And finally, our last made-up story about our mysterious neighbor. To see the other two stories, click here and here.

Jason comes from a long line of Rumford, Maine, fishermen. His father, Larry III, was a fisherman. His grandfather, Larry Jr., was a fisherman. His great-grandfather, Larry, was a fisherman. In fact, his ancestors going all the way back to Scotland all fished for a living. They kept their family fishing boats purring like a kitten. They kept the fishing net strong and neatly mended. This particular boat had been part of their family for nigh on 100 years. A-yep.

Larry Jr. was looking forward to his grandson Jason taking over the family’s fishing business. He was tired, and so old that he could barely remember what Bill Belichick looked like. Jason had been accompanying his father Larry III on the boat since he was a little boy. It was true that Jason seemed a bit different from the other fishermen’s kids and grandkids. Larry Jr. blamed it on his son for naming his boy Jason instead of the expected Jason IV.

“Names are important,” he tried to explain to Larry III. “Larry is a name you should be proud of.”

“I am very proud of the name Larry,” Larry III told his dad. “But it’s time that we start shaking things up a bit in this family. It’s time we accept that it’s the 21st Century. Larry is a 20th Century name. Jason SCREAMS Millennial.

But Jason is keeping a secret from all of the Larrys in his life. He can barely think the words much less say them out loud to his father Larry Jr. The fact is that Jason has no interest in fishing. In fact (and these are the words he has never told anyone), Jason has motion sickness. The truth of the matter is that he carries barf bags in his pocket. When he is feeling particularly nauseous, he hurries down below deck and tosses his cookies into the bag, and throws the bag overboard. There have been reports of pods of dolphins with plastic bags on their noses. Jason feels badly, but what is he to do? When Larry III asked Jason why he was wearing a patch behind his ear, Jason told him it was Apples’ latest ear buds.

Jason knew the only thing he could do was to run away from home. He needed to get as far away as possible, and as far from the sea as he could get. He looked at a map, and chose Mesa, AZ. There would be no oceans within a couple of hundred miles.

Without telling a soul, he flies to his new home. He plans on letting his parents know he’s safe and where he is once he is settled. Until then, he wants to keep his location a secret. He found a small furnished house in east Mesa, and put down a rental deposit. He hung kokopellis on his walls and put fake iron javelinas in his front yard. Anything but lobsters. The closest he came to a fishnet was an Indian dreamcatcher that he put up behind his bed.

The neighborhood was quiet. He kept his lights dim to avoid being seen. There was one close call when the man next door introduced himself. Up to that point, Jason had only seen him from the waist down as he mostly had his head inside the engine of a Ferrari.

“We’d love to have you come over for a cocktail sometime,” the man said. “Maybe we can include shrimp cocktail!”

“I’m allergic to shellfish,” Jason said, firmly.

I’m going to continue with another made-up story about our next-door neighbor. If you read yesterday’s post, you know we have a mysterious new neighbor. Mysterious, because he seems reluctant to make our (or anyone’s) acquaintance, doesn’t seem to have a job, and seems to sit in the dark. Because we can’t figure him out, we are writing our own stories. Names are made up. By the way, do you remember this neighbor of ours?

Jason Big Nose McGill is getting tired of being a hit man for the Irish Mob in Cleveland. Being a mobster is all he knows how to do. He’s been a part of the mob since he was 12, when he delivered messages to those owing the Boss money and hitting them in their kneecaps with a croquet mallet for good measure. Not surprisingly, he could never get excited about playing croquet after that. Until now, he hadn’t minded being part of the Irish Mob. It’s what his family did. His own father had been the Consigliere to the big Boss before he got shot by a rival gangster while in the arms of his mistress who had dropped by for some of his famous Irish stew.

His heart just isn’t in it anymore. Not since he met Astrid Bjorg, a nice Norwegian girl from the right side of the tracks. His parents had stopped speaking to him ever since he brought her home to meet them. She even brought lutefisk and pickled herring. It didn’t help. He wants to settle down, maybe have a kid or two (would they be Norwish?) and work at the ironworks plant alongside her father.

