The Post Office

06 Monday May 2019

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Here in the U.S.of A., we joke about the post office, to the point where one of the unintended functions of the United States Postal Service is as a source of humorous anecdotes.

Today I had to return a package to an online merchant. I went to the local branch.This sign in the parking lot said “15 Minute Parking“.

“Shouldn’t be too long”, I say to myself, “if 15 minutes is the top end of a visit.”

Walking in, I see a line at the counter. People are queued up, with parcels and packages to send out. The counters have boxes piled three and four high. There are two clerks at two service stations to handle the crowd. I decide this would be a good day to use the automated kiosk. I press the kiosk’s computer screen, as directed. The next screen tells me I cannot use the kiosk to mail parcels or letters. There is a malfunction, somewhere. Oh well. I go in to stand on queue.

While standing on line, I notice one clerk seems to be spending a lot of time with a couple and their little baby. This couple is applying for passports and this clerk is assisting them. That means we actually have one clerk for everyone else on the line.

Astutely discovering that the line is kinda just poking along, a manager type offers to handle mail pick-ups, drop-offs, and stamp purchases. This syphons off a customer or two. Meanwhile Passport Clerk is administering an oath to the applicants about supporting The Constitution and not giving aid and comfort to any enemies, foreign and/or domestic, The applicants said “Yes!”, they supported The Constitution and promised to not give aid to any enemies, much to the relief of my fellow postal patrons and myself.

By now, I had abandoned all hope of getting out in fifteen minutes. The customers in front of me all had packages, except for the elderly lady with a back brace who used a walker. I believe she was shopping for commemorative stamps, plate blocks in particular .

No sooner had Passport Clerk finished with these two applicants, than a family of four dropped in, all to get their passports, thus taking up more of Passport Clerk’s time.

The line was moving along, but that fifteen minute parking sign signalled an impossible goal. We Wretches With Packages, are known to the postal workers collectively as “Saps”, I am certain.

Finally I get some face time with the clerk.  He rattles off a few mailing options. I go for First Class. They were estimating a three day shipping time to send the package back across the country to Seattle, Washington. And they only wanted to charge $5.66. I promised I was not mailing perfume, volatile liquids, small arms ammunition or Cuban cigars.

I paid the money. They took the package and I was on my way. As I see it, my going to the post office was still cheaper entertainment than going to the movies.

Castor Oil Compress

06 Monday May 2019

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Porngirl3 suggested I make a compress of castor oil on cloth apply the compress to the area affected by pain and then apply heat to the compress for about 30 minutes. Yesterday’s session brought relief. Tonight seems to be working too.

Yes. I did the therapy for about an hour. I feel the difference.

I’m exhausted. Good night, all,

Awake. Pain.

05 Sunday May 2019

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It is almost 4:00 AM. I slept for a couple of hours, when the pain woke me up. I made a pot of decaf, folded some laundry, took some Ibuprofen, and I am watching Curiosity Incorporated. Alex is checking out a Volkswagen Beetle from 1968 that he discovered in a storage shed.

I find distraction to be an important element of pain management. Something to think about besides that I hurt.

Time for more coffee. Maybe I will have a pear too.

Swim. Pain. Aftercare. Postscript.

05 Sunday May 2019

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I did the castor oil compress with heat. Feeling some difference where it was applied.

Actually it feels a lot different about an hour after the treatment. Different as in better.

Until the nerve is no longer pressured, finding useful treatments for the muscles involved are critical. If the muscles can relax, normal activities with minimal aggravation is the goal.

Staring At Devon On A Saturday

04 Saturday May 2019

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I am looking at a scene in Devon, Dawlish, to be exact, looking at the Brunel Railway. A train just went by, a swift, sleek, Vision Of The Future train.

Quite lovely. It’s a coastal scene. There is the English Channel, some cliffs in the distance, people strolling or cycling on the paved walk below the rails. All very England. Somewhere to the left, off camera, is the “sceptered isle” Shakespeare praised.

I look out at the sea. I’m reminded of what Melville wrote about the sea and bodies of water at the start of Moby Dick. We humans need to look at the sea. We pay big money to do precisely that.

Ever since I found The Magic Of Tidying Up, my house has gotten even messier. That’s probably how we all are. Once I discovered that things aren’t working, the not working part of my life is making its presence more obvious. Were it vocal, Not Working would be screaming.

I can’t decide what to do today, except spend time with J and swim. Definitely swim.

I have heat on my neck and shoulders. I still get “tingles” down my arm. But I will take my problems any day over what other people have to deal with.

My time at the seaside must end. A shower is on the horizon. And brunch. And time spent with my beloved. Later.

Welcome To The World Of Marina Morlok

03 Friday May 2019

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Marina Morlok is a Russian woman in her early thirties who can talk a “blue streak” in Russian. That is no surprise. She is Russian after all. She just opens up her life to the entire Internet, and, as long as her viewers are as fluent in Russian as she is, they can learn about what she eats, what she wears, her makeup, her hobbies and artistic endeavours. We all get to watch her cats, her enigmatic hairless cats, jump about the apartment, and enter and exit the camera frame.

She is now my friend, not really. I merely lurk around the periphery of her life, partitioned by language.

