The Bloggy Blogface!

   A few weeks ago, the last of my father's counter top appliances went kaput. It was an unnecessarily large microwave. I used it from time to time to heat up frozen dinners for him, or to reheat my own leftovers. He used it a whole lot more than I ever did, specifically to reheat coffee. He'll brew his little hotel-sized pot of coffee every morning around six-thirty, pour it into a cup, place a lid on it, then let it sit on the kitchen table. About two hours later I'm up and moving around, and that cup is still on the table. He'll reheat it before 9:30, then leave it covered on the table. Sometimes he will reheat it two or three times, thirty seconds to a minute each, in the span of an hour. I don't know what the proper temperature he desires for his coffee, but most of the time, whatever it is, is not it. So he puts a lid on it and just...walks away.  My parents moved into this apartment fifteen years ago. I was living three time zones away at the time, unable to ...

   I recently had to help my father organize the taxes for the past two years. Well, I did most of it, because I don't think he had to for himself in quite some time. My mother took care of it, at least according to her handwriting on most of the paperwork. And maybe my aunt helped out some as well. She was more of the math whiz than any of us.  When I say organize, I use that term loosely. I don't know what the hell I'm doing with their taxes.  I've never even seen their taxes until this past year. I'd say everything's secretive with things in this family but we're talking about taxes here. Not so much secretive as boring.  For many years, my parents had their taxes done by a certified public accounting firm downtown. They're located in an office building they share with a few other businesses, such as law firms and a yoga place. The inside has quite a 1980's-90's industrial feel to it. Lots of steel doors, drop ceiling hallways. Very inviting....

    My mother had a poster of Tom Selleck in her closet. She was in her late 30's to early 40's at the time. Selleck was holding a volleyball in one hand, with his opposite elbow draped over a net, with some stamp mentioning the 1984 United States Olympic men's volleyball team, who happened to win the gold medal that year. Selleck was not on the team, in part due to the fact he was at the peak of his Magnum P.I. acting fame (even though he's 6'4" but played basketball/baseball at Southern Cal. I had to look ). My mother loved watching that show. She would have never admit to it, but I'm sure she had a big crush on him. Not many grownup parents have posters of other grownups, who are not their spouse, in the closet one shared with said spouse. She also had some old Star Wars posters in there, to maybe balance the mood whenever she went in there to pick out some work attire in the weekday mornings.  She had her other shows, too. Murder She Wrote was one. T...

    The last time I went bowling, I was a moody jerk. This is according to various sources whom I bowled with that evening. I don't disagree with them. Every time I have bowled as an adult, I seem to get noticeably frustrated with myself. Not so much because I suck (I do, like many of us), but because I used to be good. Good, damnit! I won trophies as a kid. TROPHIES. I had it man, I really did.  But, then I stopped bowling. Aged out of the youth league and just quit bowling altogether.  Fast forward a couple decades later, my bowling game is both depressing and predictable. I will always start out strong, then get progressively worse each game. First game I'll get a few strikes and finish maybe with a 150. Next game less strikes and maybe a score of 96. Final game I'll get zero strikes, maybe one spare and finish with a 72. And no, this isn't because the pitchers of beer we're sharing start kicking in. There's something deeper going on here. Maybe.  I recently...

  In all fairness, I've just stopped counting the years. I mean, I know how old I am today, sure. I just don't care to tell anyone. And there's nothing wrong with this approach, really. I'm not lying on any application forms, nor any other random documents that ask for my date of birth. Those who need to know, know. And that should be good enough, right? A friend recently asked if I knew what time I was born. For some reason I thought this was listed on birth certificates, but they are not - at least not back then at this particular hospital. I remember my mother saying sometime in the very early hours overnight, to perhaps sometime at dawn. I also remember her saying I was supposed to be born on the 16th. That must have been pretty annoying for her. Imagine hoping to get some rest overnight and then BOOM, it's time. Guess I needed an extra day's nap in there? Who knows. I do share a birthday with a handful of celebrities and great people. Michelle Obama, Jim Ca...

 In the February tundra that is upstate New York, in a hospital room some eleven-hundred plus miles away from me, a doctor named Oleg signed off on my mother’s death certificate. She had been in and out of the hospital for a couple months, after falling repeatedly at the apartment. My father had to call 911 a few times to help get her to the emergency room, and after the third or fourth time falling they just kept her there. At some point, she broke her hip. Then she may (or may not have?) caught COVID in the hospital. She wasn’t vaccinated. There was talk of sending her back home (potentially with COVID) which sounded rather suspect coming from medical professionals. Things at home seemed rather unclear about hospice care, so sending her back with a serious pandemic diagnosis didn’t seem like a great idea. My father is vaccinated, but would still have needed to come into close contact with her constantly if she went home. That didn’t end up needing to happen.  I flew to Alban...