Category Archives: personal grooming

Sunday Well Spent

29 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by in Catholic Life, personal grooming, Popular Song, Sport

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

In my fantasy, I am drinking French roast coffee made in a French press pot with freshly ground beans. I am eating a butter croissant slathered with butter and fig jam. I am reading the New York Times at a leisurely pace in no hurry to do anything in particular.

In reality, I made the coffee, prepared the croissant, took the papers off the porch, sat in my “comfy chair” (imagine Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition), found the Mississippi John Hurt Delta Blues recordings on YouTube my friend recommended. As I opened the paper, I acknowledged to my innermost self that I have zero (0) interest in reading the paper. I am not going to spend this Sunday, damp, chilly, and rainy though it may be, getting agitated by current events. Why? I have a whole damn week for that. Shortly after Mississippi John Hurt finishes Sliding Delta and Charley Patton does Jesus Is A Dying Bed Maker, I go upstairs, put on starched white shirt, black trousers, hounds’ tooth jacket, black tie, and shiny black shoes. I’m going to Mass.

My soul needs it all. The time with God, sitting with my friend Madeleine, and watching the families together, especially the children. Unbeknownst to me, it is Catholic Schools Week, so the school children process in and sit together in the front pews. The children are wearing their school,uniforms, the boys with white polo shirts with the St Benedict Crest, while the girls wear the grey plaid jumpers. (Is it really 2018, not 1958?) The oft-satirized Drill Instructor Nuns are a thing of the past. The teachers are all lay people.

The Mass ends just as my back can take sitting, kneeling, and genuflecting no longer. Now comes the piece de resistence. We sing the beautiful Alma Redemptoris Mater for the recessional. Father Tony notes my buzz cut with approval when I shake his hand at the door. He gives my noggin a rub, a most friendly and welcome gesture. He is human. Whaddaya know!

Home. Then we take a trip to a pizzeria for white spinach pizza, then back home. Mrs CorC? has work. I take a nap, debating whether I really want to swim today, aching body and all. I go, complete 2500 meters. I’m glad I did. It means that my average is 5 workouts per week, 20 swims in 28 days. The pain is considerably lessened. Thank you, endorphins.

I am especially proud that I watched no sports this Sunday or the whole weekend for that matter. I have had enough. In my head, I hear Dylan Thomas read:

“I see the Boys of Summer in their ruin…”

It is over.

Instead I listen to Ella Fitzgerald sing Rogers & Hart songs. Such a voice, such delightful songs. I secretly long for a woman who loves Rogers & Hart and Ella as much as I do. That would be, well, perfect.

Simply perfect.

Cleans Up Good

19 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by in personal grooming

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

I have reported about my weight loss for several weeks. Sunday I tried on one of my “skinny suits” and it fit! So I tried on a jacket and trousers that I had not worn in years. They fit too.  For the AA meeting today I wore my jacket and tie. The immediate response and running joke at AA when one shows up dressed up is, “How did court go today?” Or “What time is the funeral?”

But I dressed up just for fun. And wearing a jacket and tie is almost comfortable when not required to be worn. 

So anyway, here is the lame-ass selfie I took.

Out of curiosity, are any of you ladies out there sexually attracted to men wearing suits and ties?

Diner Dante´ Haircut

28 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by in Bloggers, food, Literature, personal grooming

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

This morning began late. Well actually it began too early. I was up around three AM because Mrs CorC? had episodes of Highway Patrol playing on YouTube. Somehow Broderick Crawford barking “10-4!” and the relentless orchestration had failed to take me to Dreamland.  So I was up for a while, settling my restless spirit, went back to sleep around four, waking up for good around eight AM.  I had a meeting at ten and put off eating until after the meeting.   I was nostalgically pulled to the quirky downtown diner I treat myself to from time to time.  I went down and, perusing the menu through the Weight Watchers filter,  found nothing I really wanted to spend a day’s worth of points to eat. So I had a scrambled egg, sausage and a biscuit and still used 18 Smart Points.  for some reason, the ambiance was off today.   Time to move on.