You, Marina, and I are the new peasants in this Mega Domain, hopeful that Soros, Buffett, the Russian Oligarchs, and who knows who else won’t be able to acquire everything, but leave us enough to live on. We’ve been lucky so far.

I fear, sometimes, that there are virtual Courts, the modern version of Versailles, Vienna, Constantinople. They are based on news feeds, the covers of supermarket tabloids, business journals and broadcasts. The news reporters are the news makers. Here are the Murdoch children, There is a television journalist married to a powerful central banker. Here the rich play their games, plot their intrigues, seduce their next lovers. Maybe that next lover that a would-be tyrant takes will be the next Evita for him or her. And our drab lives will find colour in their travel, travails, sport, and dalliances. And somebody will write a musical intended for even more comparing and longing and admiration and envy

If we are smart, we will let Marina Morlok entertain us, rather than the Kardashians or Kennedys. Or whoever else can snag a reporter’s attention and pay a public relations firm enough money.

Now Marina is eating tomatoes, cucumbers, yogurt, and something else. She chatters on. And we love her. She opens the yogurt cup, licks the yogurt off the top, as we all do when we think no one is looking. Would Hillary or Bill, Melania or Donald, pig out like that? Reason enough there not to trust them.

We watch Marina’s cat drink water out of her cup on the table. On the stove it looks like Marina is heating up pierogies in a pot of water, or whatever the Russian equivalent of Polish pierogies may be.

This is my world today. Marina’s groceries have more meaning for me than the pathetic blathering of the inept plotters of the Democratic Congressional Leadership. They are Twentyfirst Century’s most spectacular failures at court intrigue to date. They wouldn’t have lasted a week in Byzantium.

Vespers

02 Thursday May 2019

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I am listening to Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Vespers (All-Night Vigil) on YouTube. It is, of course, serene, uplifting, beautiful.

All I can think is that the world has had all the secular materialism, moral relativism, and professions of nonbelief that it can take.

Chastity, for unmarried men and women, is a virtue to be practiced, not a sexual fetish, i.e, a perversion, to play at. There I’ve said it.

Had I children of school age, I would not send them to public schools. I fear that public education no longer schools children in leading virtuous lives. I think it has taken me fifty years, my entire adult life, to unlearn the misguided moral teachings of public education, or to grasp moral teaching, on my own, within the context of the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

I guess that is why I find Russian Orthodox Liturgy so compelling. The Communists sought to destroy religion. They failed, because the Voice of God cannot be silenced, The secularists are seeking the same objective in America today, under the fig leaves of tolerance and religious freedom. There are a surfeit of “useful idiots” in politics, law, and education who assist in this cultural holocaust. And I mean precisely that. Books are banned in school, e.g. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That is close to burning a book. I think of the Heinrich Heine quote, “Where they burn books, they eventually burn people.”

We have become afraid to be intolerant of evil.

Brushes With Greatness

01 Wednesday May 2019

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My mother shook hands with Milton Berle once, outside the Hot Shoppes Cafeteria on Grace Street which was across the street from Thalhimer’s. This was 1967. The building is a parking lot now.

I saw John Warner crossing Franklin Street in 1978 after he was first elected to the Senate. He was married to Liz Taylor then. I said ” Congratulations, Senator.”

I once asked a bunch of questions to J Kenneth Galbraith, one of which was, “Did you ever have to meet a payroll?” I don’t remember his answer. I was drunk. This was 1987, I think.

When I worked at a kitchen store, The Rolling Pin Kitchen Emporium, in Regency Square Mall, Jerry Lewis came into the store. It was 1995. He was touring with a production of Damn Yankees. He needed a knife to slice his bagels. He wore a red polo shirt with JL monogrammed on the left breast (where you normally see the crocodile in a LaCoste shirt). This was 1995. The shopping mall owners just announced that part of the mall would be converted to a multi-pool natatorium. Nobody shops much there anymore. Jerry Lewis died a couple of years ago.

I once saw Justice Antonin Scalia at the Red Mass offered for canon and civil lawyers by the Thomas More Society.

I once saw Mitt Romney’s motorcade and security detail go by on Interstate-64 during the 2012 Presidential Campaign. These guys would never in a million years think of going back to being “nobodies” after getting the attention they get. Maybe that’s while they all seem to hang on to fame like grim death.

On Balance. OK

01 Wednesday May 2019

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I consider this a good day. Did some cooking, using up some stuff that needed preparing. Fixed some black beans which I ate over brown rice. I ate a lot of fruit as my dessert.

I try to stay away from stuff that upsets. My worries about Russo-American relations I must give over to God. We’ve come too far since 1945 to think He will not abandon us or them. Both our nations will find a way to Peace.

I will start the KonMari book tomorrow. The challenge is to engage my wife in the project. We shall see.

With the passing of my brother-in-law, and the pinched nerve, I have put Weight Watchers on hold. But I miss the structure, the food awareness, and the support system.

Here comes Summer. It is roughly seven weeks to the Summer Solstice. We will have the usual routine of Spring & Summer games, golf, tennis, horse racing, baseball, softball. I will go to a Richmond Flying Squirrels game with my son(s). Hopefully both. Life is good.