Posts Tagged ‘Birthdays’

The cat’s meow

March 27, 2023

It’s all uphill from here?

Mack awakened, started up, stretched, staggered to the pool, washed his face with cupped hands, hacked, spat, washed out his mouth, broke wind, tightened his belt, scratched his legs, combed his wet hair with his fingers, drank from the jug, belched and sat down by the fire.

— John Steinbeck, “Cannery Row”

“Men all do about the same things when they wake up,” Steinbeck continued.

Maybe so. But my morning ritual departs from the norm in subtle ways.

There is no pool, jug, or fire by the bed; the nightstand holds a lamp and glass of water, and a sink is just a few steps away.

Once I’ve tumbled out of bed I snatch up bits of clothing at random and dress in the dark just to see what happens. This morning when I turned on the bathroom light I saw the pea-green T-shirt I’d selected complemented my fetching pallor. Thanks to an overlong winter that has spilled over into spring I looked like a scoop of pistachio ice cream with eyes.

It didn’t help that Miss Mia Sopaipilla had begun singing “Happy Birthday” to me around 2:30. I thought I was prepared, having gone to bed early, but nothing prepares you for a cat singing “Happy Birthday” at 2:30 in the morning. Especially when you know it’s not “Happy Birthday” she’s singing.

Who knows what makes a cat sing anything at 2:30 in the morning? Not me, because I refuse to get up and find out. I rolled myself up like a burrito in the blankets, put a pillow over my head, and stayed put until 5.

Shortly after I finally arose to serve Her Majesty I heard an ambulance, but I wasn’t in it.

At least I don’t think I was. But I’ve only had two cups of coffee so all bets are off.

Marching forward, looking backward

March 26, 2023

Calm down, ye amadáin, I’ve not a drop taken: That’s a Guinness 0 so.

Birthdays. Some of us get overserved, others get 86’d with the cork barely out of the bottle.

Whoever’s in charge of this party seems a bit random. Can’t tell the top shelf from the well, the class from the dross. Proper ladies and gents given the shove while the most appalling tossers have the run o’ the place.

Take me, if you can bear to. Here I sit, roaring up on an age at which I had fully expected to have been stone dead for at least 39 years. Upended many an office pool I did.

“Who picked 69? 69? Well, doesn’t matter, because the bugger is still alive!

Turn your radio on.

Meanwhile, there’s many an empty stool in this shabby shebeen. Where’d everybody go? They were all here just a minute ago. …

Herself is back east with family and friends to raise a belated parting glass to a lifelong friend carried off by COVID last fall.

I’m right here, having charge of the cat. But recently I spoke with one of my old pals, the former Live Update Guy Charles Pelkey, who has taken a few sucker punches since a cancer diagnosis a dozen years ago but is still on his feet in Laramie, all bouncers be damned.

It may be my birthday that’s on tap come Monday, but I’d buy Charles a round to celebrate his most recent lap around the sun, may it not be his last. Lucky for me and my 401(k) I don’t drink anymore; I don’t think he does, either. ’Tis unknown the amount of money our younger selves could piss away in a proper pub.

At the publisher’s expense, of course.

But that’s neither here nor there.

And anyway, it’s the thought that counts.

So belly up to the bar — unbeknownst to the landlord, who is manhandling another tray of industrial lager to the hoops-watching gobshites glued to the TV in the back of the pub, we’re uncorking an 18-year-old, double-cask, single-malt episode of — yes, yes, yes —  Radio Free Dogpatch. And sláinte to yis.

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: There was an inordinate amount of racket in and around El Rancho Pendejo this week, but after a series of false starts I was finally able to nail something down using my trusty Shure SM58 mic and the Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. Editing was in Apple’s GarageBand, with a sonic bump from Auphonic. Music and sound effects are courtesy of Zapsplat, Freesound, and Your Humble Narrator.

Spring forward

March 12, 2023

Kelli and Shannon take a brief break from eBay Madness.

Huzzah to Herself, who started another lap around the sun today, and an hour early too.

Pal Kelli came out from the Great White Midwest to celebrate the milestone with her (and do a little eBay bidness on the side).

I (not pictured) have been serving as cat wrangler and chief cook-slash- bottle washer. Also, eye candy. You’ll have to trust me on this last one. No paparazzi!

Viejo pendejo

March 27, 2021

Not dead yet, but not fooling anyone, either.

Happy birthday to me

I am old, as you see

Bald, wrinkled, and smelly

Plus it hurts when I pee.

 

Ho hum. Another year, another decidedly muted celebration.

Last year I rode 66 minutes on the stationary trainer, being slightly stove up. This year … to be honest, I’m not feeling it. The whole birthday-ride thing.

Sixty-seven miles? Not gonna happen. Sixty-seven kilometers? Nuh uh. Sixty-seven minutes? Maybe, but not on a trainer. That much I know for certain.

It’s not a “Duane’s Depressed” kind of situation. I don’t have a pickup to park, or a shack to walk to. Anyway, I’m waiting on our yard guy to come around and tell me how much money he needs for his next trip to Vegas.

But afterward maybe I’ll take a page from ol’ Duane’s story and go for a 6.7-mile walk. I do have these feet at the ends of my legs, and I don’t have to air ’em up or grease ’em or nothin’.

Happy birthday to Herself

March 12, 2021

Dig those crazy puffballs.

