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Butch Furse
Each year we find it more difficult to like cold weather. Looking at the calendar and future weather forecasts it looks like we’ll have some tough days ahead of us. There’s not much we can do other than try to laugh at Ol’ Man Winter. And that’s what we are going to do.
We came across a conversation of several Arctic explorers who apparently were trying to outdo each other as to which group had been under the most extreme cold weather conditions on their last venture.
One explorer claimed, “It was so cold where we were that the candle froze and we couldn’t blow it out.”
he second explorer: “That’s nothing. Where we were the words came out of our mouths in pieces of ice, and we had to fry them to see what we were talking about.”
The debates continued. “The cold in the Arctic was so intense that we couldn’t pat our dogs,” another explorer declared. His listener asked, “Why not?”
The reply: “Their tails were frozen so still that they broke off if they wagged them!”
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As the COVID moves into the second year and the cold weather conditions are lasting longer than we want, we have stopped looking at our regular home calendar with those printed dates in the daily squares. Looking ahead just gets a little depressing. Thus, we have adopted a new and simple routine to follow. It is pretty easy because our daily lifestyle continues to fall into such a routine that seems to be repeated every seven days with very little variation.
Calendar dates have gone out the window. Our daily schedule begins, not looking at a calendar, but knowing the following days hold specific events in our household. For example:
Sunday is Go To Church Day. In the afternoon we read the Sunday paper with its four pages of comics then try to squeeze in a nap. Monday is the day the Betterhalf asks if I would like to help her clean house. Tuesday we begin the day by putting out the recycling tub and after lunch head uptown to pick up the new issue of the News-Register. Wednesday the Betterhalf heads out for grocery shopping because it’s “Banana Day” at the grocery store.
Thursday begins by heading to the street curb with the trash can for garbage truck pickup. Fridays and Saturdays are high school and college sports contests on the tube.
Such is another exciting life for us senior citizens.
RL Furse is publisher emeritus of the News-Register
