April 1, 2014

I picked up a terrible sliver at work the other day, it was as bad as I had ever had. A piece of lumber this size would cost a buck and a half at Home Depot. My boss wanted it to cook hotdogs at the lake. I'm taking it home to replace a missing fence post. I couldn't find a pair of pliers, so I had to dig it out with a razor knife, it was in my right hand,so I had to do the surgery with my non-dominant left, by the time I was finished,I needed eighteen stitches. It would have only been 14 but the doc had to dig deeper to get a branch I had missed.
That's not why I'm writing today though. It's Obi again. I went out for a walk the other night to burn off a few calories, you know, just to make his creeping up on me a little more difficult. Obi tried to blame it on the ice, but I'm convinced it was him who kicked my feet out from under me in an attempt to immobilize me for who knows how long. I was going down hard. My right hand said,"Don't even think about using me to break the fall, your brilliant surgical attempt has left me a tad disabled." My left had already shot upward and outward like he was waving at a crowd. My knees screamed, "Don't use us, Ed needs us when he kneels to pray." My hip asked, "Yah. When does Ed ever kneel to pray?" My back replied, "I think they're right, he was kneeling when he got that sliver the other day and I definitely heard him call out to his Savior." My right shoulder said, "I'm not sure that was praying, and, by the way, I'm not available either." That's when my brain piped in, "Ok you idiots, do what I say." "Right elbow, slam yourself backward and try touching Ed's left hip. Left foot, try to touch your ankle bone to Ed's chin. Chin, when you see that ankle bone coming lift up quickly and throw yourself to the right. Right knee follow the path of Ed's chin, and left foot plant yourself firmly and push like hell.".....Ed was on  his feet, a gold medal performance. Had there been a crowd it would have been cheering in a standing O, the judges would hold 10's across the board, well two of them probably would hold  7's, but still, silver's great.
 Actually, there was one old guy shovelling his walk, he had witnessed the recovery with his mouth agape. He gave me a toothless smile and a thumbs up,would have been two thumbs but his other hand had caught the teeth that had fallen from his mouth. The skull said,"Thank you" to the brain. "Don't mention it, we we're in that together."
I had a talk with Obi. He's just tired of creeping and wants to leap and bound. I'm going to have to be a little more vigilant.

Have a great day

Loved

March 1 2014

Obesity. Yep, he's been creeping up on me. I call him Obi for short. He was with me the other day at the grocery store, I caught him dropping two 2-litre bottles of Pepsi into the cart. I give him a look "What the...?" "Buy one get one free," he says. The problem with two litre bottles is, they start to go flat as soon as you open them. I can probably do a litre for breakfast, you know, that caffeine buzz, not to mention the sugar high you plummet from around 11a.m. It's that second litre, it should be drank the same day so you're looking at an evening snack. Obi has the answer of course, he's thrown 6, that's one half dozen, bags of potato chips into the cart. I sort of blurted out "Jesus Christ Obi". That's when the old lady hit me with her purse, it was heavy too, the arm she carried it with was 3 inches longer than the other. The stitching was leaving scratches where she dragged it across the terrazzo floor. I look again at the bags of chips...FORMAT FAMILIAL, I think that's DIMENSIONE DELLA FAMIGLIA to Lucy and her friends, to me it's FAMILY SIZE. Big bags in any language, although, lets face it, family size is relative, no pen intunded, pour a bag of these into a bowl and an average family will eat it in 20 maybe 30 minutes. Open a bag for Luigi and Mary's family and they won't even get to the bowl, they'll be gone in maybe 8 or 9 seconds, 6 if we have to share with the girls. Ohh! I think I heard a bag open, catch ya later.

Have a great day

Loved

February 1, 2014

You know how they say that when you fall off a roof while holding a sheet of plywood, you can use it to float to the ground safely. It's not true. If it hadn't been for the plywood catching a few branches on the way down, I wouldn't have slowed down at all. Unfortunately it turned me upside down so I was unable to land on my feet. I had a choice of landing on my face or forehead, my face has to cradle my glasses so I chose my forehead. I was landing in snow so I was hoping for a soft landing, the bad news was it was packed as hard as ice, the good news was I didn't have to run for ice to keep the swelling down, I just left my head in the snow. Having grown up in the Antonini family the sight of the blood didn't bother me at all but after having lost about a pint I figured I better go inside and clean it up. I tried to sneak past Deanie, she had warned me about being on the roof, I didn't want to get an "I told you so", she didn't. She just said, "Get out of my kitchen, you're dripping blood on the floor".

