MONDAY, MONDAY

After a weekend of living the high life in Arlington, VA we’re back home and back at the usual routine of a normal work week. It’s true that I don’t go to “work” anymore but I do have work that needs to be accomplished so that our happy home remains happy. This week I have an extra chore on my assignment list. I’m going to be painting the bathroom, which was very recently fixed up and painted. My wife doesn’t like the shade of bright white that the contractors used to cover up their mistakes. So we, rather she, selected a nice pinky-beigey color that I’ll slap on the walls as soon as I properly fix up some of the drywall goofs I mentioned. Then we’ll go on the new shower curtain, floor covering and matching accessory search that all of us men love so much. Also this week I need to get started on the spring yard clean-up task. Last year I successfully postponed that job until late September but I don’t think I can get away with that again. Maybe if I plead a fear of re-injuring my shoulder I can get a reprieve. That might not fly since I’ve been milking that for over three months now.

I should explain that we didn’t really live the high life this past weekend in the sense of acting like a corporate bandit or high government official. We did stay in a decent motel and we did have a couple of very nice dinners in restaurants. The dinners were nice enough to kick the old blood sugar up into un-wanted territory so they really were quite good. But quite a bit of our time was spent helping our daughter and her fiancé pack for their upcoming move to a larger apartment across town into Maryland. I did my usual fine job of supervising and assembling boxes. As much as I strive to do a good job on those very necessary activities I sometimes feel that my wife and daughter, and now my future son-in-law, don’t really appreciate my efforts. That’s probably that “loneliness at the top” feeling recurring. I used to have that feeling when I was a manager earning money. Now I have that feeling and I’m not even getting paid.

This morning I had an appointment with my eye doctor. My vision has been slipping a bit so it was time for a check up and now that I’m dealing with the blood sugar problem it’s even more important to keep an eye on my eyes. So I had all the “can you see this now” stuff and the glaucoma test and the shining bright lights into my pupils to see if my eyeballs are still connected to my brain. It seems like every time I go for an eye exam there’s some new piece of really cool high-tech equipment used. This time I had something done called “fundus photographs”. There’s a device with a camera hooked to it that points into your eye and flashes a really bright light. Before the picture is taken the doctor puts some kind of acidy drops in each eye to open up the pupils so that they’re the same size as when you did all those drugs all those years ago. The camera thing is hooked to a computer that picks up the image of the inside of the eyeball. Then some kind of “photo shop” software program tints the image different colors so the eye doctor can check for different kinds of problems like bleeding, retinal detachment or macular degeneration. It is way cool. I asked the doctor if he ever saw any goldfish floating around in there like you used to see in old cartoons. But he was too young to get the reference and was not amused. You’ll all be glad to know that after all the tests were done the only change in my vision that was detected can be fixed by some new glasses with lenses only slightly thicker than the Coke bottle bottoms I have now.

This afternoon I had the pleasure of shopping at the local Wal-Mart again. And once again, on a non-holiday Monday afternoon, the store was packed with customers. Sometimes when the place is crowded it’s with lots of senior citizens and moms with little urchins. But today it was a wide cross section of folks. Unemployment must be contributing to the crowd but if they’re unemployed how can they afford to buy all the crap they’re buying? I know I keep getting tele-marketing calls with wild offers of Obama stimulus checks and housing loans and debt reduction schemes so maybe these folks in Wal-Mart are smarter than me and are taking advantage of those offers. That’s why they have so much disposable income and can afford the twelve different giant size bags of potato chips and the big screen TV loaded into their cart.

Well I’d better go take another look at the bathroom painting job and develop a plan. That way when my dear wife gets home I’ll have some progress to report even it’s minimal. And I think my shoulder is acting up anyway so I’d better hold off on the actual repetitive motion of painting for a little while. Back me up on that will you?

Have a fine day.