My wife and youngest daughter just spent a week in Denver visiting family and hiking in the mountains as a summer vacation. I spent a week home alone with my 2 college-age children and 2 geriatric dogs as my summer vacation. Guess who drew the short straw on that one? But I tried to make the best of it, and although I am not sure if I made the “best” of it, I think I at least made the “better” of it. Here’s how …
During the week, I attended one political meeting, started eating weeds (blog post coming!), ate out 4 times, brought food in twice, assembled the remaining shards of our family and celebrated my youngest son’s birthday (one of the college-agers still at home), saw friends, and went to see 3 sets of live music (2 outdoors), one of which featured my latest song collaboration called Black & Blue.
That was fun. The waiter who walked in front of the camera at the end was our waiter. Can you guess if he got an extra generous tip?
I also exercised every day, sometimes twice a day. Nothing serious, just walks and some swims. I calculated 100 laps in my 16′ diameter pool is almost 1/3 of a mile. I didn’t say I swam 100 laps, but I certainly calculated the distance. Despite eating out and bringing food in, I lost a total of 4 pounds. I could stand to lose a few more. I wonder if my wife and daughter would like to take another vacation before school starts?
Our 13 and 15 year old dogs survived despite me having to follow this medication schedule for them.
With a medication schedule like that for them, I needed a medication schedule for myself to get over the anxiety of having to follow their schedule.
When I collected my wife and daughter from the airport, my wife could not hear anything, had clogged sinuses, had a sore throat and was low-talking all the way home since she couldn’t hear anything and wasn’t sure how loud she was speaking, so she didn’t want to be yelling. One night back in Chicagoland with the windows open on a cool, low humidity summer night, and she is back to her old self. Chicago > Denver, like I had to even write that.
My wife and daughter did not return empty-handed. They brought me home some Rocky Mountain rocks for my pond, and also brought home these …
I am not sure what they are, which end is up, and why they are not fully painted. I also don’t care. I respect anyone who would purchase something so large and unidentifiable to carry-on an airplane.
I do care that my wife and daughter returned home safe and sound. Welcome back. What am I writing? Like my wife really reads this nonsense.
Jim Flanigan Looks at the World 