It isn’t easy to leave the Mob, however. But he has an idea, one that’s dangerous but has possibilities. He knows about an upcoming hit on the mayor, who also happens to be a member of the rival gang that killed his father. He’s pretty sure he can work out a deal to be placed in a Witness Protection Program if he alerts the authorities to this hit.

And he’s right. They agree to send him to Mesa, AZ, if he will testify in court. He does as he said he would do, and then goes to tell Astrid the good news.

“Are you flipping kidding me?” she says, much to his surprise. “There is not a bit of Norwegion food south of Strasburg, Nebraska. I’m not going someplace where they eat tamales instead of Kjøttkaker.” She would hear none of his arguments, and he finally gave up.

But he knew his time was limited if he didn’t get out of town soon. The FBI placed him in a quiet neighborhood in east Mesa. They gave him a furnished house, a nondescript car, a nose job, and a new last name.

He isn’t giving up on Astrid. But he’s laying low and keeping quiet. He avoids the neighbors by driving his beige 2001 Toyota Corolla into the garage and closing the door before he gets out of the car. There was only one mishap, when the next door neighbor, who always has his butt sticking out of a red Ferrari, came over and introduced himself.

“Maybe you could come over sometime for a cocktail,” the neighbor said.

“Fat chance,” he thought. “I’m busy teaching myself how to pickle herring. Now, if I could just find herring in this damn town.”

I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet that we have a new neighbor here in AZ. Sadly, our Canadian friends who owned the house next door as long as we have owned this house chose to sell. We miss them very much. But we looked forward to meeting our new neighbor. The truth is, for a variety of reasons, we have not really met him. We know a few things about him: 1) His name is Jason. We know this about him because we received a piece of his mail that was misdelivered to us. 2) He is a youngish man, in the neighborhood of 35 or so. We know this because Bill walked over to him one time when Jason was putting trash in his can out front and Bill introduced himself. 3) He mostly sits in the dark. Jen keeps track of this because when she takes Winston out for his final chores at night, there are no lights on. Ever. Finally, when he drives home, he pulls his car into the garage and shuts the garage door before he gets out of the car.

Because we haven’t had the opportunity to meet him, we are each writing our own story about Jason’s life. I will feature a new story for the next few days. Names are completely fictitious. Except for Jason’s.

The last time was a close call. Too close for Jason’s comfort. Up until then, he had been able to kidnap a total of three different women from three different parts of the west side of the Phoenix area, kill them, and dispose of their bodies without even a wave from a police officer. This time, however, he forgot to put on his mask before going into the Arizona Department of Transportation where he had stopped to renew his driver’s license before driving his latest kidnapped victim home. Bad choice, Buddy, he told himself. You should have waited until the weekend, even if the lines were longer. Because as he sat quietly looking at his number (48) and the number they were on (2), a tiny woman wearing a Bernie Sanders for President shirt, came up to him and began screaming that he SHOULD BE WEARING A MASK. He didn’t want to give up his place in line, because now they were on (7), but he didn’t want to call attention to himself. He got up to leave, but to his surprise, the little tree-hugger was as relentless as she was small. She followed him to his car just as the woman in the trunk began pounding her feet against the roof.

He quickly got into his car and drove to his house. She had his license plate, however, and he knew he didn’t have much time. He opened his trunk a touch and threw in a bottle of lotion. “You might want to start spreading lotion on yourself,” he told her. “I don’t know why, but I saw it in a movie once.”

He called his friend who was a realtor, and found out there was a house for rent, fully furnished. The only problem was that it was in west Mesa, very far from where he currently lived. “Hmmm,” thought Jason. “Far away is good. Very good.”

“I’ll take it if I can move in this afternoon!” he said.

Since the house was currently vacant, the realtor agreed. He gave Jason the code for the lockbox and told him where the garage door opener was kept.

