Greetings Fellow Travelers!
How nice of you to drop by my little cesspool of random musings and share a bit of the flavorful (and non-caloric!) scents that always seem to naturally waft from the inner recesses of my too little used mind! But who am I kidding? I am sure that all none of you have waited expectantly, nay hungrily, to discover whatever obnoxious collection of drivel that might pass for this months installment of Blaggard's Blog! A month without a witty posting by yours truly is what? A month! And a good one. Be that as it may, my shrink and my parole officer (not to mention all my unseen friends at NSA (Hi Bob!)) insist that I express myself more often. In English. So there you have it. But where to start?
Did I ever tell you what really scares me? Hillary Clinton. In a nightie. Holding some large rubbery looking thing and saying that she really wants to get o the bottom of my Benghazi. Shudder. OK, that wasn't fair. Nobody should EVER have that foul of a mental image sprung upon them. I apologize. After a long cleansing puke I think I will feel better. Back in a sec.
Still here? Again, my bad. But more to the point; do you want to know what really scares me? Not death. Actually, I have long thought that I would probably kick the proverbial bucket fairly early, just like my dear old dad, who was the picture of 54 year old health until he suddenly dropped dead. This little morbid mindset of mine actually has been something of a blessing. For one thing, I am always sorta surprised every time I have a birthday. It adds a little something extra when you don't take them for granted. Which leads me to the best part. I really think that I have tried harder to appreciate the time that I have been given that I would have if I had just taken it for granted. Life seems more precious in a way, knowing that it is always possible that I could be guest of honor for an extended dirt nap next week. But like I said, I don't sweat the grim reaper. The thing that bothers me is growing older and losing my already tenuous connection with reality. The thought of Alzheimer's is far, far, far more frightening to me than waking up in the arms of Jesus and tasting the everlasting joys of the complete knowledge of, and direct fellowship with, my Heavenly Father. In a word (or two) senility sux. Especially when it really seems that you have never really been all that far from it in the first place. So, the prime directive for your gracious literary host is to somehow keep as many neurons firing in proper order as possible. To paraphrase the Grinch, "I must stop my brain from decaying to last season's Who Hash, but HOW?"
Which leads me (finally) to the title of this months discourse. Well, I suppose I have already talked about the brains part, but what about the other stuff? Glad you asked. Blossoms! As I plants. Lots of them. In MY yard. Alive (for the most part) and planted by ME. If you were to somehow find your way to the Brady hacienda, like say, Brad and Janet with a flat tire, then you might observe that over the last three years (or since my statutory exit from the Armed Services) I have planted azaleas, camellias, roses, dogwoods, blueberry bushes, peach trees, a fig tree (immediately eaten by Bindy, our seven month old Golden), butterfly bushes, Japanese maples, lillies (or something like that), and today, a pecan (pronounced pee-can) tree. Hell, I even tried a garden last year with very mixed results. Tomatoes and I do NOT get along apparently. Stupid fruit(? ) Whatever.
Oh, wait a minute Steve. You just jumped from a depressing paragraph about dying and going crazy to some weird thing about flowers. Perhaps, you wonder, the whole brain hash thing is not quite as abstract as we thought. But no! There is a point here. I think. What I meant to say was that I have somehow found a completely new interest in life. I like flowers. I like seeing something alive and know that knowing that I had something to do with it. I like the idea that there is just a tad more color in the world because of me. So there's that. Oh yeah, and the Tai Chi. I have been doing Tai Chi for the last few months. It's not supposed to be a heavy exercise, and I don't get winded, but for some reason I (and I alone in the class) sweat like a pig when I do it. It's probably neurological or something. Or maybe I am just a prodigy and my Chi is flowing so strong that it just leaks out. Who knows? But there I am, repulsing monkeys and picking up needles from sea bottoms and such things, and enjoying the hell out of it. Looking for harmony or something I suppose. I am not sure how exactly but the Tai Chi and the flowers seem to be connected in some way. Japanese samurai used to grow bonsai trees as hobbies. Maybe they had the same feeling somehow. BTW, I also just started doing Tae Kwon Do as a way to get in shape. Prayers appreciated.
But mostly, the one thing that I had a hand in (so to speak) in bringing beauty into the world is certainly in the person of my wonderful daughter Shannon, who will, in less than a month, be an old married lady. If there is anything that can make you feel older, or make you wonder where the time went, that having a child get married, I don't want to know about it. It was yesterday that she loved riding on my shoulders and pretending to be asleep so that I would carry her to bed, and I was the only man in her life, and all was right with the world (even if I was too stupid to realize it at the time). Now she is a beautiful, brilliant, loving and almost completely out of the nest. I know, that's the way it should be. That means Barb and I did our jobs. Yada yada. Shut up. This is my blog and I can feel sorry for myself if I want to. Besides, I was talking about bringing beauty INTO the world, but I didn't mean that that beauty actually had to grow up and actually go out INTO the world! But Shannon has never been one to gather moss, so I really shouldn't be surprised. At least my plants will damn well stay where I plant them! They are not going to meet some hot gardenia plant from out of state and run off. They will be right there in the yard, growing and getting prettier and prettier, until one day I might decide to set up a playhouse or swing set or something for another little girl that might somehow just show up for some reason, and we will smell flowers and maybe eat a berry or something, and laugh and tell stories about her mother, and laugh some more, and I will be very, very glad that I had enough birthdays to meet her and enough functioning brain cells to love her, and I will be very, very, very happy. The End.
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