Month: September 2020

Walmart tends to have racks at the front of the clothing sections with seasonal merchandise tied to upcoming holidays, probably including Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Memorial Day/Independence Day (flags and whatnot can apply to both), Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and probably a bit of New Year’s Eve.

Starting when the boys were just coming into school age, I’ve often picked them up a Halloween shirt. None of the other holidays; only Halloween.

For many years, I bought them matching shirts–that is, shirts with the exact same design. Generally a pumpkin-themed shirt and not one of the more daring designs with zombies or anything. I didn’t want to frighten them or their classmates–later, the younger kids at their Lutheran school.

When younger, they often delighted in having matching clothes and would sometimes wear the same thing to school, including their Halloween shirts.

The penultimate purchase or two, I bought different designs for them as they’ve gotten older and have their own independent styles and want to be differentiated from their sibling.

However, this year, when I was at the Walmart for more practical needs, I saw that the Halloween shirts were out, so I again bought them the same design.

As is the wont, I picked these up when they were in school, and I put them in their shirt drawers without commenting on it. They discovered them, and although they no longer squee with delight when they find these things, they have both worn the shirts several times in the first week. The youngest will wear the shirt year-round and not just during Halloween if the past is any guide. Maybe the older one will, too; he didn’t like the last design, two skeletons where one is holding the other’s spine with the caption, “I’ve Got Your Back.”

You know, when they were younger, I could delight them with surprises like this. New shirts, new socks, new Spider-Man sheets on their bed. Now, they’re more sophisticated. They still enjoy these things, but they can’t squee any more as they’re young men.

Or so I tell myself as I still like to get them little gifts from time to time as a sign of affection.

I’ve been to Wisconsin Dells a couple of times in the last couple of years–and intended to go again this summer, but. So that plan was deferred until next year, hopefully.

Although I had an inclination to, I did not attend the Tommy Bartlett water-skiing show because it was always there.

Not any more:

After nearly seven decades, the Tommy Bartlett Show in Wisconsin Dells announced Wednesday it will close permanently due to business losses during the pandemic.

In April, the owners of the water-ski, sky and stage show made the decision to close its attraction this summer due to restrictions on large gatherings.

By “No more,” I mean, maybe.

After all, the company owns a lot of attractions and property in the area. It’s possible that they’ll change their minds next year if the property doesn’t sell and tourism comes roaring back. But who knows.

Full disclosure: Although I never saw the full show in the Dells, I am pretty sure I caught parts of the group performing on Milwaukee’s lake front during Summerfest.

(Linked link seen on Instapundit, but I did see the story on the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Web site first.)

So what am I to do with this?

The instructions are to click all the squares with fire hydrants.

But none of the squares have more than one fire hydrant in them. As a matter of fact, no single square has a single fire hydrant in it.

Is this how it knows I am human? Because I ignored the stated instructions and followed the implied directions.

So I made my first trip to the YMCA since February.

In February, my oldest son and I were taking the triathlon prep class ahead of a projected April Y Not Tri indoor triathlon, so every Monday and Wednesday we ate far too much sushi before going to the Y. The lad would shoot some hoops before class whilst I would do some weightlifting. This was back in February. The before time. We skipped the last week of the classes before everything got cancelled because the early signs were that the Pandemic would be something like the beginning of The Stand.

But it wasn’t, and the YMCA remained closed for a while. Then they opened it up without locker rooms and with some onerous restrictions. So I stayed away.

This week, I realized that I had not really been for a run or a bike ride on a weekday since the boys restarted school, so I have been thinking about a return. My beautiful wife mentioned that Planet Fitness, of which she is a member, asks you to wear a mask when you come in and go out, but when on the machines and whatnot, you don’t. I hoped the Y would be the same. First, though, I had to get some new weightlifting gloves as I used my most recent pair as biking gloves for the Olympic duathlon last spring, and the garage is a black hole.

So I stopped at the sporting goods store that has no guns left and three dumbbells (no barbells or weights) left).

As I explained on Facebook:

I stopped in the sporting goods store today and tried on several pairs of weightlifting gloves before I made my selection.

