I was recently at the wedding shower of the daughter of one of my best friends. One of the questions for one of the quiz games was why my friend named her daughter the name she did.

I was actually puzzled and searched my memory, and was coming up blank. We’d been friends since we were 15. I didn’t think there was anything we didn’t know about each other. But my memory was methodically combing through its data banks and was retrieving nothing. I knew it wasn’t her mother’s name, mother-in-law, or any beloved female relative.

That’s when our other best friend who was sitting next to me said, “Of course you know this!”

“Nope,” I said. “I got nothin’.”

She replied with a huge grin, “Our bar names.”

Let’s talk about geriatric rockers. And I don’t mean rocking chairs for old people. I mean aging rock stars.

This week was the start of our geriatric rock concert tour. Seems like this is the summer for octogenarian rock stars to take to the stage. And we sixty-plus year olds happily gobble up the tickets and follow along.

After all, we came of age, albeit a little behind our older boomer brethren, with the coming of age of rock and roll itself. The ‘60’s brought us more than protests, turmoil, counter-culture, political unrest (hmm, what does this remind me of?!), but also bands like, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Grateful Dead, and the list goes on.

You can’t make this stuff up. Y’all see this one in your social media or news feeds?

Apparently, a woman, a 70 year-old author of seven cookbooks who is very much into fiber, has coined the activity and term Fart Walk.

She and her husband eat a lot of fiber apparently, and so they go for a walk about 60 minutes after dinner to release all that built up gas from their meal.

In her words, “And you fart when you walk so that’s why I named it that.”

Yo. The Phillies are number one in the entire MLB. Yankees are a half game back and in our own division, the hated Braves are 7 games back.

This is awesome. This is incredible. This is….not us.

Don’t get me wrong. I am over the moon. I am beyond excited and happy and loving it.

And yet….it is a strange feeling. One with which I am not really familiar, being from Philly and all. I can’t seem to really relax into it and trust it. There is underlying anxiety, like waiting for the bomb to drop and smash our lead position, along with our hopes and dreams, into smithereens.

For those of you from Philly that are reading this, you might know what I am talking about.

Remember when it was your birthday and you used to maybe get a couple of cards in the mail from your grandparents, an aunt and uncle, and maybe your best friend? You might have had a party and invited a few of your friends. There would be cake of course, a few gifts, candles, and making wishes as you blew out the candles.

But that was pretty much it.

This week we’ll round out the trilogy of Unwanted Guests.

Only this week, the Unwanted Guest is not in insect or rodent form. It’s a little more amorphous than that.

This Unwanted Guest is never seen, but he leaves his calling card everywhere in the house, especially in the kitchen.

Let me explain.

🤬🤬🤬 Comcast.

Need I say more? This could be the shortest blog ever because I am pretty sure I could leave it at that and y’all would get it. No further explanation needed.

But, where’s the fun in that? Lol.

About a week ago, we turned on the tv one evening only to be greeted with some error code message.

My initial reaction was to contact Comcast through the app to get help with the problem.

Ernie’s first reaction was to do the initial troubleshooting which is basically unplug and replug the connection to the cable box.

They say the walls have ears. In this case, I’d say they also have eyes, nose, mouth, and likely a tail.

Last week we talked about stinkbugs in the bathroom. This week we are going to talk about something, as yet still unidentified, that was in the family room wall.

Like the stinkbugs who started moving in around mid to late fall, so too did something take up residence in the family room wall.

What’s happening with animals and insects these days? Have they gotten soft? Can’t take the outdoorsy-ness of their outdoor environment when the weather gets cold? What would Darwin have to say about that as these animals and insects seeks the warmth and shelter of human homes? What might the impact on evolution be?

I can’t say what that impact might be but I can tell you about the impact on me. And it’s not good.

It appears that our bathroom has become a hotel of sorts for some unwanted guests. Stinkbugs to be precise.

Sometime in the late fall/early winter, the first of these unwelcome lodgers ensconced themselves in our bathroom.

And it’s never more than one at a time. It’s like somehow they send out a message saying, “this place is mine. No one else may join me here. This is a single room occupancy only.”

This is a follow up to the previous blog post titled The Price of Pizza.

This is a story of a wrong made right. Of the power of the people. Of the little guy getting a win. Of the free-market capitalist system working as it should.

You may recall that in The Price of Pizza I talked about how my favorite pizza place, Maple Glen Pizza, changed their pepperoni from the large, generous slices they used to have to small, little stingy ones. This altered the overall taste of the pizza and what was before, hands down, the best pepperoni pizza ever, became just an average, regular, so-so pepperoni pizza.

My sister, niece, and I were having a texting conversation of Seinfeldian proportions the other night. It started off with me referencing my Girl/Empty Nester Dinner (see previous blog post on that topic). I mentioned that it included grapes.

My sister, who was also having a Girl/Empty Nester Dinner of her own, said that hers did not include grapes because when she tasted one at the store they were sour.

“You taste the grapes before you buy them” I asked?

