On a lighter note ...

Miss Kyndall Grace Bosley thinks that being tossed into the water is a great deal of fun and will keep asking for more until Grammas arms ache!

Why is like whine

Here is my question. Why am I able to so successfully tell myself how to behave but equally unsuccessful at following my own instructions?

I think I am coming down with OCD in my dotage.

I tell myself: your office is freezing cold and it makes you miserable but it is almost August and you'll have a nice new boss in January if you can just shut up, suffer and survive. A few hours later I have my hand on my purse ready to stuff it all and walk out. Now we know I can't afford to be unemployed. We know that the labor market in a town of 7000 people is never great. But, I'm ready to leave.

Next: that guy, the one that doesn't want me anymore oh, but he keeps "in touch" ... e-mails, an occasional phone call. I tell myself; just forget about him, disregard e-mail, don't answer the phone, for goodness sake don't send e-mails and don't call him. Do not, under any circumstances go to a softball game hoping to see him. Do none of that stuff. What, are you stupid?
And then, not only do I e-mail, but I go back from time to time to re-read what I e-mailed.

I'm telling you, its OCD. This is very disturbing behavior for a person who never did anything repetitive or compulsive for the first 68 or so years on the planet. And now I'm compulsive, what causes this?

I read a suggestion about telling yourself several good things regarding the day before you even get out of bed. I have so much to be thankful for, and I am thankful. My family is doing very well, employed, educated, enjoying life and each other. My health is extraordinarily good. At water aerobics the other night our young (17) lifeguard/cheerleader/instructor just went nuts when some of us were telling our age ... she kept screaming at me ... "I don't believe you are 70 years old, really you don't look that old."

I have the best group of friends beginning with extended family members from Florida to Michigan to Washington, with whom I now keep up better than ever before thanks to the internet (Facebook). I have friends from school days in Wisconsin, school days in Texas, radio stations in both places, ad agencies and my friends at Monument. I have new friends, found since I retired to this part of Texas, found at each of the wonderful Episcopal churches that have welcomed me over the years, Ascension, Christ Church Cathedral, St Peter's in Brenham and dear St. Francis in College Station. The Houston radio community is just crazy about keeping in touch with reunion lunches, extemporaneous parties, and of course, funerals.

There is no good reason for me to be losing my mind ... so why is it going?

Posthumous

This has been a tough year for funerals and its only July.

We found out tonight that Paul Williams will be inducted, posthumously, into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame. It would have meant so much to him to have been able to stand up and receive the honor in person. He deserves it. He was long a loyal Texas radio veteran. He did it until the very day he died. We didn't get to the event last year because of a ticket snafu but we had attended others including one of the first when my first radio boss, Bill Weaver, was inducted in a ceremony that took many hours to complete. The ceremony will be in the Houston area in the fall. I hope Kathy will be able to attend.

Marty Ambrose will be on the inductee list as well. His sweet wife will probably accept. Marty was the inventor of radio traffic reporting in Houston ... forty plus years of it. He was still on the air after being diagnosed with ALS in the Spring. His funeral was just last week.

This week I went to Ken Grant's funeral. He was already in the Hall of Fame. Can you imagine going to work at Houston radio station in 1949, before anyone had ever thought of rock and roll or top forty radio, and remaining at that station (those stations, KNUZ and KQUE) until they ceased existence in 1997. Forty eight years of remarkable change in the broadcast world, from acetate to blue boxes to cartridges and CD's. Ken was the kindest man, the cleverest man, and he survived through all those changes. It was Parkinsons that laid him low just after moving to North Carolina to be near his daughter, Terry.

All of this serves to remind me how important it is to celebrate the great and special people that we know while they are standing here before us.

One last posthumous note. Many years ago, after a gig by his then wife, Jeannie Seely, Hank Cochran, the Yanceys, and Paul and I, went out to dinner at the San Jacinto Inn. After dinner we came back to our house for whatever we could find for nightcaps and to listen to them play and sing some more. Now, Hank wrote several monster hits, "Make the World Go Away", etc., but his own biggest selling recording was of a song he didn't write. That night he sang it to me,
"Sally Was a Good Old Girl." I've met a lot of famous musicians in all those years in radio but that is the only time one of them sang their hit to me. Hank died this week, too, at 74.

I'm telling you ... it is becoming a posthumous life.

The Un-Bucket List

Must be my summer of buckets. Here's the new plan. Things I never want to do, either again, or ever.

Not going to drink anymore chocolate malts. Loved them and ordered them for many years but I think we've come to a parting of the ways. The one I got at Braum's Ice Cream Parlor in Hillsboro on the way home yesterday took about twenty minutes to go from yummy drinking to excruciating stomach cramps, etc.

Apparently seventy year old digestion systems are unlike the seventeen year old model and I must learn to adjust accordingly.

I never again want to agree to do something just because I will feel like a lazy guilty slob if I say no. There's a "volunteer position" opening soon among my favorite group of Episcopalians. In any other decade I would volunteer. Now I won't. It would require several things from me that I no longer choose to give. For one, it would probably take repeated phone calls. I don't make repeated phone calls any more. It would also hang over my head as a monthly chore with a firm deadline and dependent upon other people to complete. Nope, not going to sign up for that.

I have already stopped buying many of the things that I am supposed to "not live without" ...

Baby Bucket List

A few years back I started a Serious Bucket List. Big mistake. There were two problems with it. One was that most of the items were expensive places I wanted to see. The other was a wish to Dance One More Time with My High School "Sweetheart."