Have a great day

Loved

HAPPY NEW YEAR

I don't know about the rest of you, but my brain drops the ball in a lot of circumstances. I usually check the weather soon after I awake so as to dress properly for the day, long sleeve?, short sleeve?, heavy coat?, light coat?, etc. The other day I wake, FREEZING RAIN, screams out from the media. My brain immediately registers and tells me, "Eddie boy, be very careful out there." It is the main focus of my thoughts for the entire time I'm getting ready to leave the house. Then I step out the door and it's like, "Hmmm, I wonder what's for lunch today?. Now I do have to admit, it does snap back into focus the moment my feet hit the driveway, although, a bit too late. Every driveway is sloped, mine is no exception. Granted, it's not a Nancy Green or Jean Claude Killy slope, but, not having the talent of Nancy or Jean Claude I'm doing all I can to stay upright as I begin my descent. I'm doing pretty good as I gain speed. Let me tell you about Regina's soil. It's gumbo, it expands and shrinks at will. That's why my driveway has lifted and is at a completely different level than the city sidewalk, so I`m coming up to a ski jump soon. Granted it's not an Eddie The Eagle jump, but not having the talent of Mr. Edwards, I need every ounce of my own talent to land safely... and I stick it. Let me tell you about Regina's maintenance crews. When they grade the street they leave mountains of snow along the edge of the sidewalks. Granted they aren't the Rocky Mountains, but, they may as well be. My feet stopped dead, however, my upper body continued it`s forward motion, I wasn`t worried about traffic, being from Regina they knew the outcome and had already stopped to watch. So, when my body hit the icy roadway I did my best imitation of a curling stone and shot right across. Let me tell you about my neighbor across the street, he has this fancy snow blower, so the mountains that should have stopped me, were cleared and I continued right up his driveway until I hit his garage door. At least I had stopped. I got to my feet, my brain was thinking...How long til lunch. Oh, oh.

Have a great New Year`s day

Loved

Dec 1 2013

Every once in a while, in the housing industry, people are in a position where they have to move furniture into their new home before it has been completed. That is the case in this particular incident.
It was like a psychic moment. I saw it before it happened. The two massive human beings were carrying an upright piano down a flight of stairs. You've seen the type, their necks start at their ears instead of their jaws, theirs arms stick out sideways because their biceps are too big to hang downward. In this case there were two  of them and they seemed to be having very little problem with the piano. Then I saw it, the bottom behemoth missed a step, I saw myself slip in behind him, brace myself, place my hands on his back, I saw him taking the split second I gave him to drop his foot to the floor, and, I might add, I even saw the placement of my own feet so he would not land upon either of them. Once he was steadied I saw his appreciation of this small man who lent a hand in time of need. I saw it all. Too bad it didn't turn out that way.
You know, I'm not a zoologist or biologist, I don't claim to know a lot about organisms and their functions or evolution. What I would like to know is, is there a species on the planet, when falling, will not try to lower their paws, or legs, or whatever type of equipment they have to move on, so as to land upon that equipment so as not to injure themselves? None come to my mind.
So, when I saw this guy shoot his leg upward in an effort to regain his footing on the tread he missed 4 risers ago. My first thought, after, oh, this isn't good, was, when they coined the phrase, "All brawn and no brains", this was the guy they  were talking about. What happened next wasn't pretty, when that monolith hit my little 5 foot 9 inch frame he sent me through the drywall and studs like toothpaste through a tube. He and his piano came through as well, along with dumber, who decided to ride the piano down. Lucky for me we didn't make it to the cement wall, our momentum was halted by a furnace, it was a high efficient Lennox Elite Series EL296V Model number UH070XV36B, you're probably wondering how I know so much about it. Easy, my left eye was only a quarter inch from the label.
Sometimes doctors will ask you to rate your pain on "a scale of 1 to 10" 10 being the high end. I can remember a few painful events in my life, my first broken nose I'll give a 2, the second and third time, maybe 3s. Fish hook in the leg an easy 1. Freezing my right ear 0, thawing of same 6. Catching the end of my nose on a stuccoed column, a 5. So as you can see I haven't had a lot of experience with pain, and I would think that a 10 would come just south of the tunnel with the light at the other end, so I'm going to rate the piano resting on the big toe of my right foot an 8 and one half.
I really misread my first psychic experience.

Have a great day

Loved

November 2013

Ok. So, we've installed hardwood or some other type of flooring in somewhere between 50 and 75 houses in the last 12 months. I have to tell you, if you're not visiting someone you know in the house, they are "all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same". Another thing, we had just finished the identical house a block over when it happened. So it's not unimaginable that a person might walk out the front door, carrying a table saw, and step off the porch where a set of stairs would have been if not for having been removed so a newly poured concrete walk could cure. I grant that Google is fast, but I gotta tell ya, it's no match for a brain measuring it's options before disaster. Now, I'm not claiming to understand Albert's theory of relativity, but, the energy equals mass times velocity, velocity squared yet, eliminated my first option. Set the saw down as I hit and tuck and roll was my second, until my brain registered the hole recently excavated for a basement next door. Mind you, it wasn't much of a hole, perhaps 7 or 8 feet deep. I've stood on the precipice of the Grand Canyon, now that's a hole. Even so, option two was out, and, I was running out of time. My last option. Land on my feet and set the saw down as my legs buckle, throw my head violently to the side to avoid either knee driving my chin to my forehead and use my ass for padding to bring myself to a halt. Would have worked to, if I hadn't caught my nose on a stuccoed column. Stupid brain didn't manage to notify me of that one. I've heard of people paying thousands of dollars to have their nose shortened, I did mine myself, for free. I'm playing Rudolph in my grandkids play this Christmas.

Have a great November

Loved 

October 1, 2013

Good morning on October 1. I have to post pretty early to be able to say that to Louise, but I think I've made it. We were given a bit of a scare in Sept. when doctors found a small brain tumor in one of our nephews on Deanie's side of the family. Events went very smoothly and they are satisfied they have it completely removed,  the little guy is back at home. He is Shirley's oldest grandchild at 7 years...Joshua Stinson. The news from my own little family is great, the kids are enjoying their new year in school and Beata continues to progress through the stages of growing up. Jamie and Holly are happily busy with their little family and Heather, Deanie and I continue our daily morning walks.

Have a great day

Loved