“Yes, she said. “Just like Nanny would when buying them from the huckster.”

My niece replied with, “I taste the grapes because she does.”

“Goodness gracious great balls of fire,” I exclaimed the other day.

Ernie looked up from his puzzle, puzzled by my words. “What did you just say,” he asked?

“You heard me right,” I said. “Goodness gracious great balls of fire.”

He said, “Seriously? Who says that anymore?”

“Well, clearly, I do. I am making an effort to curse less, “ I offered by way of explanation.

Cursing. There was a time when cursing did not come easy for me. I grew up in a non-cursing household. I don’t think I have ever heard either of my parents utter a single curse word. Unless you count Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—which I will come back to in a minute.

Today being Easter Sunday, it seems the appropriate time to share the story of The Easter Bread and The Wedding Ring. I’ll save the blog post on cursing for next week.

First, a little background. Italian-Americans have a lot of traditions and a lot of the traditions revolve around holidays and food. Easter is no exception.

We make this most amazing bread for Easter. It’s so good, I never understood why we couldn’t make it year-round. I guess it wouldn’t be called Easter Bread if that were the case.

Growing up, my mom, aunts, grandmother would all bake the Easter Bread. Those loaves of bread were like currency too. An aunt might drop by for a cup of coffee and say, “Oh, here’s an Easter Bread for you. I had some extras.” You truly could never have enough Easter Bread.

Ernie and I were raised with two entirely different approaches to grocery shopping. His was Frugal Core. Mine was What’s A Coupon?

As you can imagine, these two diametrically opposed philosophies led to some clashes of epic proportions early on in our marriage.

I bought a shirt the other day. The first time I wore it, I noticed something bothering me. It was the 500 tags sewed into the side seam of the shirt.

There used to just be like one, two tags tops on an article of clothing. The material type and washing instructions.

Even those two tags would usually require cutting off as they would be itchy against the skin. And you had to cut them, not rip them as I sometimes would do. Ripping them risks ripping out the seam and could leave you with a hole.

Cutting the tags off with scissors requires the skills of a neurosurgeon though. If you don’t get it precisely right the remnants of the tag will still be itchy and bothersome. So you’ve got to cut it closely enough to avoid that scenario.

Wow. I finally get one up on the aging process, but who would ever know? It remains hidden, never to see the light of day and only was recently revealed to me via an X-ray.

I went to an orthopedic doctor a couple of weeks ago. I had this bump on the back of my hand that my primary doctor thought was a ganglion cyst.

The orthopedic doctor examined it and said, “Nope, not a ganglion cyst. Looks like some arthritis forming. Can happen with aging, and the bones start to bump up against each other.” Or something like that. I can’t really remember the details (also something that can happen with aging).

He said, “But let’s get some X-rays to be sure.”

You know those Progressive commercials where the Millenials are turning into their parents and Dr. Rick tries to help them?

Well, paging Dr. Rick for Baby Boomers turning into their parents.

It struck me the other day when I was having a conversation with my friend. I was meeting her for lunch at a place about a 20 minute drive away. She had also invited me back to the same area for a happy hour with former coworkers.

Paradox. A situation, person or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.

Paradox number 1. I love the Grateful Dead. I hate going to their concerts.

Now, normally, any band I love, I love going to see them live in concert.

I love the Grateful Dead, but had never been to any of their shows until I was married to Ernie.

Ernie not only loves the Dead, but is indeed a Deadhead. A super fan for any of the uninitiated.

So much so that the song he picked (with her approval of course lol) for the father of the bride dance at our daughter’s wedding was Scarlet Begonia. H

He even surprised her with a scarlet begonia and tucked it into her hair. Afterwards, the bartender told us that that was an epic father/daughter dance and that he had never seen a Grateful Dead song for one before.

So, in the mid to late ‘80’s when he realized I had never been to a show, he couldn’t wait to take me.

How much did your Valentine’s Day cards set you back, last week?

A few blog posts ago we took a look at the price of pizza. This week let’s take a look at the price of greeting cards.

When did a greeting card go from costing $1.50 to $8.00? Is it just me, or is $8.00 for a greeting card ridiculously expensive?

Especially for something that someone will read, and whether it’s later that day or days later, will eventually toss it in the trash. Unless they are a hoarder. In which case, they will keep it, along with any other greeting card they ever got, forever.

No one was more disappointed than me when our local gift shop, which sold their greeting cards at 50% off and I never had to spend more than $2.50 for a decent card, went out of business. I no longer have a go to discount card store.

Talk about losing hours endlessly scrolling through social media?

That’s got nothing on losing hours endlessly watching on demand streaming tv.

How did we ever watch a weekly tv series in the past? That seems so antiquated now. Kids today could never imagine having to wait a week to get the next episode of whatever show they were watching.

Now when you watch a series on Netflix you build your cocoon—blanket, drink, snacks and you don’t leave for HOURS, possibly even days. Just. One. More. Episode. You don’t even have to do anything to get the next episode—it just comes up on its own in seconds. And just like that, 10 hours have gone by.