I read recently in an AARP publication, and then again on Next Door, that there are bad people who are taking advantage of us in new and inventive ways. I think scammers are kind of like the people who sell umbrellas in metropolitan areas like New York City and Rome. A few drops of rain, and within minutes, the streets are full of people offering umbrellas at a ridiculously high price.

Scammers, like umbrella salespeople, react quickly to whatever tragedy is happening in the world. As soon as the word PANDEMIC hit the air waves, people were apparently getting phone calls or email messages about the coronavirus. We have a cure. We have masks for sale. We have an herbal vaccine. We have toilet paper. I’m happy that I never got such a call. Not because I would have fallen for it, but because it would have made me so angry.

The ink wasn’t even dry on the legislation that created the economic stimulus package, whereby many Americans received loot to use to stimulate the economy, before the scammers were making phone calls again. Give us your account number and we’ll invest your money and make you a millionaire. Someone got your check instead of you, but we can fix it if you give us all of your personal banking information. I’ve got some swamp land in Florida I will sell you.

I am very careful about texts and emails that I get. In fact, I don’t answer my telephone if it’s a number I don’t recognize. I always figure if it’s legit, they will leave a message and I can call them back. Also, my email provider does a cracker jack job at recognizing spam. Oh, they get it wrong once in a while. Poor Café Rio can’t get a break from Comcast. But mostly they get it right.

I checked my spam folder yesterday, and learned that someone named Daniel Sullivan was alerting me to the fact that the government discovered they owe me $4.7 million dollars. What a boo-boo. Unfortunately for me, a woman named Annette Stillman was masquerading as me and trying to get my money. The nerve. However, Mr. Sullivan smelled a rat and was going to foil Ms. Stillman’s efforts. He wanted me to give him my bank information so that they can deposit my riches into my account leaving poor old Annette penniless.

Here was the first paragraph of the email, verbatim:

Dear Beneficiary,

We apologies for the delay of your payment and all the inconveniences we might put you through, while we were having some minor problems with our payment system which in all case not meeting up with fund beneficiary payments, we apologize once again.

Obviously, I was totally unconcerned about the fact that the sentence made no sense, nor did it contain any punctuation at all. Bankers, after all, are left-brained and worry about dollars and cents and not commas and correctly spelled words. Ha!

Seriously, these people are evil. But they are also stupid. I know there are, sadly, people who fall for these scams. But I am puzzled by anyone who can read the above paragraph and not stop and wonder.

I’m letting my $4.7 million go unclaimed.

I don’t have a bucket list. In fact, nobody had a bucket list before 2007 when the movie The Bucket List starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman was released. Suddenly everybody has a bucket list.

But not me, because most of the things I would put on a bucket list are things I will never do in a million years. I might offhandedly say, “Wait, what? You’re going to safari in Africa? That’s on my bucket list.” The truth, however, is that I will never go to Africa. I’m not saying that with any kind of sadness; however, the way my life has laid itself out almost certainly precludes a trip to Africa.

Late last year, I watched a series on PBS about the development of country music. One of the episodes featured in the series focused on bluegrass music. I love bluegrass music. In that episode, they showed a number of people — mostly women — playing the dulcimer. I believe I said out loud to myself, “Learning to play the mountain dulcimer is on my bucket list.”

Learning to play the dulcimer, my friends, is another thing that I can’t actually put on a bucket list. I will never learn to play the mountain dulcimer, for a number of reasons. When I looked up dulcimer on Wikipedia, it described it as a fretted string instrument of the zither family. Well, I had no idea what the zither family is, so I looked that up on Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia, the word zither has historically been applied to any instrument of the cittern family.

At that point, I stopped. I didn’t bother to investigate what in the hell the cittern family is. Especially when I read that the word guitar is derived from the word cittern. Huh?

Not knowing where to even find a mountain dulcimer, or someone who provides dulcimer lessons, sealed the deal. I will have to be satisfied with five years of piano lessons. I don’t think the piano is in either the cittern or the zither family.

Another activity that I believe I have thought might be on my bucket list is learning to water ski. Let’s analyze this bucket list item. I can’t swim. I can’t even tread water. My niece Jessie told me that her dog EDI can’t swim. Seriously, I thought all dogs could instinctively swim. Not EDI. Jessie says EDI isn’t buoyant and promptly sinks. EDI and I have that in common. I, too, promptly sink. It isn’t that people haven’t tried to convince me to learn to swim. Many have, and many have failed. I’m not buoyant.

Nevertheless, I think it would be fun to water ski. I tried once, when I was in high school. We had a cabin on a lake, and our neighbors had a speed boat. They spent weekends water skiing. One Sunday, they asked me if I wanted to learn to water ski. Inexplicably, I said yes. Even more inexplicably, my parents — both who knew I couldn’t swim — said, “Great idea! Have at it.”

