MY LOUSY WORLD: The holiday and other stuffings

Posted 11/25/14

Thanksgiving entrees: If you’re like me, you’ll wake up Thursday morning at about 10 a.m., pet your dog, splash cold water on your face and scrape the cat hairs from your tongue, desperately eager for the first football game to start.

But …

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MY LOUSY WORLD: The holiday and other stuffings

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This is another of my adult deficit hyperactivity disorder columns, unable to focus on one subject before flitting to another. Forgive me, but I have a lot to say about a bunch of stuff. So without any further au jus: 

Thanksgiving entrees: If you’re like me, you’ll wake up Thursday morning at about 10 a.m., pet your dog, splash cold water on your face and scrape the cat hairs from your tongue, desperately eager for the first football game to start.

But also eager for family fellowship and unspeakably good food, you head to your married brother’s house for more traditional Thanksgiving fare. But before rushing out the door because you’re late again, you’ll call in a small wager on the 2 o’clock Dallas game while watching one more play of the thrilling Bears-Lions skirmish.

Upon arrival, you see all the cars and wish they hadn’t invited so many, making it harder to check the TV for scores. The seductive smells overwhelm you and you think, “Come on already, let’s eat!”

The game is temporarily forgotten, replaced by the priority of seizing one of the drumsticks, but soon you’re making another unnecessary bathroom trip so you can sneak another peek at the score. And then WHAM — it hits you: You suddenly remember what this holiday is truly about. In your self-centered haste, you’ve forgotten to give thanks for football, and that there are now three Thanksgiving games instead of two.

It humbles one to think there are poor people in Third World countries that don’t even get cable. Let’s not take it for granted, lest we lose it.

Finally back home alone, you’ll kick newspapers off the couch, clearing space to stretch out and belch unashamedly while watching the grand finale: the Super Bowl champion Seahawks versus the always-dangerous 49ers.

“This one might just go to overtime,” you predict just before falling asleep and waking up to an infomercial on the screen and your hand in the spittoon.

But that’s just me. Maybe your Thanksgivings is nothing like mine. And that’s OK. It doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy it and think of plenty of your own blessings to give thanks for.  

• Two things to never discussion: Religion and politics: I just pray to God Obama finds some hidden wisdom before it’s too late and the first missiles starting the Battle of Armageddon are launched. I truly tried, but I can defend the man no longer!

• Coulda, shoulda: I should have been a highly paid product development executive instead of a dumb ol’ roofer. Marketing is everything, and I just switched from my lifelong toothpaste love, Crest, to Colgate. Why? The cap; it’s attached to the tube. No more losing the cap and slowly squeezing out toothpaste resembling grade school paste.  

• Pathetic product placement: I can’t wait to use up the last 4 rolls of the 8-pack of single-ply toilet paper I tragically bought by mistake recently. I detest one-ply; it should be “wiped” from the face of the earth. I’m far from frugal, and if it weren’t for the fact I work seldom and sporadically, I’d simply toss it in the garbage, (shredding it first so as not to perpetuate this one-ply horror on some innocent dumpster-diver). No, I’ll use it up, but I’m certainly eating all I can stuff into my yap to speed up the process!

• Self-lies I fall for every time: I should never, ever get the half gallon of ice cream out of the freezer if I don’t intend on eating the entire thing at one setting. It’s impossible not to, but being painfully aware I’m 60 now, Simvastatin is not a miracle worker, and the plethora of obits lately for men younger than me succumbing to heart attacks, I’m giving it up altogether.

The quarts I mean; I’ll go back to buying pints.

• And if that don’t kill ya: Like all virile men my age, I fear prostate cancer.

A sound night’s sleep has become impossible since I get up nearly every hour to relieve myself; (by that I mean “water my duck,” “see a man about a horse, or “take a whiz”). I no sooner get back to bed when I wake up with my back teeth floating … literally.

My old baseball buddy Ronnie Crosby was back in town recently for his dear mother Bernadien’s funeral. He’s been getting treatments for prostate cancer, so I decided to pick his prostate for advice.

He begged me to get a PSA test, but thankfully said my symptoms sound more like simply an enlarged prostate. Enlarged? At the rate I’m waking up, it must be the size of an accordion!

I had much more to say, but I’m out of space. There, that’s something you can be thankful for, eh?

P.S. Take the Lions minus the points.

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