In case you haven't heard, I almost got that one. We reconnected on the internet. He lived in Baja, for reasons we shan't mention here, and he invited me to visit. I bought the ticket and enroute to the airport he called to say he was in the VA hospital in LaJolla, having had a heart attack. I went to see him anyway. We talked for three days in his hospital room. I toured the LaJolla, Delmar, Torrey Pines area of California and ate a lot of fish tacos. There were some memorable moments and interestingly different versions of our young romance. He even got a pass from the hospital long enough to go up the coast for lunch and take me to the San Diego airport. We did not dance.

New plan: Mini-Buckets. Now I do spur of the moment, gosh I always wanted to see that, hear them, try that, little buckets. Its a better way for me.

A few weeks ago I saw that the Marshall Tucker Band would be appearing at Gruene Hall. Now, I really only knew a couple of their "hits" but I loved "Heard it in a Love Song" and thought I needed to hear it in person. Only a couple of the "originals" are still in the band. I had never heard a concert at Gruene Hall, only walked through one afternoon to look at the pictures on the wall. Daughter Laura and her husband agreed to accompany me. It was a lovely warm May evening. The place was packed, mostly a bit younger than me, definite yuppie biker influence, and the opening act was unknown and very loud. But the Marshall Tucker Band was wonderful! I treasure the memory of standing with a dance hall full of people, hearing an amazing re-creation of the big hit, and singing along with everybody else. Mini bucket bazingo!

Then, looking for some more music to enjoy, friend in South Texas had found a young Dutch fellow who is a rising star in, of all things, conjunto music. (For any uninitiated, it is accordion based, polka-ish, Tex Mex) And this youthful Dutch group was performing at a three day festival in Rosedale Park in San Antonio. I went to the Saturday show, a different conjunto band every hour on a breezy hilltop within view of the beautiful Our Lady of the Lake campus.








More darn fun, happy people, great music and great variety. Oh, and did I mention the food? The best taquito plate I ever encountered. Looking at the picture I took of it makes my mouth water.

Another winner in the mini-bucket department.

The Serenity Prayer

Various members of my family are familiar with the Serenity Prayer for various reasons. Personally, I have appropriated it for my own use.

You all know it: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
The courage to change the things I can and
the wisdom to know the difference.

I have assigned the three parts ..
things I cannot change = other people ...
courage to change = my own self ...
wisdom = God.

I am really rolling with the first and third but I struggle mightily trying to change my self.

Here's how it goes. The other person does not want me. I have the wisdom to recognize that fact.

Now my question is: where do I get the courage (or whatever) to come to grips with my part ... just get over it. Quit thinking about him. Get over expecting the phone to ring, the text to appear or an e-mail asking for another try. Just get over it.

One excuse is that I spend an outrageous amount of time by myself, alone. Friends and family have suggested that I may "overthink" things! Another is that I have virtually no experience in boy/girl junk. Thirty years without a significant other ... actually thirty years without a date ... is poor training for handling interpersonal relationships.

Now, did I avoid such on purpose for all that time? I don't think so. I really believe there wasn't anyone out there ... and I guess there really wasn't. Oh, and there still isn't. Sadder still, even if there was, I want the one that got away, went away, was never really here.

Back in my "day" it was bandied about that there was "someone for everyone" ... obviously I made erroneous choices early on and the bottom line appears to be that there really isn't anyone for me. Durn. I thought it sounded good.

When I wished for a view of what it would be like to be "falling down stupid,"" crazy about" and "head over heels," it never occurred to me that I would a) get it, b) like it and c) find out that it was a very temporary situation.

So, now I am wishing for a partial lobotomy to forget all that I learned! Helps me understand why people turn to booze, pills and other mind numbing devices. I don't even have the courage for that!

And don't suggest "counseling" ... the last one I went to thought I was rational!

I thought about quitting my job today ...

I almost always do on Social Security check day. I look at the amount and wonder if I could learn to live on it.

In the three plus years that I have worked here I have never once heard the words "Good Job, Sally". Maybe I'm not doing a good job. Every year on my anniversary I get a carefully bureaucratically worded review ringing with faint praise which concludes with a munificent fifty cent an hour raise.

Now, this is a not a cheerful man. He does not throw compliments around. He is normally accusative, based, he would say, on his many years as a police chief. The fact that he is far more civil to me when our "part-time" employee is present in the offices notwithstanding.

In fact, when I asked today if he wanted me to quit he was quick to point out that if my work was in any way unsatisfactory I would hear about it. Further, he said, if he was displeased with my performance, I would be able to tell. Really? How?

Don't misunderstand. This is a swell job. I am fortunate to have been found for it. Thank you, everyone at St. Peter's who told him he should hire me. I walk to work two blocks and see friends and folks to talk to all the way. The hours are reasonable. And even if there is the occasional twelve or thirteen hour day for a long board meeting, there is an hour of comp time for every hour over eight. I can and do all the tasks assigned and there are very few chores that I absolutely dread. I have even come to terms with dusting and vacuuming every Friday and emptying all the trash. The office is lovely and comfortable, at least until the temperatures get into the high seventies outside and we have to have air conditioning blowing down to the high sixties or low seventies to offset the heat.

I just go through all of these points every month to remind myself how very lucky I am, how grim the job market is, especially if your next birthday is the seventieth, and how little money I have.

Okay, all better now. Hi Ho Hi Ho its off to work I go ......