The gods served up a cotton-ball sky for Herself’s mumble-mumble-th birthday this morning.

I immediately felt a kinship with this piece because she’s still cute
and he looks like shit.

They won’t be there for long — the forecast calls for gusty winds out of the SSW as Thor breaks out the old hammer for a little light touch-up work on Colorado.

As The Bug® still holds sway over the land, and we have not yet had our shots, the birthday festivities will be muted, as they were last year.

Herself and a colleague did manage to enjoy a socially distant cocktail and appetizers on some uptown bistro’s patio yesterday afternoon while I stayed home and cooked dinner (turkey tacos and arroz verde).

The other day we went shopping for a birdbath to keep the juncos hydrated and stumbled across the Dia de los Muertos talavera pictured above, a bride and groom sitting on a bench looking slightly stupified, probably from strong drink and/or unbridled lust.

Vato’s got a ticket to ride. Orrrrale.

As we both have March birthdays, it was a no-brainer — boom, two birthdays, one present, no waiting.

The couple matches the cyclist we have by the front door, so, bonus. You may remember El Señor from our Interbike coverage in days gone by.

Meanwhile, the phone rings off the hook it no longer has with calls from well-wishers. Later we will nosh on some delicious snacks and watch something silly on TV.

Par-tee, baybee. Not even The Bug® can stop us.

‘Better weird than not at all’

May 16, 2020

I settled for a snap of the balloons because old guys taking snaps of children unrelated to them is mega-creepy.

One of the kids next door celebrated her sixth birthday yesterday.

There was a party of sorts in the cul-de-sac. Instead of hugs and kisses, she got social distancing and masks; in lieu of cake and the slicing thereof, we noshed on individual cupcakes in either chocolate or vanilla.

From the vantage point of someone who turned 6 in 1960, it seemed a strange way to mark the Great Leap Forward from kindergarten to first grade. Or it did until I recalled that when I reached this milestone Elvis was being discharged from the Army, a few thousand of his countrymen were heading off to Vietnam, and Francis Gary Powers was enjoying an unscheduled layover in the Soviet Union.

So, then, as now, there was lots of weirdness going on, and not just in your friendly neighborhood cul-de-sac, either.

“It may be weird, but better weird than not at all,” as a neighbor and I agreed.

A hummingbird had a bird’s-eye view of the party from her nest in a pine just off our driveway. According to Audubon New Mexico, the hummers lay two eggs a half inch long in nests the size of a walnut shell, and this one has done a fine job of camouflaging her tiny nursery. Herself and I saw the little nipper zip to the limb yesterday as we were leaving for a bike ride; I took a closer squint and spotted the nest.

It takes a bit of squinting to find this hummer guarding the kids.

66(6)

March 27, 2020

“Please, don’t wake me, no, don’t shake me, leave me where I am,
I’m only sleeping. Asshole.”

I was awakened at 4:30 a.m. by Miss Mia Sopaipilla singing me “Happy Birthday.”

At least, I think it was “Happy Birthday.” It sounded a lot like “Mrow yowr rowr myowww erroww mrow yowr rowr meeeeeeeeeeeeeowwwwwwwww.” But I’m not much of a crooner myself and so who am I to be critical of another amateur’s warbling?

It goes without saying that when I woke her up a couple hours later, I was the bad guy.

Meanwhile, someone has promised me birthday pancakes. But she’s in her office yelling at NPR so I’m not holding my breath.

Still, I am on top of the earth and I don’t work for the government, as Thomas McGuane has said. So, later, the 66-minute birthday ride. Right after those hotcakes.

Bikes, trains and automobiles

March 27, 2019

I didn’t take a camera on today’s ride, so you’ll have to make do with a feeble iPhone shot of the bosque just starting to show some color.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in with birthday wishes on this, my induction into Official Geezerhood.

Is there a probationary period? If I fail to chase enough whippersnappers off my lawn will I be stripped of my galluses, wattles and trifocals, and demoted to Youth?

The birthday ride is done and dusted, and like last year I exceeded my expectations: 45 miles, or 72.4 kilometers. Thus I have some more kms banked for subsequent birthdays. One of these years I won’t have to ride at all.

Which will give me more time for podcasting. Yes, yes, yes, it’s another edition of Radio Free Dogpatch, Senior Moment Edition. You’re welcome. Now get the hell off my lawn.

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with an Audio-Technica AT2035 microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. I edited using Apple’s GarageBand on a 2014 MacBook Pro. The music is “Matador’s Entry,” from Zapsplat.com. I really wanted to work “The Coroner’s Footnote” from Half Man Half Biscuit in here somewhere, but couldn’t pull it off. You should listen to it anyway. While you’re at it give an ear to “Every Time a Bell Rings.”

Cake me, bitches

March 27, 2019

That’s Birthday No. 1, back in 1955. What a snappy dresser I was.
Happily, I got over it. From bowtied pups do mangy Mad Dogs grow.

‘I’m not dead yet. …’

March 27, 2018

Sixty-four, Bog help us all. The lyric “When I get older, losing my hair / Many years from now” no longer applies.

I’m not that handy mending a fuse, and Herself doesn’t knit sweaters by the fireside. Still, just last Saturday we were doing the garden, digging the weeds. Who could ask for more?

The 64km birthday ride is going to have to wait, though. The weather appears to be taking a turn for the worse. If I’m lucky I may be able to manage 64 minutes of running before the rain comes.