I am more fastidious about weightlifting gloves than 95% of the clothes I buy (if they’re on the top of the stack and have the right basic size, plus or minus a size, take it!).

I am much more fussy in a hat store, however.

Today I went back to the YMCA. It was early in the morning; I went before sun up, and I would rather wake up before I gym-go, but the current schedule is not conducive to a later visit. It was, as it is purportedly at Planet Fitness, just mask in and mask out; only employees and volunteers were wearing masks on the workout floor. I did my normal interval warm-up without sprints and did a couple of weightlifting exercises–biceps and triceps–followed by a mile on the treadmill. I was going to joke on Facebook that it’s been so long that I had trouble opening the heavy door to the facility, but the amount of engagement I get on Facebook (or that I give on Facebook) these days doesn’t make my quips worthwhile. So I will share them with you.

It’s true, though: I only did about 60% of the weight that I could at the beginning of the year. Maybe not quite that low; my arms have generally been slower to progress than my other muscle groups. But still, a bit humbling. But it is very important to start low when coming back as the corner muscles–the stabilizers in the elbows, shoulders, knees, ankle, hips, and so on–atrophy faster than the big topline muscles, and if you try to do too much too soon, you can hurt the small muscles which will put you out of action longer.

I am looking forward to getting back to the weightlifting. It’s been seven months since I lifted weights. I have run and biked a bit, and I have done a couple of martial arts classes, but the running and biking builds endurance, not the explosive bursts that Mark Rippletoe thinks are important and that one needs for martial arts classes.

Check back with me next week, though, to see if I’ve made it back.

Want to instantly upgrade your home? Give it a name

As you know, gentle reader, I refer to my current spread as Nogglestead because I planned to be more successful at gardening and orcharding than I have proven to be. And as the archives of this very blog attest, I named the home we had in Casinoport Honormoor. Strangely enough, we did not name the house during our brief interlude in Old Trees. Perhaps because it would have been pretentious to name a little ranch house in that town of very old manses indeed (probably the presumption of pretentiousness did not stop me–it never has before), or maybe because it would have had to be in ALL CAPS because we lived right on the Interstate.

But I’ve not wanted to upgrade my home.

I just read enough English literature that it seemed the right thing to do.

I went to my sister-in-law’s funeral on Thursday in the southeastern part of Missouri. My sister-in-law came from a large family–she was one of nine–and a number of them made the trip down from Wisconsin and various parts of Missouri to attend.

Apparently, the family agreed beforehand to wear Packers apparel to honor my sister-in-law’s love of the team. I kid you not. We had jerseys at the service representing:

• 12 Aaron Rodgers (2).
• 80 Donald Driver.
• 52 Clay Matthews.
• 87 Jordy Nelson.

Along with assorted other Packers apparel amongst the children and whatnot.

I was the only one in a suit, which prompted one of her sisters to ask “Where’s Jake?” when I arrived in my fedora and sunglasses. I’ll be honest, I’m almost fifty, and I’m still a bit gobsmacked when a stranger makes a joke about how I’m dressed. Don’t get me wrong; I will make jokes about how I am dressed–I told someone that I sat down during the viewing period before the service because I didn’t want to be mistaken for a funeral home employee, especially as I would ask for tips, and that would be gauche at a time like this (and I was actually mistaken for an employee by a member of my sister-in-law’s family). Eesh, I got a bunch of jokes to put me down in my school years decades ago, and they still put me in a bit of a mental defensive crouch when I get them now.

My brother is doing all right; he’s talking about the future and has gotten another dog, which his wife opposed, so he’s looking past his grief. My nephew has been hit a little harder; this was his mother and quite possibly the first death of someone close to him, so he didn’t have any warm-ups.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for all of us, them more than me, of course. I would say I’m looking forward to getting back to normal, but deaths close to home have a way of making one look at normal and wondering if it’s really the normal one wants.

A little over a week ago, our washing machine gave out, again. Prior to failure, it had made a strange noise whilst spinning; then, it stopped spinning and then intermittently spun. I ordered a new washing machine on the Internet because I wanted it delivered sooner rather than later and didn’t know when I could make it to shop for a new washer. The delivery still took a week, but it was scheduled for yesterday.