The neighbors put a life jacket on me, dropped me in the water on a pair of water skis, and took off. It should come as no surprise that I fell within seconds. Unexpectedly, however, the life jacket slipped off of me immediately, and I began to sink, just like EDI. Thank you to God, who gave me the good sense to grab onto a ski which held me up until the neighbors swung around and picked me up.

“Want to try again?” they asked cheerfully. Oh. Hell. No. Mom and Dad didn’t even get up from their lawn chairs.

Perhaps if I ever decide to have a bucket list, it should contain activities at which I might actually succeed. Making the best whiskey sour. Baking the perfect loaf of bread. Making a lasagna without looking at a recipe.

It’s all a matter of perspective.

We have a party in our back yard at least once a week, and have for about a month. A note to our friends: Don’t feel left out. Neither Bill nor I are invited either. It’s our two eldest grandkids — Adelaide and Alastair — who host the party for their friends.

Our back yard is large; large enough, in fact, to put up a volleyball net and have a regular volleyball game. And volleyball seems to be the name of the game. Each week, the group gets larger. Yesterday’s soiree included about 15 to 20 kids. All of them were wearing swim suits and hats. This one included a picnic lunch.

The thing is, were our grands and their friends not enjoying our yard, the grass would be empty. Bill and I often sit out on our patio, but it isn’t like Bill ever turns to me and says, “Hey Kris, are you interested in putting down that bloody mary and hitting a volleyball over the net for a bit?” It’s a good thing, too, because the last time I played volleyball was in high school PE class. I’m pretty sure I didn’t get my serve over the net a single time. And we didn’t wear swim suits.

I was talking to my sister Bec as the kids started to arrive.

“Will you be invited to play?” she asked me.

“Oh, golly,” I replied. “I certainly hope not. If I came out in my swim suit (were I to even have one), the kids would likely all go scampering.”

Here’s the thing, though. I know that all Baby Boomers understand what I’m about to say (and I’ve said it many times before). Despite the fact that I have arthritis in my hands and feet and neck, and despite the fact that the skin around my chin sags and my arms (well, let’s not talk about my arms), I sometimes forget that I’m not 18 years old. I seriously look in the mirror sometimes and think, when did THAT happen?

And I felt that way yesterday as I watched the kids play volleyball and slide on their homemade Slip-N-Slide. They were playing their radio (maybe too loud, I thought, in my best get off my lawn way). The music they were playing wasn’t rap or today’s Top 40 (as though I know what are today’s Top 40). Instead, they were playing the Doobie Brothers and Boston and the Elton John and Michael Jackson. I even heard Build Me Up Buttercup by the Foundations which takes me back all the way to the 1960s. I could sing along with the words (which I did quietly in my kitchen as I prepared dinner so that Addie and Alastair weren’t humiliated)…..

These are nice kids. They all thanked me as they left, despite the fact that I didn’t do a single thing for them (except find a plastic fork for one quiet young woman who asked me politely). They all looked alike to me, so introductions were useless. I could pick out Addie and Alastair, but the rest could have been clones.

I was delighted that I was playing my part in keeping these 15, 16, and 17-year-olds out of trouble. I was also thinking that maybe I should have learned to play volleyball in PE.

Bill told me later he heard them talking about the next time they would gather. They would start charging, and the dining choices would be much improved. Burgers and hot dogs, according to Bill’s eavesdropping. I’m waiting for them to start talking about digging a hole in our yard and roasting a kalua pig, or perhaps putting a goat on a spit.

We all cope in our own way. Just sayin’…..

They say the only thing that is constant is change. I don’t know who “they” is, but it is certainly a true statement. I only have to look in the mirror to see that I have changed a great deal since I was 17 years old — the same age as our eldest grandchild.

Every evening when we sit out on our patio, we hear the sounds of the neighborhood. The sounds this year are somewhat different from other years. More kids seem to be playing outdoors. Lawns are being mowed in the evening. There aren’t as many cars driving down our street. I think the quarantine plays a large role in this reality. Only the sound of the ice cream truck sounds the same. The kids running for ice cream are wearing masks.

We moved into this house — and this neighborhood — in 1993. In the 27 years we have lived here, we have seen a lot of changes. The neighborhood elementary school was shut down when we moved in. Court was 12 years old. He’s now almost 40. Our neighbors across the street also had a 12-year-old boy, as well as a boy about a year or two older. That was about it for kids living on our neighborhood street. The same must have been true throughout the neighborhood, accounting for the closed-down elementary school.

