Here at the beginning of September I’m thinking about some milestone birthdays in our family this month. On the 17th our firstborn will turn 30, and on the last day of the month, I will be 15 years younger than John McCain! (He’s a lot younger than most people realize! You do the math….)

As I age gracefully, I’m noticing some of the subtle differences that come with each stage of life - the way you see things and do things. (Notice the cartoon on the right…) On a more personal level, when I was a 20-something, it was nothing to pull all-nighters or at least to stay up late into the night doing fun activities or doing grading and course preparations as a young teacher. Now I have a hard time staying up very late at all. Just this past Friday evening a bunch of us teachers got together for a game night. Most of us played games late into the early part of the evening! Sigh!

Today’s “instant vacation” takes a look at some of the changes that aging makes in something as everyday as going to Walmart.

When men go to Walmart…

You are a man doing some kind of project around the house – mowing the lawn, putting a new fence in, painting the living room, or whatever. You are hot and sweaty, covered in dirt or paint. You have your old work clothes on. You know the outfit - shorts with a hole in them, old T-shirt with a stain from who knows what home repair, and an old pair of tennis shoes.

Right in the middle of this great home improvement project you realize you need to run to Walmart to get something to help complete the job.

Depending on your age you might do the following:

In your 20’s:
Stop what you are doing. Shave, take a shower, blow dry your hair, brush and floss your teeth, and put on clean clothes. Check yourself in the mirror and flex. Splash on a lot of your favorite cologne because you never know, you just might meet some hot chick while standing in the checkout lane. And you went to school with the pretty girl running the register.

In your 30’s:
Stop what you are doing, put on clean shorts and shirt. Change shoes. You married the hot chick so no worries in that department. Wash your hands and comb your hair. Check yourself in the mirror. Still got it. Add a healthy shot of your favorite cologne to cover the smell. The cute girl running the register is the kid sister of someone you went to school with.

In your 40’s:
Stop what you are doing. Put a sweatshirt that is long enough to cover the hole in your shorts. Put on different shoes and a hat to cover up your messed up, unwashed hair. Wash your hands. Your bottle of Brute cologne is almost empty, so you don’t want to waste any of it on a trip to Walmart. Check yourself in the mirror and do more sucking in than flexing. The spicy young thing running the register is your daughter’s age.

In your 50’s:
Stop what you are doing. Put on a hat, wipe the grime off your hands onto your shirt. Change shoes because you don’t want to get dirt in your new sports car. Check yourself in the mirror and you swear not to wear that shirt anymore because it makes you look fat. The cutie running the register smiles when she sees you coming and you think you still have it. Then you remember the hat you have on is from Buddy’s Bait Shop and says, “I Got Worms.”

In your 60’s:
Stop what you are doing. No need for a hat anymore – nothing to cover up. Hose the dog dirt off your shoes. The mirror was shattered when you were in your 50s and no need to replace it. You hope no one will notice the hole in you pants. The girl running the register may be cute, but you don’t have your glasses on so you are not sure.

In your 70’s:
Stop what you are doing. Wait to go to Walmart until they have your prescriptions ready too. Don’t even notice the dog dirt on your shoes. The young thing at the register smiles at you because you remind her of her grandfather.

In your 80’s:
Stop what you are doing. Start again. Then stop again. Then you remember you needed to go to Walmart. You go to Walmart, then wander around for an hour trying to think what it is you are looking for. Then you burp out loud and turn, thinking someone behind you called out your name. You realise you went to school with the old lady who greeted you at the front door an hour ago

I want to be perfectly fair, though, and remind my readers that it’s not just we men who are conscious of their appearance when they go to shopping. Here’s a picture of a newspaper article that proves that women think about what they’re going to wear when they go to Walmart.

Have any of you been or seen a “fashion plate” at Walmart lately? Or how ’bout some of those conversations you can’t help overhearing?

quotation…

“You never realize what a good memory you have until you try to forget something.” - Franklin P. Jones

=^..^= =^..^=
Rob

Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes.

We celebrated our grandson Drew’s first birthday this past weekend. I have way too many pictures to pick from, so I will show as much restraint as possible. Here are some of the stories and some pictures….

Grandma and Nora traveled up as planned. They got stuck in a horrible traffic backup in Tennessee, not far from the state line to Kentucky. They got off at the next exit the traffic crept up to to try to find a restroom. Several men from the DOT pulled off to see if they were OK. Becka asked the one man why the traffic was so backed up, thinking he’d say it was an accident since the southbound traffic was flowing fine. He told her that the some of the mountain had caved! Yikes! We were thankful that it had happened before they got that far. He told them that if they continued on the road at that exit, they would come to a gravel road that would eventually take them to Jellico on the other side of the place where the mountain had caved. It was after dark, but they could see well enough to know that the left side of the gravel road was a sheer drop-off! I was very relieved when they called me from Jellico!

On Friday they managed to stay ahead of the snow storm that hammered Ohio. Below is a picture of them at lunch time in Perrysburg, OH, with some of the snow from earlier last week.

What Becka and Nora didn’t know was that a few weeks ago I cashed in some frequent-flyer miles to fly up for the weekend too! I was supposed to arrive in Detroit at about midnight, but because of the snow, our pilot was delayed in arriving from his flight from Toronto. So my three hour layover in Chicago O’Hare became a six hour layover! (reminiscent of the theme song of Gilligan’s Island … a three hour tour!) When I arrived in Detroit at about 3:00 a.m. my son-in-law (who was in on my surprise) was there waiting for me. It was so fun when I slipped into our bedroom, kissed Becka to wake her up, and enjoyed her complete surprise!

We all really enjoyed being together on Saturday as preparations were going on for the “friends party” at 5:30 that afternoon. Meg and Jim asked me if I would give Drew his first trim to try to reduce his “baby mullet.” Here are a couple of pictures of the process….

“Hey, Grandpa, what are you doing to me?!”

A lot of preparations went on in the kitchen for the food for the party the theme of which was puppies. Nora set up a cookie factory on the kitchen table….

Here’s a tray full of the finished product….

Megan made a cute cake she’d seen online….

Drew also got his own cupcake - his first taste of cake! He enjoyed the cake, but he didn’t want to touch it.

Drew really enjoyed the presents….

Grandma loved being with her boy….

It’s hard to remember his being such a tiny preemie a year ago - he’s such a fine, upstanding boy now!

My flights home Sunday were less eventful, and the delay in Chicago O’Hare was shorter than Friday night’s delay. What’s kind of sad is that 10 hours of my weekend were spent at O’Hare! Yuck! Becka and Nora are driving back to South Carolina today (Tuesday). It will be great to have them home again!

***
My recent trip up north, where they are experiencing one of their hardest winters in a long time, reminded me of the horrors of global warming and of an e-mail I received recently about the Northern Lights and a frozen Antarctic wave.

***
Yellowknife, named after copper, is the the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Here are a few pictures of the Northern Lights over Yellowknife and living in teepees at 37 degrees below 0….

It’s beyond cool!

Below are some pictures of Antarctica. In the e-mail I received, what you see below was attributed to a quick freeze of a wave in super frigid air, but according to snopes it’s actually the result of melting and refreezing. Whatever the situation, that’s one cold place!

quotation…

“It’s nice to have the things money can buy, as long as you don’t lose the things money can’t buy.” - Kevin Johns

=^..^= =^..^=
Rob

If it’s zero degrees outside today and it’s supposed to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be?