Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Screw This Friday Round-Up
I’m sure my kids would disagree, but I wasn’t the world’s sweetest parent. When one of them was “having trouble with transitions,” I found that only two things worked: brute force or having extreme amounts of fun with the other children which would make being an excluded jerk unbearable. I did have one kid who would take on the “excluded jerk” mantle and wear it all day, once sitting at a picnic table in the blazing sun for hours in protest while the rest of us frolicked in the ocean. Donald Trump made me remember those fabulous days of parenting.
I join the rest of the world in wondering what’s happening with Donnie’s hair. What kind of hair product was he using that made it just temporarily yellow? Why is his hair now white? Is he out of the yellow dye? Won’t Amazon deliver to the White House anymore? And who is doing his hair? because the sides are super slicked down. All subtlety has been lost. Poor guy – to have bad hair on top of everything else. It was raining on him the other day at Arlington and his raincoat was too small. He could work up a list bad enough for me to feel sorry for him, no, that isn’t true.
We are leaving the U.P. where we haven’t been within 100 yards of another person for a week. Tomorrow we head back to Milwaukee where people can pass within inches on the sidewalk and spit out their car windows. This is an exaggeration, somewhat. In preparation, we have developed a new set of super pandemic rules which, tonight, included our messaging our son to tell him not to go into the house to get a screwdriver so he could put up the front storms and to wait until we got back so we could put a screwdriver on the ground six feet away from us and he could come pick it up. Yes. Wisconsin is that bad.
We have been eyeing potential Christmas trees. One especially nice one is on our neighbor’s property so we had a discussion – brief – about whether he would miss said tree if we chopped it down. This was idle chatter. Remember we’re not watching CNN so we need some riling up from another source. We, of course, decided against such mayhem and now are doomed to actually buying a tree from a lot somehow, unless I can get a delivery. That would be best. I will investigate.
When we were first married and didn’t have a lot of money, we called each other Lech and Blechia and joked about living in Poland during some hideous time of starvation. This was a terrible affront to Polish people, I realize, but the humor of it took the edge off a lot of puzzlement about how we were going to pay the mortgage and groceries in the same month. Happily, that period was fairly brief but the exercise in joking our way through scratchy and unpredictable times served us well. We ponder this, looking ahead to deep, dark Wisconsin winter when it’s going to be just the two us with a candle in our breakfast nook having Thanksgiving dinner while our dining room table and its six chairs sits empty in the other room. We’re not as sad about this as we might be – after all, we prepared ourselves a long time ago. Signed, Lech and Blechia
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Photo credit: Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
15 Comments on “Screw This Friday Round-Up”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
So glad you mentioned donald’s hair. I read somewhere that he does his own, doesn’t allow anyone to touch his hair, although why anyone would want to touch anything on him is beyond me. Maybe, in his depression over losing the election, he mixed the wrong color. I also noticed when he was hospitalized, and receiving treatments the rest of us wouldn’t get and on our dime to boot, the sides of his hair were shorter. Side extensions? Do they even make those?
His hair-do is so intricate, it’s hard to imagine someone doing that themselves. But that could explain what he does all day. Lordy.
I didn’t even realize Trump’s hair had changed since I have evicted him from my brain and my eyes. I am now tempted to look. As for Thanksgiving, I have ordered a boatload of food from a training program here for inner city kids who usually run a cafe but can’t. I intend to drop it off next door where my daughter, her friend and the grandkids who would usually be with us won’t be. At least we can get into turkey comas in close proximity and the kids won’t be in a rush to leave.
You really have to look at Trump’s hair – it’s emblematic of something, just not sure what. Re. Thanksgiving – I’m doing three delivered meals but I really like your idea…
The kids are very excited about the food. Who knew they could recover from coming over when showered with food from an urban kitchen?
You’re Leaving the UP just in time! Winter is up there can be so tough. But glad you got some open space to breathe.
Yes to all – winter is too much up there. We have had so many home catastrophes and a couple of getting lost in the snow. Still, it’s incredibly beautiful in the winter – wish we could be there.
You could always set a place for Swirl and Punchy at the table. I bet they wouldn’t mind some turkey.
Ha! That’s an idea!
I am imagining Lech and Blechia quarantining with Borat and Tutar now…and this gives much pleasure.
Hang in there; good thing you have your Polish training to prop you up (smile). This too shall pass.
Love the paragraph on trump – my second lol at 2:00 am when I can’t sleep and my hands are cold because it is November and the heat is turned down. I can identify with so much of this week’s round-up. I wonder if the depths of winter on Lake Superior would be as romantic and intriguing as I have fanaticized. Okay, could it be worse than being in the hospital with covid?
Thanksgiving is beginning to feel like just another one of the endless Ground Hog Days. We have had so many disappointments this year, no Thanksgiving seems like, of course, we can’t do Thanksgiving.
Even brief visit to hard times helps when times suddenly get hard when you least expect it.
best of luck to both of you