I’ve been having a delightful interchange with the author at Secret Life Of A Siren.  It started with her referencing Canto XX. I  know about  “Cantos” from Ezra Pound and Siren redirected me to Dante’, as in Dante’ Alighieri, author of a classic of Western Literature, The Divine Comedy.  Much to my embarassment, I admitted that I had not read The Divine Comedy, despite its significance in Western arts and letters.  A quick rummaging around my quarters did not reveal the copy I know I have, sooooo, I went to the public library, (of all places!) and checked out a copy.  Public Libraries are these places where you can borrow a book, read and return it and it’s free. Who Knew?

Next I went to get a haircut. I was past due for a cut. I told Brittany The Barber to use the #1 and show no mercy. She did. I feel normal again and not quite deranged, as I feel when my hair starts to look odd and sticks straight up when I run my fingers through it.06281713320628171342a

Image

“Once More Into The Breech, Dear Friends!”

08 Wednesday Feb 2017

Tags

,

Here I go again, Physical Therapy. The doctor visit yesterday ended with a prescription for a course of prednisone and twice weekly sessions of PT for some residual, more or less constant, muscle 


pain near the fusion site and some persistent tingling in my left arm which we think is related to some issues in the cervical vertabrae. Fun. Fun. Fun.

Later Today

I had my PT session. The goals for both issues is flexibility. We started off with a traction session on my neck. That was followed by some general stretching and flexibility exercises for the  legs.  Evidently lack of flexibility in the leg muscles puts extra strain on the back. Who knew? 

Post PT, I got a haircut.  I got a “Spring” haircut because it’s down right warm here in Ole Virginny’.  Between sweat in my hair from walking and pool chemicals when I swim, I feel like my hair is a gunk reserve. So Karina, my barber,  gave me close to The Works.  I would fit right in at Camp Lejeune.

Topping off the day’s excursions was a trip to the supermarket, in this case Food Lion.  The “re-set” team was in this particular store today, resetting specific sections according to the monthly schedule. I saw a crew on frozen dinners, bottled water, and  bath soap, I believe.  This is of interest to me, because I spent several years doing this particularly nasty work in some grocery stores in rural Virginia; towns like Saluda, Kilmarnock, Bowling Green, Colonial Beach.  I left today with an enormous sense of gratitude about being retired.

Posted by | Filed under Health Issues, personal grooming

≈ Leave a comment

501’s. My Kind Of Shrinkage

29 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by in personal grooming, Sexual Identity

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

They came from Amazon via UPS. That they still make shrink-to-fit 501’s with a button fly is most gratifying to me. They are made in Egypt now. Back in the 1980’s, when GQ had interesting things to say about clothes, they did a piece on S-T-F 501’s and it impressed me.  Now that I can afford to pay nearly three times as much for these as for a pair of pretty good jeans at BJ’s, I do so. This afternoon, I got naked, put on the unshrunk jeans and stood under the hot shower. I stood there, wondering what Mrs. CorC? would  say if she walked in, and let the jeans and me get good and wet. A nice little puddle of indigo-tinted water accumulates. When I feel as if the job has been done, I peel them off and put them in the washer in hot water. And Bob’s your uncle, when the washing and drying is over, they’re good to go.

Quite frankly, there is something erotic about unbuttoning the jeans to urinate, etc.  Call me crazy.   They look good, especially when paired with a white dress shirt.  I feel attractive and ageless and not 65, with titanium screws holding my spine together. They don’t look or feel like “Old Guy” clothes.  I own enough pairs of constipated khakis to last a lifetime.  I have not worn a suit in ages.  Things have changed fashion-wise.

