ever since because, of course,he insisted on hanging those pants in the closet at home and we never were able to escape that scent no matter what.)
tNo more sighing over how we used to assemble his set of Original Lionel Trains and tracks all over the gold silk living room carpet when we went to visit.  No more remembering the times we climbed the funny stairway to the attic that happened to have been built into the closet in the guest room.  No more of a myriad of things that stretch back over 86 years because we were nearly the same age......he had about 8 months on me and had manged to last one day past his 87th bithday.

Shitpissfuck! 

Bless you, Lee......I'll never forget you for whatever that is worth.  Don't worry about me.....I'll be OK and I hope to  hell you are having fun wherever you may be.

Love, Lo