Jason drove the two-and-a-half hours it took to get to the other side of town. (There was an accident on the 10 that held him up for 45 minutes.) “Shut up,” he yelled to the girl who was once again kicking her legs. “Keep lotioning up.”

When he arrived at the new house, the first thing he noticed was the neighbor’s garage door was open, and there was a man’s butt sticking out of a bright red Ferrari. He filed that away for future cogitation. That might be trouble.

He got into the house, and found the garage opener. He opened the garage, got back into the car, and drove in. He shut the garage door and got out of the car. Unfortunately, he very quickly realized that the garage was so small that you couldn’t get a bag of groceries out of the trunk when the garage door is closed, much less a wiggling and very soft-skinned woman. He had to go into his back seat and approach the trunk from rear.

He finally got her into the house, but in the struggle, he was injured and had gotten blood all over his shirt. He removed the shirt and took it out to the garbage can which was in the street. He was walking quickly back to the house when the man-with-the-Ferrari came over and introduced himself.

“Hi,” he said. “Bill McLain. We live next door. Welcome to the neighborhood. We’ll invite you over for cocktails soon.”

Jason went inside in a hurry, and began digging a basement.

Bill, Jen, and I went for a drink at a golf club near Maggie’s house yesterday. I don’t get out much these days, so I decided to go big or go home: I put on a little makeup. Nothing major. A bit of blush and some mascara. Afterwards, we stopped at Maggie’s house so Jen could have supper with them. I walked into the house and was greeted by Lilly. “Are you wearing makeup?” she asked me, obviously astonished. “I am,” I replied. She looked at me carefully, and asked, “Do Gram and my mom know about it?” she asked.

I was surprised she noticed, But I didn’t realize I needed their permission.

Have a great weekend.

Another Week
Two weekly tasks remind me of my mortality. Each Wednesday afternoon as I draft my Thursday Thoughts, I think, wow, how did another week get by me so quickly. And I am similarly reminded when I undertake the dreaded task of readying Bill’s and my pill cases for the upcoming week on Saturday afternoon. The task takes eight minutes (I timed myself recently), but I dislike doing it despite it’s brevity. I think it’s partially because I hate to be reminded about the need for more meds as we age, and I don’t want to age. But it’s also because it’s another reminder of the passage of time.

On the Other Hand….
Boy, that was depressing. However, the good news this week is that I was able to secure an appointment for the first COVID vaccination for me, and the second vaccination for Bill. I got a text message from my niece Maggie day before yesterday with a link to a news report that Maricopa County was going to be releasing 21,000 more doses the next day at 9 o’clock for people 65 and older. I assure you that I am not kidding when I tell you that I was sitting at my computer at 8:54 with my hand over the button. The portal actually opened at 8:57, and I was able to get an appointment for February 9 at 9:42 a.m. even before the clock struck 9. Ha! Furthermore, with Jen’s help, I was able to get an appointment for Bill’s second shot on February 18, which is exactly 21 days after his original vaccination. PERFECTO! I’m telling you, it takes a village to figure out and secure an appointment.

Doctor, Doctor, Gimme the News
In the past week or so, both Bill and I found out that we had some prescriptions to refill, but our doctor wouldn’t refill them without seeing us. Roh-roh, I thought. But wait! It’s the 21st Century and we are in a worldwide pandemic. Of course we could have our appointments by phone. Actually, Bill talked to the doc by telephone, but I was able to join him on some sort of invited medical appointment site, whereby he looked me in the eye and I looked him in the eye! Modern technology never ceases to amaze me. I wonder if I’ll ever go into the doctor’s office again.

Shopping
My sister Bec has a friend who owns a sweet little boutique store near where Bec lives. Yesterday evening, she opened her shop to a very small group (three, to be exact) for a special shopping experience. Bec invited me as part of my belated Christmas present. We had a wonderful time. The shop was amazing — Judy Wear — and we had a awesome shopping experience…..

Afterwards, we went and picked up Thai food. Jen stayed home and kept Bill company.