Saturday Miscellany

23 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by in Health Issues, Love and stuff, personal grooming

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

( I wrote this post two years ago when I thought Senator Kaine had a modicum of decency about him. That was before his moral cowardice on abortion truly disturbed me, before his going along with the travesties of of the current Democrat coup d’etat in slow motion has crippled this nation, before the FBI and DOJ’s perversion of the FISA process brought shame to that great law enforcement agency. So long, Tim)

The buzz around Richmond today centers around Mrs. Clinton’s Vice-Presidential selection, Tim Kaine.  He is well-liked in these parts. Republicans who don’t agree with him respect him as a decent guy who lives by his principles.  A friend of mine who went to high school with his wife admires him tremendously.  His father-in-law,  Linwood Holton, was the first Republican governor since Reconstruction.  Governor Holton kept his children in the Richmond Public Schools when white flight, accelerated by a mandatory busing court order, dramatically changed the demographics of the schools.  Tim’s a good guy and the son-in-law of a good guy.

But enough politics. Today was my Weight Watchers weigh-in and meeting. I lost another 1.6 pounds and could break the 200 pound barrier as early as next week.  There is one remarkable lady at this meeting who is always cheerful, shares from her heart and invariably has something wise to say. I told her that she was the reason I came to this meeting, even though it starts at 7:30 AM. She was genuinely touched and cried when I told her.  I was surprised at her response because I thought everybody in the whole wide world could see that she was a truly remarkable woman and that she must have heard that praise day in and day out.  Moral of Story:  Do not ever hold back praise! Never. Ever.

I got a haircut yesterday and I really like what Karina, my barber at Sport Clips, did. She did something to the back that looks pretty good.  Hopefully I got it to post right.  There were several young boys in there with their mothers getting haircuts and it was fun to watch them. One little boy, maybe 8, looked very, very serious when told  to sit still. And still he sat, as if he were sitting on a land mine that would go off if he so much as flinched. He looked pretty sharp, cleaned up.

My big plans for dinner evaporated when Mrs C or C? worked late again.  It was OK. I was basically too tired to cook. There is a nice piece of sockeye salmon waiting in the fridge I can cook tonight or tomorrow.

The sex piece with Mrs C or C? is still a work in progress. Don’t think for a moment that the only people messed up around sex were raised Catholic.  She was raised Southern Baptist.  We shall see.  (Note: Both parties being awake and in the same room at the same time increase the likelihood of meaningful dialogue taking place.  Baby Steps)

 

 

Random Observations

06 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by in cooking, food, Fruit, personal grooming, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Observation #1

Men are gross. The ladies are right about that. Why do I say that? Yesterday, at the Y , I’m getting dressed after my swim. One of my fellow members is also attending to his grooming. He takes the blow dryer there for use in drying hair, presumably that particular hair on top of the head, and, after a quick once over to his pubes, uses the communal blow dryer to dry the space between his toes! All of a sudden, I really didn’t need to style my hair with the blow dryer.

Observation #2

Somebody tell me the difference between cultured buttermilk and kefir. The most basic one is that kefir costs about twice as much. The two products taste remarkably similar. I know there are active probiotic cultures in kefir, but does their presence mean I have to pony up twice as much dough?  I guess so. 

Observation #3

Kitchen parchment is really cool stuff. Last night I lined the pan with it when I grilled the swordfish steaks in the oven and wrapped the corn on the cob in it as I cooked them in the oven along with the fish. The clean-up with parchment was easier, I think, than with aluminum foil. By the way, cooking corn in the oven or on the grill is so much easier than throwing them in boiling water on top of the stove.

Observation #4

Fruit 1: Why do strawberries seem to last an incredibly long time before turning into gross red pulpy blobs these days? I notice this in the ones I buy at the market in the big PETE #1  containers that come from some farm near Watsonville, California. Maybe they pick up a weird vibe from the spirit of John Steinbeck, who lived near there. The locally grown, “pick your own” kind seem to have the shorter life I remember from the Dark Ages of the Eisenhower Administration.

Fruit 2: Peaches grown locally, within a few hundred miles, more or less, are delicious. The ones trucked in from California or Washington (I live in Virginia) are pretty nasty. Let’s not even talk about the ones from Chile that show up in the stores in the winter.  I must say that the Chilean cherries are pretty good.   Chilean  apples aren’t bad. The oranges are so-so.