Author: Rev. Joe Dirt

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I Just Lacked Patience

I spend hardly anytime on Nextdoor.  I actually have their notifications going to an email account I use if I think I might be spammed by a site or business.  Every day or two or three I flip through this account to see if there is anything of interest there, but mainly just to delete all the trash.  Today, however, one notification of a posting on Nextdoor caught my attention.

Sharon RottlerKirkwood Park / Meramec • 17 hr ago

Someone just left me $60 in cash on my front porch with a note that said “mailbox replacement “ . We have been talking about replacing our mailbox, just haven’t gotten around to it. If you left the cash, please let me know who you are and why you felt the need to give us money.?

Some of you, dear cherished readers, may remember a posting of mine, The Things We Notice, on this same channel.  In that posting I touched on several things but one was the replacing of the post on which rides our mailbox.

After reading the Nextdoor posting, I quickly came to the conclusion that I had not been patient enough, that I should have listened to Señora’s encouragement just a little while longer before undertaking the much needed replacement of our mailbox post.  Since I replaced the old post with a new cedar post, since I reused the mailbox that Sarah had painted, since I did the labor myself, the $60 would have covered my costs, and it would have left me enough over for a six-pack of one of the craft beers that I so enjoy.  Ahhh…Grasshopper… patience.

You have to feel for the poster though.  She tossed a softball to all the trolls out there.  Some of the comments were just funny, but a least a couple were down right mean.  Life on line is not for the faint of heart at times.

And so it goes.

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Señora’s Grilled Cheese Secret

One of the ways that Señora spoils me is to make me a grilled cheese sandwich from time to time.  She is especially apt to do this if I am frantically rushing, gathering the necessaries to go to the golf course, or if I am in the the middle of a honey-do project around our abode.

I find her grilled cheese sandwiches especially delectable.  While making a grilled cheese is not an especially challenging culinary chore, when I make one they are never quite as exquisite as  those that Señora creates.  Externally, they look the same, the beautiful deep brown color of bread essentially fried in a vat of butter – and yes I take my cholesterol  pill religiously. The difference is on the inside.  Her sandwiches have a creamy, melted cheese interior with the cheese dripping from the edges.  I can never get mine to do that.

But I recently discovered her secret, she puts the cheese on a plate and pre-softens it in the microwave and then weaves the cheese into a piece of art on the bread before popping the tasty gastronomic treasure into the skillet with more butter.

Yum, yum.

I might be able to recreate her sandwich now, but it would still be lacking that one important ingredient that makes her sandwich so special, TLC.

And so it goes.

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Speechless after that…

I went to the golf course the other day and picked up a game with a twosome on the first tee, two gentlemen around my age. We rocked along for 16 or so holes playing golf and occasionally, occasionally conversing.  Somehow the conversation turned to social media.

I remarked that I was not on any of it currently, and that I had gotten off of Facebook years ago after discovering that I did not  like many of my relatives. At least a big part of that was that many of my relatives had huge problems with my liberal politics and agnostic stance on religion, and I with their conservative politics and evangelic religion.

After hearing my comment about not liking my relatives, one of the gentleman remarked, “I don’t like anyone.”

Well…I did not know quite know what to say after that.  I’m not sure I have ever heard misanthrope so openly avowed.

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I’m Too Sexy…

I found myself in my retirement sleeping in later than I cared to do, giving me a feeling that I had wasted half the day.   To give myself a purpose to rise at a reasonable hour I started setting my Skype Spanish lessons for 0900 hours or thereabouts. Not wanting to look totally like a homeless person on Skype while I am talking to folks in Central and South America, I usually shower first, get dressed and then sit in front of the camera.

Señora once told me all I need to do is put on a nice shirt as no one is going to see my from the waist down.  Well, I am not really willing to do that. Talk about your ugly American…  One morning I was running a little late so I grabbed a pair of shorts hanging Continue reading “I’m Too Sexy…”

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Word of the Day – Ouroboros

  • Noun:  Ouroboros
    1. a circular symbol that depicts a snake or dragon devouring its own tail and that is used especially to represent the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth
    2.  something (such as a never-ending cycle) that is likened to or suggestive of the Ouroboros symbol
  • Synonyms:
    1. amazingly an Internet search found none…
  • Usage:
    1.  From the section talking about the current Missouri Attorney General, Eric Schmidt: “For the most part, that’s involved fastidiously tracking the latest fronts in the United States’ ongoing culture wars, from mask-mandate mania to critical race theory panic to attacks on trans people — and then suing the shit out of everyone involved. Often that’s the state’s underfunded public schools, which then have to spend what little taxpayer money they’re allotted on fending off the AG’s  legal attacks, which are also funded by taxpayers, thereby creating something of an ouroboros of perfectly wasteful spending. Oh, and he also sued China over COVID-19 — totally on behalf of the people of Missouri, not at all a transparent campaign stunt. ”
  • Encountered:
    1. While reading Riverfront Times article A Missouri Voter’s Guide to the Most Batshit Senate Race in History

To see more Words of the Day, visit this link: Words of the Day

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Matrimonial Log – Star Date 5782.202

“Matrimony… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Casamiento Segundo, its until-death-do-us-part mission… to explore a strange new relationship… to seek out a new life and new adventures… to boldly go where no sane couple has gone before.”

Just to put this in context, Señora and I are fast approaching our 9th wedding anniversary.

So… I am sitting on the porcelain throne in the downstairs bathroom this morning reading a few pages from Rabbi Joseph Telushkin‘s delightful book, Words That Hurt, Words that Heal.

Interrupting my meditations and reading, there is a banging on the bathroom door followed by,  “Are you in there?”

In reply I said, “Of course I am, it is 0932 and I have had two cups of coffee.”

Señora goes on, “Do you want to get married again?”

To which I answered, “Will I have more privacy in the morning if we do?”

Apparently that was not the correct response.

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Quote of the Day – J. B. Pritzker

“Here is where the Republican game plan is the most audacious: They want to distract you into believing that gay marriage, black history, Disney World and library books are more of a threat to our children than AR-15s… Don’t tell us that a 10-year-old is too young to learn about the history of slavery but not too young to run active-shooter drills when she learns how to play dead.” ~~ J. B. Pritzker, Governor of Illinois

To see more Quotes for Day, visit this link: Quotes for the Day

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Okeisms – Southernisms    

I was more or less raised on the east coast.  But I also spent a lot of summers in Oklahoma.  Both my parents had rural, agrarian upbringings, one in Kentucky, land of beautiful horses and fast women, and the other in Oklahoma.  One of my siblings has described Oklahoma as southern and western, but definitely not southwestern. Under their cowboy hats, Okies definitely operate with a southern sensibility. For many years I was married to a highly educated woman who grew up in the boondocks of Arkansas.  She was buried so deep in the pine forests and mountains of rural Arkansas that the first black person she encountered was when she went away to college. She and her mishpocha had a very southern, rural way of speaking.  When we would go back to visit her parents, the closer to their home we were, the more country her speech became. The same phenomenon happened the further afield we ranged. Once we were on vacation in New England, and I had to frequently translate for her.  The Yankees up there were baffled by her accent, and she, not infrequently, by theirs.

So why I am I bringing this up? Continue reading “Okeisms – Southernisms    “