The Resident Rodent

I was at the computer. It was late and suddenly there was a commotion in the kitchen and, like every head of a multiple member family, I did a fast head check. Three mutts sleeping on the carpet in the hall, two missing. And since I had to get another cup of coffee anyway, I went to the kitchen to check.
It was not the two missing mutts however. They were schnoozing on the couch
it was the resident rodent who brazenly had chewed a hole in a new bag of doggie biscuits that I had left on the kitchen counter and had noisily been dragging biscuits to its lair.
And the worthless mutts, you might ask, what were they doing?
Being worthless is what they were doing. This was not a quiet operation, gnawing and hauling biscuits.
And when I heard some noise in the oven and opened the door, there was the culprit, not about to give up on the biscuit he had worked so hard for.
And now I know. It is not a mouse, it is a rat, but fortunately not of the slithery kind. My resident rat is light brown, fluffy and round ( no wonder, with all the doggie biscuits and other missing items ) and more a Disney type rodent, sort of hamster like and obviously not going away, and since the mutts don't seem to care, and I cannot kill it, we had better come to some arrangement. So.... NO hanky panky. I can, maybe, deal with this one, but a whole family...
NO WAY.
Now the problem remains, how do I explain this to the rodent ?

Riding The Bus.

Years ago, when I first started to ride the buses here in PV, I oftentimes found myself the only gringo on the bus, a lone blue-eye amidst a sea of black hair and dark eyes. And it seemed, in those days, that I was a lot taller than the average Mexican bus-rider.
Now, things are different; not only because I live in an other part of town, but riding the buses has been discovered by frugal tourists.
So now when I bus it, I am likely to share the bus with a horde of elderly gringos and even more so at this time, as now is the time for the Snowbirds to land. Snowbirds are folks who come here to warm up from the winter weather where ever they live. I believe the unofficial opening date is Jan. 15, so they are here and they have gotten the obligatory tan ( or burn ) and are ready for adventures. On the bus.
And I am fascinated by these old geezers with their females supported by viking bras and girdle like undies, encased in matching tops and shorts and, almost to a one, some kind of hat. And the protector, the male, released from the drudgery of suits and ties and polished shoes, are very often in wild print shirts stretched over big bellies, baggy shorts and tennis shoes and socks, showing legs that mostly should have remained hidden.
So there they are and I stare at them and feel superior till the skies open up and a thunderous voice yells at me:
Listen up, you bum.
You are one of them.
And I suddenly see the truth. I am no different than they, only in denial.
And then my joints start to ache and my back hurts and I wonder if I will get a cold from the open window, and did I remember to pee before I started this journey and .............
it is not so much fun when what you look at is like a mirror.
I should go back and ride the buses full of Mexicans.

Hand Ball

This is a picture from a Danish newspaper to-day.
The match is between Montenegro and Denmark
( Denmark won ) but I think the Montenegron (!) in black, misunderstood the idea of hand ball.
Three cheers for sports.

No More Cold

No More, I said to myself, no more blogs about being cold.
What, I said to myself, does a little cold matter. A bit of frostbite, maybe. A few fingers and toes missing, maybe.
But then what use are they anyway, I wondered. The fingers one can use to pick one's nose, or give someone else "the finger", or show off the engagement and/or wedding ring to all the suffering friends who do not have one and many other things and, all right, they are useful, but hey, Readers Digest is full of heart warming stories about people who learned to live without.
So why not me, I wondered.
I shan't mind reading about the courageous people who go through life being cold and loosing fingers and toes, so long as I just have to read about it.
Reality is different, and I do not like it one little bit.
But, as I said, this is the last time I complain. Next time I probably won't have enough fingers to type with anyway. ( I use two, maybe three when things are really jumping )
So, this is the last blog about me being cold.
Besides, it was a lovely warm day.

Senior Moments

Senility is setting in, only we do not refer to this problem, in this PC world, as senility, nor as Alzheimer's, but gently as "senior moments". At least I do, but then I am seriously involved.
To combat this scourge, I make copious notes.
I keep a note pad next to the computer and one on the dining table. The two places I do most of my thinking ( maybe I should extend to one in the bathroom as well .....)
No matter.
But the trouble arises when, on reading these notes, I have no idea what I meant to notate.
To wit.
One page would have entries like this:
Annemarie----Movies---The King Is Alive...The Intended....( Den Du Frygter )

Waist....40----41

Ian Rankin > John Rebus ( Exit Music )

Tableful..> pl.? table(s)ful

James and Kathy...Vacation ? price...Apr.3 to 13-14

Now most of these, being fairly recent, make sense. But if I go back a few pages, I really don't understand the notes anymore.
So why, you might wonder, do I bother.
well, it makes sense when I make the notes and maybe, just maybe, should I need some info later, I can find it on some old page. Or not. At least I tried..........when I remembered.
Getting old is so much fun.
NOT.

Stymied

I love words.
To-day, in an article about the glitz less Golden Globe Awards, I came across the word
tablefuls
and my private little alarm bells went off.
Webster's will show it in its singular form, tableful, but no information on the plural.
Here is my conundrum; does it not make more sense to follow the form of say surgeon general, which in plural is surgeons general. After all the meaning of the word is full table or in plural, full tables, therefore the word, I think, should be
tablesful.
And does anyone except for this person really give a hoot ?
And should this person care ?
YES.
Because I love words and because there is a enough coarsening of the language going on.
And besides, it gives me something to do.

cold

I know, I know.
You are all going to think I am crazy, but these days I am cold.
I get up in the morning and put on sweat shirt and sweat pants pants before I venture out with the worthless mutts.
And still I am cold.
It might be an uncomfortable combination of old age and thin blood but
the result is the same.
Even the worthless mutts suffer.
The other morning I noticed that they all were absent and after a search of the house I found them on the top terrace, huddled in a strip of sun to get warm.
Have I been here too long? Has my blood thinned out? Am I crazy?
Whatever.....
Now the sun has set and the cold, like some Science-Fiction monster, is slithering in to my house. Time for the sweats.
And the cheap wine.

Nerds vs. Luddites

My digital camera decided to be cranky and kept telling me that the memory card was full and therefore it was not able to function.
The problem was that I did not have a memory card. At all.
My DVD player got cranky as well and kept signaling NO DISC even though I had just seen it swallow one, and therefore it claimed it could not play.
So now, thanks to James and Kathy, I have a memory card and a new DVD player.
Here is where it becomes interesting, for I know very little about formatting memory cards and installing DVD players.
I have the instruction booklets, but I always feel that the booklets and I speak different languages ( in the case of the DVD it is true, it is in Spanish ) and I fear that the Luddite in me will make things go to pieces and explode and otherwise not function.
I am desperately looking for my inner Nerd. He must be there somewhere. Please.
Back to the instruction booklets.