thx, big bros

Happy B-Day Schlitzy! Stay home!

Im back to work Wednesday, though. So, Ill be venturing out

Where are you now?? The fears are coming back to me once again!

I fear nothing, Allah is with me!

Happy birthday, Schlitzy.

Mr. Baseball and I graduated from high school the same year. I was seventeen, which seems impossible now. Folks from high school have already planned our 50th reunion, and, damn, I hope to make it until then.

Almost done with grading that's due Wednesday. Most of the students who have remained are doing well enough. It's been a strange semester, and I'm glad it's over.

Normally, I'd be thinking about what to do during the summer, but it looks like I'll be preparing to teach remotely in the fall. Ah, well.

The daughter of my best friend from high school just graduated with her degree in Veterinary medicine, so a bunch of us drove by her house to congratulate her from a safe distance. She's a great kid who survived leukemia her senior year in college, took a year off, and then got her degree from NC State. She was delighted to see everyone, and she dressed in her robe. Not a typical graduation but a memorable one.

My liquor bill has Tripled!

I drank bourbon tonight because we had an informal online meeting. I still can't drink alone.

thats drinking alone.

i cant ever remember drinking alone. even a beer without being in a bar or someplace.

You will have to excuse my overt sentimentality, perhaps some self-indulgence, so read if you want. If not, not.


I want to tell you a story about Mary (Mary Ellen to most who knew her). She had been at a doctor’s appointment in Boston and was driving home. Somewhere near Faulkner Hospital, she saw a car overturned. No one had stopped. Mary just couldn’t drive by. She ran to the car, saw smoke, and smelled gas. In the back seat, two small children were hanging from their car seats. She slid in on her back, cut the two children out of their harnesses, carried both of them, and buckled them in the back seat of her car. She gave them lollipops to quiet them. (Later, should would tell me that they weren’t old enough to have lollipops, but she was desperate to calm them.)


Still no one else had stopped. She had seen the mother in the front seat bleeding, so she grabbed a blanket from the trunk, broke out the driver’s side window that had been partially shattered in the crash, and wriggled in on her back. The mother had severed her brachial artery in the crash, and blood spurted everywhere. Mary held pressure until an ambulance arrived along with the police. They told her she had saved the woman’s life. When they asked for her name, she declined to give it.

She was calm when she told me about what had happened. But she was pissed. Pissed that no one else had stopped during the entire time. She knew many must have witnessed her struggling.

At this time in her life, she had already undergone a quadruple bypass, a couple femoral popliteal bypasses, ulnar nerve transpositions, and who knows what else (well, I do). Soon she would spend the remainder of her life on dialysis.


One more quick story: On one of the nights she was hospitalized, she heard someone panicked, yelling from across the hall. No staff responded, so Mary went over to see what was wrong. A man well over three hundred pounds had half fallen out of bed. She propped herself underneath him to keep him from falling until nurses arrived. I just shook my head when she told me. I had grown used to her ways.


One day, a couple years ago, my granddaughter Ellen Marie (she was, of course, named after Mary Ellen) and I were walking somewhere, and Ellen decided we should go a certain way. I knew it was the wrong way, but I let her lead. After walking a bit, Ellen said, “Grandpa, I think that was a bad decision.”

“That’s okay, Ellen, we all make bad decisions, but sometimes we make good ones.”

“What’s the best decision you ever made, Grandpa?”

It’s best to be honest with children. “Accepting the love of the grandmother you never got to meet, Ellen.”


You accept what’s given and offered. You accept it all.


Today, May 13th, marks 15 years since Mary’s death. And there are days when I can still hear her calling out to me, “Hey, ****head!” I think it was a pet name.

My is with you tonight.

Great story, John. I know it doesn't feel like it since she is no longer with you, but you are one lucky SOB.

I know, Dom. Thanks.

What a remarkable woman. Did she have medical training?

She did work as a CNA for a time, so a little.

John, great story. Mary sounds like a great person.

My most sincere condolences to you.

I have to admit, kinda teared me up, which is pretty unusual. Thank you for sharing.

As I read your account, I was asking myself what I would be able to do in the same situation and I realized that all my Red Cross certifications were over 50 years old, so I guess the answer is not much. Again, a remarkable woman.

She was remarkable, kind and generous, invariably right about most things, and determined. Irish through and through.

God is on vacation. This explains a great deal about 2020. Now that you know, make the proper adjustments.

This has been a public service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled life.

Mary

They all can't be on vacation, can they? Who signed their leave requests? I didn't.

Root beer. When my brother was driving me to hospital I realised that I was extremely thirsty. I asked if he had got any water, he said that the only thing he had was root beer. I took a bottle and it quenched my thirst. When I got home I put the remainder of the bottle into the fridge. I tried to drink some a few hours later. J H Christ, do the people who drink this stuff swallow the disinfectant you are given after a dental examination?

Info request: Are there any sneakerhead or sneaker collector's forums comparable to 2+2? Place where they get together and discuss various aspects of their hobby? There's some stuff on reddit and some sites pimping goods, but I haven't been able to find anything else.

was it real root beer soda or like almost all sodas, corn syrup and sodium benozate and artificial flavorings..

i got into the habit and your eyes will open if you read every single label on anything in a package before you eat it.