The Emerald Rose

Well, I survived. (Except remind me next time not to get seats in the 29th row up in a stadium! The mere thought of Rocky running up those stairs in that movie gets me sweating now.)
Great concert, but what a long way this has come in fifty years. As I said in my earlier blogs we crammed everyone into a big orange school bus, crammed all the equipment into an old, long forgotten bread truck or delivery truck, and away we went. Well today they are more like the Rollin’ Stones on tour! As we drove up to the stadium there seemed to be a traffic jam. All the cars were backed up, the right lane was at a standstill, and I smiled at my inner smarts to get there 45 minutes early, and then I saw why it was tied up.
Ahead of us, on the right was a 54′ tractor trailer truck with my favorite Corps, “The Boston Crusaders” and all kind of other billboard type pictures and all on it’s side. “Boy imagine that, thier own tractor trailer rig for thier equipment,…wow!”, thought I , and then I noticed another one in front of it, “Holy shit! Two tractor trailer trucks!”, and then I saw a third! Then ahead of that were three HUGE tour buses, and two or three big SUV’s, all of them painted and themed, what a sight! “Boy, this has gone bigtime”, (sigh)
Of course being America, the seat of Capitalism, it didn’t stop there. In my day going, playing, winning, and leaving were as good as it got, but thank God for Capitalism. There were rows of smaller trailers with sides that lifted up revealing full blown retail stores inside and conviently designed for a cashier, and a gopher who went and got your size from inside and brought it out to the cashier. All the merchandise was on display in a really slick full plexiglass covered case that ran the length of the trailer, and they were even wired for credit cards! This was getting more and more like a Rock Concert.
So I bought a hat, a tee shirt, and a bumper sticker at the Crusaders trailer, now I got memories every time I open my closet, and there can only be one car in any parking lot in the Florida Panhandle with a Boston Crusaders bumper sticker on it’s bumper! Now as the Church lady used to say, “Isn’t that special!”
Show was great, it lasted almost 3 and a half hours, and it was a “First Annual” so it will be back next year. Well I guess it’s time to turn off the music from Cats, you know the track, “Memories,..all alone with my ..memories.”
And now back to my regularly scheduled life!
Had lunch yesterday with one of my old “Admin’s”. Man this lady was more organized than a “Mary Kay” Sales Rep. That’s what made her great, she was totally organized, knew where I was going and what I was doing before I got there and was ready for anything. Shame, she’s thinking of moving to Arizona. “But Gloria, there’s no Ocean there. No Ocean, No Ocean breezes, that’s why it’s 115 degrees in the shade, warm is one thing, but “medium well” is a whole horse of a different color!”
Oh, I did figure out why “cowboy boots” are so tall. No it’s not to protect your ankles from snakebites,…but it is to prevent the flames shooting out of the soles of your feet from walking on pavement when it’s 115degrees, from schorching your socks! Perfectly logical,…right? 🙂
My wife’s cat has a tendancy to take a wizz on our bed when he get’s all cranky because we aren’t paying enough attention and feeding him 24/7 (classic definition of a “pig-cat”) but like any parent we explain to him, he has to reduce his consumption because he has diabetes, that ‘s why he gets the two injections a day! (“What injections?, he meows, “The ones we stick in you when you’re eating your kibbles and bits like a condemed man with less than 10 minutes left to eat in life”, says me. “Oh, those, I kinda thought you were just being an asshole and pinching me”, he meows.
Anyway, his visa to the bedroom has been permanently revoked, and only my Saintly cat, Mr. Hiss is allowed in to the sleep chamber. His bowl , his litter box are all in the bathroom adjacent to our bedroom, and he is a “nibbler” not a freakin’ vacuum cleaner with paws like the wife’s cat. But every morning when the automatic coffee maker pops on at 5:30am they know it the end of the adult Homo Sapiens sleep cycle. But how different they are at that point.
Her cat, “Smokey” goes over to our bedroom door, sits down and starts pawing the door (it’s a plastic masonite composition so he doesn’t even make marks, just a shitload of noise), then he starts with a soprano aria from Wagner’s Classic Opera, “meow,meow, whine, whine, excuse me, I need food, cat starving here, get your ass out here and feed me before I pass out, then you’ll be sorry, you’ll trip over me and break your knee thing” And he just goes on and on until we get up. Well since we were out late at the Drum Corps Competition we sort of decided to sleep in a bit, to hell with him. We’ll pick up the body when we get up. After twenty minutes of continuous scrathing he got the point and stopped, so when I finally got up to go feed him and give him his injection, he spent the first ten minutes yelling at me like the wife occasionally does when I “rarely and infrequently” stay for that one last pint and miss the sunset on our back porch , if you know what I mean.
Now you would think my saintly cat, Mr. Hiss, would be up waiting at the door, ready to go, have a romp through the house, go out in the back deck, etc. No, not really his attitude as a “primo bed slut” is “I ain’t movin’! You guys gotta get up and go to work,..but not me, so move I need more room in this bed! I’ve only had about fifteen hours sleep, you don’t want me to get run down do you?”
I suppose he’s right, if I don’t get up and go to work we won’t be able to buy those perscription kibbles ‘n bits, the insulin and syringes ($100 a month, man that cats got an expensive habit!).
Well off to work, got to support the cats, my wife’s got a job so she’s good to go, but the cats keep telling me thier job search is going poorly, and I’ve got to be patient and support them a while longer til “the right position” comes along.
“So lying all curled up and napping is an effort?”, I asked one day.
“It’s like working out for the world title fight, we just gotta keep up the regimine and stay in shape, who knows there may be a good ad in todays classifieds. Oh, and have a good day at work, see you tonight,…and oh yeah, would you stop slamming the door on the way out,…close it gently.
“Oh sure, sorry, I didn’t know it upset you cats.”
“ummm, yeah,….bye,….zzzzzz,…zzzzzz”
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