A Kvetch about Old Age in Italian (of all things)

 

 I am sure all you faithful readers will remember my talking about my beloved, amazing, world renowned  friend, Bruno, the Walt Disney of Italy.  I consider this friendship one of the miracles I have been lucky enough to have had bestowed upon me.  After encountering his work on the internet I was so blown away by his genius that I wrote him a fan letter and was totally blown away even moreso when he answered me and (get this) thanked me and apologized for his imperfect English.  That was many years ago and since then we have maintained an email correspondence, have exchanged drawings,  various gifts to share delights, have met........first in Milan, Italy on one of my trips when I offered to buy him a cup of coffee and he and his twin daughters drove into Milan and took me out for a fabulous lunch and lots of talking and hugs and a second time when he came to LA to be honored at the Disney Studios and he asked me if I could meet him and his family at their hotel nearby.  He is really a genius with fabulous wit, artistic talent and, of all things, humility!   I feel incredibly honored to have him for a friend, to put it mildly.

Anyway, he recently emailed me a birthday greeting and a few lines to bring me up to date on his activities and we exchanged a few quick emails back and forth updating each other.  Now I must reveal that he is 12 years younger than I am and in good health, thank heaven, but in his 70's he can empathize with all my rants and gripes about old age.  In his note to me today he included a recent drawing of one of his main characters......Mr. Rossi is to Bruno as Mickey Mouse was to Walt Disney..........I decided it was too wonderful to keep for myself so I am sharing it with you. 

Hope you enjoy it.  (the translation of the caption is in the last line of his letter)

Love, Lo

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 from a Bruno Bozzetto email

.........I perfectly understand your problems about the bad vision, the getting old, etc etc.

I'm running on your same way... just after you.

In these days I did this drawing about this problem... that means (approximately) "Getting old has some advantages...help me to find just one"...

Love

Br1

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P.S from Lo
I am devastated that some of you did not see the drawing.....I had the same problem when I first viewed my blog but it took a minute or so for it to appear. If you encounte that problem try waiting a bit to see if it will finally download the cartoon. SO SORRY

Il giorno 30/mag/2014, alle ore 01:02, LMS52927@aol.com ha scritto:

Il giorno 30/mag/2014, alle ore 01:02, LMS52927@aol.com ha scritto:

Prick Is Not Always A Dirty Word

Yes, it's me and I am still here.    Apparently.    Amazing but true.

And nev er let it be said tat Lo is too old and too stubborn and too resistant to change to ever try someting new.  Well, old, yes.......and stubborn, most definitely and resistant to change......I'm afraid that is often the case, but not always.  For instance, if you wonder what I have been up to lately I can btell you that there has been a variety of things........like going through stacks and stacks of papers, notes mail and various documents and (bravely) throwing away saved up stuff with wild abandon, thereby ending up with one much smaller stack of seemingly importgant stuff.  This will be seized up at a later date and the process will be repeated.

And I ave been singing and,  what is worse, recording my singing, and worse yet, sending said warbling to my beloved friend,  Ida, who claims to adore my shaky contralto and begs for more, so how could i possibly deny such  request.  I also inflict the same on the finches who, for some reason, seem, to like it too......at least they come out of their nest boxes and sit on their perches with closed eyes, apparently mesmerized by my dulcet tones.  For a person who loves to sing but does not really have much of a voice there is nothing nicer than having an appreciative audience who does not demand quality, just applauds you for making the effort.  In factm, Ida's pleas for more goaded me into  pulling 10 or 11 of my musical muddlings from my WMA files and actually laying down 11 tracks on a
CD which I whimsically entitled "Lo Sings (?) which I will present her with as an early Xmas present. 

And that brings us to the PRICK referenced in my ambiguous, but I hope intriguing title.  Still suffering mightily frrom the red hot poker stabs inflicted on my left buttock by the errant sciatic nerve I decided to take my cousin's advice and try Accupuncture!  What the hell, why not?  I was not afraid of accupuncture, having tried it many years ago for some other plague that attacked my back.  At that time it did not help me appreciably and it was expensive so I did not continue with the treatmentments but desperation drives even a pinch-penny like me to extreme measures so I got a referral and made an appointment and off I hied myself  to be pierced into wellness.

The treatment began with a deep tissue massage during which the  masseuse attempted to enter my left buttock with her powerful fingers and seize the errant sciatic culprit and extraact it, literally pluck it out and throw it in th waste basket.  I do not think she succeeded but I could not be sure because, after she finished my poor left cheek was so so sore that I could not feel the sciatic pain.  Progress?  Perhaps.

Then entered the Doctor and, since I was lying on my right side with face to wall I could not see her nor the tools of her trade, but I felt a few teensy pricks here and there  on my left nether regions and down the left leg.......too inconsequential to even be called pricks, but perhaps mini-pricks.  Then the lights went out and I was instructed to be still and not move for 15 or 20 minutes and, of course I obediently did just that wondering if my Chi (the force the needles were supposed to energize and redirect) was doing its thing as obediently.  It is not easy to lie perfectly still for 20 minutes.....that I learned perfectly.  Then the light went on, the needles were removed, unprick, unprick, unprick, and I wase sent out into the world considerably poorer but hopefully with less sciatic pain.

