You can’t turn back the clock. But you can wind it up again. – Bonnie Prudden
Wife and little dog been up since OH!-six-hundred.
Take blood pressure pill.
Pour first cup of coffee, hazelnut cream.
Figure fun flavors start the day better.
Turn on Morning Joe, discussion of Romney’s outstanding Presidential debate performance.
Mitt looks, so, you know, handsome and silvery, Presidential…
A spectacle I turned off halfway through.
Hard to argue with the guy, who denies he said
what he’s been saying the last year or two.
He will cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires.
We all know it.
Not to mention Big Bird deserves our support.
***
Today Romney says he didn’t really mean
what he was caught on tape saying
when he thought no one would find out about it.
Forty-seven percent of Americans no longer freeloaders.
Imagine their relief?
No pun intended.
Is he telling the truth now
or was he telling the truth before?
Before he got caught.
***
Make the bed.
***
Start this report.
Decided I’d try to do what my friend sometimes does, simply to talk about the day.
0848. Both dogs sound asleep. Head back to recliner.
A second cup of coffee and NetFlix DVD of 2003 Tour de France.
Still researching my article In Defense of Lance Armstrong.
Like to watch video/read a book/magazine about biking before I head out for my daily ride.
Build a bowl of blueberry yogurt, sliced almonds and granola.
Both dogs awake when they hear – from the other end of the house –
my teaspoon hit the bottom of dish, which they both love to lick clean.
Stretch/isometrics/barbells.
Head out the door, put on helmet and climb on bike.
Back home ninety minutes later.
So exhausted, but not as exhausted as yesterday.
Too tired to eat right away.
Watch rest of DVD of Tour de France.
Stage 9, Beloki crashes going downhill, going over fifty mph.
Lance on his wheel.
Nowhere else to go,
Armstrong heads cross-country, hops off bike to climb the hill, remount and rejoin the chase.
Juiced or not, you gotta be a great bike handler to make that move.
Also impressive, Tyler Hamilton with a broken collarbone refuses to quit.
I feel like a pussy.
This shit is tough enough when you’re feeling good.
Lunch is left-over boneless ribs with left-over white rice.
Better than prison food. Forgot the cilantro.
Finish my chores.
Listening to political shows, we learn the jobless rate has dropped to 7.8%,
the best labor news since January 2009.
Then an idiotic statement by the unfortunately-named Jack Welch
– former head of GE and no relation –
who suggests Obama’s people have cooked the numbers to recover from poor debate performance.
When the unemployment numbers were going up, nobody doubted them.
***
Answer more mail.
Start back to work on my book, tentatively titled When Running Was Young & So Were We.
Today an interview I did twenty-seven years ago with Joan Benoit,
winner of the first Olympic women’s marathon in 1984.
Special lady and a great, great athlete. (She deserves two greats.)
***
Hear my wife’s car pull into the driveway
and I rush out to greet her.
She’s a government worker, hasn’t had a raise in six years,
but has added three titles to her responsibilities.
Like many women, she can multi-task,
but she can’t be in three places at the same time.
I goose her up the stairs.
You can see a transformation in her mood and energy as she changes into a Vera Wang pajama set.
I hand her a stiff vodka tonic and she falls into her own recliner.
We watch The Young & The Restless.
Actually, she watches while I read Sports Illustrated and the daily paper.
She’s watched this particular soap opera for some 25 years
like mind candy, dissipate the day’s abuse.
***
We call my mother, which we do almost every day,
every day, every goddamn day,
just to let the old girl know we are thinking of her.
The oven is heating.
Fridays are pizza night…tonight it’s California Kitchen’s barbecue chicken.
As we eat, we watch House Hunters,
deciding which vacation homes we’d buy with a million dollar budget.
Then we get serious.
Tonight it’s Homeland on Showtime – everything we watch is recorded
because as an ex-Mad Man and a sentient adult male, I loathe commercials.
Mrs. Sweetie already starting to doze off; after all, it is 8:30 p.m.
She goes to bed and the dogs go with her.
***
There is little to watch on TV, so I turn on a Baltimore Oriole/Texas Ranger game.
Couldn’t care less about a game.
I study sports because they teach me so much.
Or they remind me of lessons already learned.
Guess I’ll go to bed early and read more about biking, my newest obsession, my latest passion.
Passion seems to be an infusion, the real fountain of youth.
Told my bike guy I was scared of crashing.
He responded with, we’re all scared of crashing.
Got to thinking about that…
We’re all scared of crashing.
Ain’t that the damn truth.
My homies at The Brothers Barber Shoppe.
Yesterday was a more exciting day.
Got a haircut, went grocery shopping and visited my doctor.
I go to a black barber shop, lot of fun.
Friday the most fun day there.
Young brothers get ready to chase the shorties on the weekend and the ministers prepare to preach The Message.
Friday they gather.
Often, I am the only white face in the place.
And I am only man looks like he actually needs a haircut.
Those guys roll tight.
Shop at Publix, where I am the master of BOGO, Buy One Get One free.
Remember to get fresh clump of cilantro.
For 99 cents, you can kick up every meal and salad for a week.
***
Oh, yeah, yesterday was more exciting for sure.
Got a flu shot.
Which was free, thanks to ObamaCare,
My young Pakistani doctor analyzed a recent, comprehensive blood test.
Turns out I’ll live.
And I am in better shape than he is.
Epilogue.
Romney lost.
Lance confessed over and over again.
The dogs died, we got new dogs.
My book came out right before my mother died.
Wife retired.
I stopped biking after my last crash.
I am old.
Do I really want an angry black man with a razor at my throat?
My barber has ten kids.
He’s gotta be angry about something.
I refuse to get a haircut during a pandemic.
And civil unrest.