Like The Sands Of Time Through The Hourglass ...

"So are the days of our lives".  I wondered the other day if this particular soap opera was still on the air, but I keep forgetting to look.  Anyway, thoughts and observations from the house-husband in his second month of house arrest ...

As a part of my daily regimen, I try to walk three or four miles early in the morning.   Over the weeks, I've found that the maximum entertainment value from this exercise is to be found on Sunday morning before 7 a.m.  Apparently there are a lot of people in my neighborhood who like to stay up really, really late on Saturday night, drinking.  And of this group, there appears to be a subset of husbands and wives that really don't care very much for each other.

One morning, I came across a woman backing her car out of her garage; while her husband was doing his ding-dong damnedest to keep her from it by trying to push the car back in to the garage from the rear end.  However, he was losing.  I stood there for a couple of seconds, watching.  No words were spoken between them.  Just her goosing the car down the driveway in short spurts, and he pushing like hell on the rear of the car.  A moral dilemma on my part ... do I say something, or let her run him over?  Fortunately, just as I was trying to decide what to do, a squad car pulled up and the friendly policeman jumped out of his vehicle and yelled at them to "cut that shit out!"  They did.

Several Sunday mornings later, I was strolling down the street in the same vicinity when I heard someone vacillating between screaming and talking very, very loud.  As I walked closer, I saw a middle aged man pacing up and down his driveway shouting into a cell phone.  Oh, and he was dressed only in well used, formerly white underwear briefs and black socks.  I crossed the street and sped up my pace, but did manage to hear what he was shouting.  I gathered he was talking to either his wife or girlfriend, and he kept repeating "I love you to death", scattered with references to how he didn't like going to AA meetings because there were nothing but drunks there.  About ten minutes later, I was walking through the parking lot of a strip mall, when the same guy, still nattily dressed in white briefs and black socks, roared pass me in his car, screeched to a halt in front of a trash can and deposited a large garbage bag into said can.  Then he sped off again, presumably for church.  I already knew what was in the bag, but I went over to check anyway.  Sure enough, it was chock full of empty beer cans and wine bottles.  I guess that made sense ... hiding the evidence.

Yes, walking is fun.  And so is watching instant streaming movies on Netflix during the day.  Several weeks ago, Netflix announced that they were going to begin charging more if a customer subscribed to both "instant streaming" and their mail service.  There was the usual clamour, but I didn't see where an extra seven dollars a month was going to lower me into the poverty income level.  The instant streaming is nice, but I've noticed that Netflix doesn't really offer the best movies with the service.  I've treated myself to some really awful movies over the past several weeks, including "The Trailer Trash Boys:  Countdown to Liquor Day", the entire "Left Behind" series starring born-again Jesus freak and former "Growing Pains" cast member Kirk Cameron, and ... my personal favorite "4-D Man" with former late 50's and early 60's heartthrob Robert Lansing.

I remember seeing "4-D Man" at the Springfield Drive-In Theatre in about 1959, and I was thrilled to see Robert Lansing again as he was in one of my favorite early 60's television action dramas "12 O'Clock High".  In it, Lansing played fearless Army Air Force pilot, Captain Something-Or-The-Other, who flew his B-17 in approximately four thousand missions over Nazi Germany during the Civil War.  I recall that he wasn't a particularly good pilot, as he was shot down about every other week.

Anyway, there was a lot of stock footage in this show taken from actual gun cameras during the war.  My Dad would study these very carefully to see if there might be any footage of him.  I constantly reminded him that this wasn't likely as he was in the infantry, but this never deterred him and he kept looking.  He did the same thing during "The 20th Century", which aired on Sunday evening.  I don't believe he ever saw himself.

When I'm not encountering self-destructive drunks during Sunday morning walks or watching crummy movies on Netflix, I'm keeping up with maintenance on the house.  Over the weekend, I noticed that the two steps on our backdoor stairway need to be replaced.  Being meticulous, I purchased lumber, cut it to size, painted it and, as I started to install it, realized that instead of 2 inch by 10 inch boards, I needed planks that were 2 inch by 12 inches.  So, a job that should have taken a couple of hours and a few bucks ended up taking six hours and a couple of bucks times a lot.

It's raining this morning, so I'm giving the maintenance thing a rest for a while.  My blood pressure and bank account thank me.

While I'm thinking about it, I need to find out if "Days Of Our Lives" is still on the air.

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