Ciao

One of my cousins is retired, but volunteers at high schools in Nebraska. He announces small town football games, he writes stories about the games for local newspapers, and so forth. He’s well respected in the small-town communities around his area.

He recently posted something on Facebook that caught my attention. He apparently was invited to MC a cheerleading competition. He posted a group photo of several cheerleading squads (maybe they were the competition winners??) Anyhoo, there were some 50 or so girls from at least three schools posing in typical cheerleading positions. You know, those positions that make my body hurt just to look at them. But what struck me was that all of these girls — every single one — was wearing a mask.

Somehow, that just took my breath away. I couldn’t help but think that this photo was verification of how weird the world is right now. Not that we needed reminding. And it also made me think that when these kids are parents or grandparents, they’re going to show this photo to their kids/grands and tell them about 2020/2021, the years of the worldwide pandemic. The years when things changed dramatically.

That, then, made me think about significant times or world events that I still remember. Those where you know where you were when they happened. I’m 67 years old, so there have been quite a few. There are three that particularly come to my mind.

I attended Catholic school for my elementary and high school years. In 1960, I was in first grade. We were learning about how presidential elections worked. The teacher asked the class to raise their hands if they would vote for John F. Kennedy. Almost everyone raised their hands. She then asked who would vote for Richard M. Nixon. Carolyn Meyer and I raised our hands. Because see above: Catholic school. When I was in fourth grade, on November 22, 1963, our principal (a nun whose name I can’t recall) walked into our classroom with a very somber face. She said, “Children, get down on your knees. We are going to pray. Our president has been shot.” I think everyone remembers where they were when they heard that terrible news. His assassination changed America.

I remember June 12, 1987, when President Reagan made his famous speech in Berlin. He and other world leaders had been working for some time to defeat communism. Heck, during all those years of Catholic school, we never failed to pray for the “conversion of Russia.” Reagan’s speech in which he firmly told President Gorbachev, “Mr. Gorbachev, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL,” was an important part of the breakdown of communism. I watched the speech yesterday on You Tube, and I will admit that I started to cry. I never thought I would see an end to the Cold War in my lifetime.

Of course, one of the most unforgettable moments in all of our lives was September 11, 2001. In so very many ways, that event changed our lives forever.

I wish I could live long enough to first, see the end of this pandemic; and second, to see how it is written about in our kids history books in the future.

What do you need to be content?

That question was recently posed to me by Pinterest or Facebook or Instagram or one of the social media platforms I peruse. (Actually, those three are the only platforms I know how to use. See yesterday’s post.)

Anyway, it’s an interesting question, and one I gave a lot of thought yesterday. There’s no reason I shouldn’t always be content. I have just about everything a person would want out of life. A great family. Nine healthy and happy grandkids. A wonderful husband who’s already shown me the box of candy he’s going to give me for Valentine’s Day, both because I was in a, er, discontented mood and because he has a hard time keeping a secret. Not one but two nice homes– both paid for — so that I can enjoy the best seasons in the best places.

See what I mean? Content should be my middle name. Yet, I’m often rattled. At loose ends. Disgruntled. Crabby. Restless. Darn right sad.

Take the other day when I took Bill for his COVID vaccination. I was positively CONVINCED they would vaccinate me if I smiled nicely and explained that I was his caregiver. Instead, they smiled nicely back at me and said they were so very sorry, but because vaccines are in short supply, they are only giving them to those older than 75. I understood. I still do. Nevertheless, I cried all the way home, and long after that.

At some point, Jen asked me why I was so disappointed. “Are you so afraid of getting COVID?” she asked. It took me most of the day, but at some point, I realized that she was on the right track. I’m not afraid I’ll get the virus. Don’t get me wrong. It could happen. But I’m very careful, I always wear my mask, and my idea of an outing is to the grocery store. The truth of the matter is that even if/when I’m vaccinated, there is still no place to go. I’ll get the vaccine at some point.