So I moved the old washing machine to the garage where I can repair it at my leisure and have a back-up washing machine or I can store it for a number of years until I–or my heirs–get someone to haul it away.

I took the opportunity to move the dryer out as well and to wash the floor beneath them. So the floor is clean-clean (or is it clean/clean) for the first time since we moved into Nogglestead eleven years ago.

Forgive me while I immortalize it here. You, gentle reader, undoubtedly know the feeling of pride when you clean something that nobody will ever see, and you try to think about how to steer conversation in that direction or to draw attention to the normally unseen area when you have visitors. At least, I hope you do. I certainly do, but not that often (see also eleven years between floor washings).

And, as a bonus, I can knock an item off of my whiteboard.

I organized my whiteboard with those categories sometime around 2014. A couple of times, I’ve gotten in and vacuumed lint and whatnot, but I’ve never completely washed the floors since I wrote the task on the whiteboard.

Somewhere early in the century, I had a whiteboard in a cubicle that I used a lot for tracking work tasks, so I got one for the home office, too. However, in the intervening years, that whiteboard has not been in reach of my mammoth desk, so I’ve ended up not using it much. Nor, apparently, knocking off the tasks on it.

But I will eventually remove the one about cleaning the laundry floor. Or just leave it on the whiteboard for a while, until I need to do it again.

I predicted last November that I was entering a dying time much like my family experienced in the late 1980s, where a number of family members (my grandfather, my grandmother, my step-grandfather, my step great grandmother, my cousin, and assorted great aunts) died in a short period of time. My aunt and stepmother had cancer, and I pointed out that the generation above mine was entering that sixties through eighties age group and might be coming to the end of their retirements (which is what the Wall Street Journal’s Complete Guide To Money called death, although much of my extended family, even in that age bracket, are not actually retired yet).

My aunt died at the end of November. Although treatments seemed to put her into remission, my stepmother passed this summer. The best man from my wedding died this spring.

And my sister-in-law has passed away unexpectedly.

She had had what should have been routine surgery last week and might have been discharged too soon. After a weekend of illness, she collapsed on Tuesday morning. My brother performed CPR on her, and although they restarted her heart at the hospital, she was nonresponsive and unlikely to recover. So after her daughter and sister arrived from different parts of the state, my brother decided to discontinue the life-preserving means–she had no brain function–and she passed. I spent most of the week across the state, supporting my brother as he tended to the immediate after.

My manager at work just lost her mother to cancer, and I said it was the hardest thing. Throughout the week, I reassessed what actually was the hardest thing. When my mother was sick and in the ICU, I had the power of deciding if and when to discontinue life support. I thought that was the hardest thing. Then I watched my brother actually have to make the decision, and I thought that was the hardest thing. Then I watched him tell her children that it was time, and that was the hardest thing. Then I watched them tell her nine-year-old grandson that Grandma was in Heaven. So it’s all the hardest thing, one hardest thing after another.

I was not especially close to my sister-in-law, so I was not acutely grieving. At times I felt like an intruder while her family group huddled together, but I think it helped my brother to have someone of his generation there for support. I hope so, anyway. I could only play the role of the wise old (too soon) man who stoically understood grieving and could warn the others of what they would experience. I told them that the grieving would come and go; that my brother made no mistakes and was not negligent leading to his wife’s passing; that to watch someone you love grieve is almost worse than your own grief, as the fear of pain is worse than actual pain; that little things would set them off; that at some point, you will start to go on with life, and might think you’ve forgotten her because you’re no longer actively in pain, and you might feel guilty about it, but don’t; and that the first year will be filled with milestones such as her first birthday without her, the first Christmas without her, and so on, which will make it all real again. I think I helped; but they are only words, but hopefully sympathetic ones. I never know if I’m helping or not.

Like so many things this year, it makes one confront one’s own mortality and reflect on what one has done and what one has left undone. Unfortunately, every marker of mortality this year has not made me act much better.

Eesh, and don’t I feel a little sompy making it all about me.