I have now had 3 treatments and sometimes I think they helped, other times not so sure.  I have decided they did not help enough to continue at this time, preferring to save my money to buy more blank CD's so I can sing my pains away and fill my friend, Ida, with joy and delight.

Oh, yes, one more thing I did which I had never done before.  I made a fabulous Turkish/Armenian dish entitled Imam Bayildi......a concoction of onion, garlic, tomatoes, eggplant, sweet red bell pepper, a handful of raisins  and assorted spices cooked into a delectable stew.  I was inspired to do this after tasting some sold in our neighborhood Middle Eastern Market and and googling a recipe.  I must say that it was a great success. I loved it, Florence loved it, my neighbor, Marge, loved it and I suspect that my Wednesday caregiver, Ann will love it. 

   
I had better add eggplant and bell peppers to the shopping list so I can make more.  (NO, I do not know where these italics came from all of a sudden, and furthermore, I do not care.)
 There is an interesting story about the name of the dish which I will try to remember to tell you in my next post.  A little suspense never hurt a blog, did it?

Love, Lo

My jeans have muddy knees and ass......what can this mean?

In case you wondered where in the hell I might be, let it be known first, that I am still here, that I have been out in rhe front garden apparently planting impatiens.  "Yes, yes", you say, "but it has  beenb over a month since there has been a peep or a rude word out of you."   And I canb only say that it takes me a helluva lot longer to dig a little hole than it used to.I am sorry for worrying you by dropping out of sight for so long........there has been a succession of reasons and excuses.......we just won't go there right now.  Suffice it to say....I am still alive......still here on upper Califa St. griping, ranting, complaining and oy vey-ing in my usual vigorous, loud-mouthed and uncouth fashion.  Struggling mightily with vision problems which really makes it difficult to near impossi ble to read and write and that does discourage me from even trying on some days.


However, it seems tht spring has somewhat revived me to the point that Ihave felt sgtrong stirrings and urges for impatiens and lobelia.......so much so thst I and my trusty caregivers have made multiple excursions to the discount nursery for bedding plants.   Sadly, the nursery's supplier has failed miserably to provide lobelia in a condition to satisfy the owner and he has sent them away with their puny lobelia and ordered them to bed without their supper,  leaving me with nothing but a few flats of impatiens, some rose bushes (who can resist  2 for $12)     and a b aby Lavender plant, a few pots of pink and yellow daisies anbd a trunkful of potting soil and planter mix.

Since my gardener, an excellent fellow at his trade except for having no aesthetic eye for planting, would have simnply inserted them all into the  bed exactly 6 inches apart anbd with no consideration for tastefully alternating colors, it became obvious to me that I would have to plant  'em or spend the summer in a snit, I hied me to the back corner of my clothes closet praying that I had not tossed my beloved work jeans.  Tenks gott I must have rescued them from the discard pile and put them back in the closet whebn I wasn't  looking.  And,they still fit somehow.  So, donning them anbd my favorite T shirt from the good old days with the "BadDog" legend across the front, I schlepped myself out to the front lawn and got down on my knees at the planting bed energetically removing each little plant from its pot, loosening the root ball, digging the hole and planting it.  This lasted for about 6 plants at which time my knees  yelled at me that if I did not get off of them they would  make me regret it, whereupon I switched to a sitting on my fanny position...legs askew...not the mnost ideal way to plabnt, but better thanb having yur knees go onstrike for a week.  I managed to get a flat abd a half planted suchwise and then my entire bod started to scream dirty words at me, so I hoisted myself up in the only way I am able to these days,,,,,,,by pushing yp into the yoga Downward Dog pose (an inverted V) and unrolling upward from there, whereupon my caregiver, Florence, helped me stagger into the house and the bliss of my recliner.  It still took 2 extra strenghth Tylenol to restore me to human condition but I felt mightily pleased with what I had accomplished a nd the fact that I had accomplished anythinbg at all.  At this point in time all of the impatiens have been planted but the story does not exactly have a happy ending.   My plan had been to go back out later in the week when my knees abd other joints had finally shut up, but Wednesday came which is gardener day and, much to my horror, I discovered that Jose had carefully planted the rest of the impatiens according to HIS method......6 inches apart and not exactly where in the bed Iy had intended them to be.    Enh!   So be it.  Good enough my knees have convinced me. 

Each of these frenzied episodes, you understand, must be followed by several days of The Recliner Pose in which I attempt to molify my bod into forgiving me and grudgingly giving me back just enough mobility to stagger to the potty whenb necessary.  The next thing on the list is to attack the side  bed by the driveway, but I have decided that I will simply place the pots where I want  them to go and wait for Wednesday.......let Jose do his damndest.


Be warned, my  darlings, that I can no longer go back and correct all the typos, grammar and punctuation errors of which there are a myriad, I know.  I am hoping you will be able to pick your way across this field of errors, broken glass abd dog turds and deduce my meanings and intentions.  If you can put up with the mess I will try to write more often.  As you canb see from the above ramblings, Lois still lives.

Funny, there seem to be too many keys for the letter "B" on this keyboard.....maybe a manufacturing error or perhaps my right forefinger has swollen to twice its size whenever I reach for an "N".  Oh well, SPF.

I luv you all.
Lo