Our eldest granddaughter Adelaide is a senior in high school this year. Even Baby Boomers on the older end of the scale remember our senior years. Prom, football games, plays, senior photos, ceremonies. Sadly, many seniors this year aren’t having that same experience. But if I had to describe someone who is content, it would be Addie. Her parents may disagree because undoubtedly she complains to them more than to her nana. Still, she and her siblings and their friends made their own homecoming celebrations. She got senior photos taken. She’s happily working towards a decision as to where she’s going to go to school. She is making the best of it all.

As are ALL my grandchildren. I should use them as my example. Because the truth is, worrying or feeling discontent does absolutely nothing to solve the problem. My rule should be if I can do something to change a situation that I don’t like, I should do it; if I can’t change a thing, I should let it go.

And thanks John Steinbeck for letting me borrow your book title.

Facebook — or a variation thereof — was created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. If you live in a cave on Saturn, you might not know that FB is a social medium onto which people can post photos and comments about, well, really anything they might feel the need to share. Facebook’s closely related sister — Instagram — is very similar, only it mostly features photos.

While Mr. Zuckerman didn’t call me up in 2003 and ask for my input and advice, I’m fairly sure his objective was to allow people to communicate information about their lives to those who choose to follow you. Of course, the Facebook user chooses just what they want to let people know about. And my guess is that mostly they share a very narrow slice of their lives.

I signed up for Facebook sometime around 2008 or 2009. I had to close down my account at one point because a Bad Guy hacked into my account and began telling my friends that I was in London and lost my purse and passport and needed them to send me oodles of money. Thankfully, no one fell for the ploy. I closed down that account and joined under another email address. And just for the record, if I’m ever in London and lose my purse and money, I will not ask for donations. Unless you insist.

The thing about both Facebook and Instagram is that no one tells a complete story of their life. No one would be interested in seeing a picture of me in my sweats. without makeup, telling you all that I’ve had a shitty day. I don’t feel like cooking. There’s an inch of dust on my furniture because I don’t feel like dusting. Bill and I have been bickering all day long.

Nope. I — along with most others — post photos of my garden plants when they are thriving, and my bedroom when it’s freshly painted and the bed is made, and the fresh loaf of bread that I just took out of the oven when the egg wash is still gleaming.

The reason I started thinking about this was that I read a book called Confessions on the 7:45, by Lisa Unger (which I will review very soon). I don’t want to give away the story, but it deals a lot with the picture she paints of her life on social media and how it is vastly different than her real life. I found that notion disturbing and, frankly, pretty accurate.

I used to post photos about my life quite frequently on Facebook and Instagram. I’ve never figured out Twitter and my dance moves aren’t good enough for Tik Tok. I don’t even know all the other forms of social media. I know I’m showing my age simply by even mentioning Facebook. I post my blog on Facebook every day out of habit. (Also, my sister Bec “likes” my post everyday to let me know she’s alive and well. Seriously. It’s our check-in system.) But as for the rest of my life, I almost never post any more. I’m not anti-posting; I just figure my blog allows my friends and family to keep up, and they don’t want to hear a single word more.

Social media is a great means of communicating with far-away family and friends. But I have to remind myself as I look at everyone’s life, that they probably don’t wear makeup sometimes and dust may collect on their furniture as well.

My mother used to say whenever our dog Mac got a haircut, he was so embarrassed he wouldn’t come out of the bedroom. I didn’t believe her. Dogs can’t feel things like embarrassment. Right?

Wrong. Yesterday, Jen’s yorkipoo Winston got a much-needed haircut. In particular, his tail had gotten matted and unattractive. Jen told the groomer to cut him short, and to cut the tail as short as the rest of him.

Well, he cut him short, all right. Except for his cute little face, he looks pretty skinny and, well, cold. And let me tell you, he was definitely embarrassed. He walked into the house, jumped on the sofa, and put his head under one of the pillows.

Here is a shot of him hiding in the small space between the wall and an ottoman. Don’t look at me, he seemed to be saying. I’m hideous.

The good news Winston? It will grow back. The bad news? The temperatures are falling once again. Stay warm.

Have a great weekend.