The neighborhood stayed like that for quite a few years. And then little by little, people began getting older and putting their houses on the market. The houses were purchased by younger families who wanted to bring up their children in the City and County of Denver, but didn’t want to live in the inner city. Our neighborhood fit the bill.

Pretty soon, the elementary school reopened. Now there are so many young kids living in this neighborhood that I have to be very careful when I’m backing my car out of the garage. Especially now that families are riding bikes and walking baby strollers and playing basketball in the street.

I admit that I love the sounds of the neighborhood these days. There is a house catty-corner behind us. Though we could toss a baseball to them over our back fence because they are on a cul de sac, we can’t see them. But judging from the sounds I hear every evening, they have a swimming pool, a trampoline, and a number of children. One evening Dave was over smoking a cigar with his dad, and I sat with them (no cigar). I could tell they were playing some sort of game that included both kids and adults, but I couldn’t tell what game. When I wondered out loud, Dave said, “Cornhole. I can hear the thumping sound when they miss.”

On either side of us, and across the street, our neighbors are the same as 27 years ago. We have all aged in place thus far. We all enjoy grandkids now. We also do all of the things older people do. We get gray hair. We have lots of doctors’ appointments. We talk about our health instead of our kids’ activities. We show photos of our grandkids who live far away.

I wonder what this neighborhood will look like in 10 years. Constant change.

Readers of this blog and/or friends of mine (and I hope those two might overlap) may have guessed the truth last week when I announced that Nana’s Whimsies was taking a short break. In fact, one of my good friends contacted me straight away, saying I hope you really are taking a break and it’s not that your old nemesis The Bowel Obstruction has reared its ugly head.

Of course, it was that Mr. Bowel Obstruction once again had reared its ugly head. The pain began suddenly on Wednesday right after lunch. I tried to ride it out, but by 8 or 8:30 that night, I was in too much pain to wait any longer. I was very scared about going to an ER, and what would almost certainly result in an admission to the hospital, in the midst of a pandemic. I was certain Bill wouldn’t be allowed inside. Actually I was worried for no reason on both those accounts. Bill was able to be with me in ER, and he was also allowed to visit after I was admitted. The same wouldn’t have been true a week earlier.

When I get sick in Denver, I always go to the same hospital. I have never been treated in any other way than with respect. The same was true this time. I will admit they didn’t immediately jump on the painkiller bandwagon, but I get it. They started conservatively. When that didn’t work, they came shooting with both barrels.

“What are you giving me?” I asked the nurse. “Fut tunnel,” he replied. Or something like that. “Say it again,” I requested as I reached for my notepad. “I want to write it down.” “Fut tunnel,” he repeated.

Suddenly it occurred to me what he was saying. I have read enough mystery novels to know the dark road you go down when you begin taking fut tunnel. Or Fentanyl, which is what it was.

“Just like in our gritty novels,” I told my sister Bec the next day. “Except I wasn’t shooting up in a dirty gas station bathroom.”

But my funny hospital-story-of-the-period doesn’t have to do with the Fentanyl, which definitely relieved my pain but I don’t ever need to see again. Instead, it has to do with where they located a bed for me to live for the next two days. I was sent to the neurology ward. The good news was that Neurology was designated a non-COVID floor, so I didn’t have to worry about that. The bad news, however, was that patients on that floor are confined to their beds, no ifs, ands, or buts.

And therefore, so was I. My bed was literally alarmed. If I lifted a single butt cheek from the mattress, nurses and other personnel came running like ants from an anthill sprayed with pesticide. That didn’t cause a problem the night I was admitted because I was still in a lot of pain and in no mood to move from my bed. However, the next morning, the pain let up. Just as it always does, one moment I’m getting ready to ask for more pain medication, and suddenly the pain goes away. Zap. Gone.

At that point I feel as well as the nurse. Probably better because Fentanyl provided me a long winter’s nap. I began begging my nurses to remove the alarm and let me walk the floors or at least go to the bathroom by myself. My pleas fell on deaf ears until finally a nurse agreed that if she could confirm that I could walk without help, she would free me from my mattress bondage.

But here’s the problem: Whenever I’m in the hospital, I wake up the next morning with a headache. It could be from the pain meds. It could be from not being able to drink a cup of coffee (nothing by mouth). It could be a combination of the two. But I always have a headache. And when I ask for something for the pain, I’m always given the same answer: The only thing I can take is Dilaudid. Now, I thank God on my knees for the Dilaudid when I can barely stand up because my stomach hurts so bad. But PEOPLE. It’s a headache. After expressing her shock that I would turn down a narcotic, she agreed to talk to the doctor about an alternative.

About a half hour later, she comes to take me on my walk. But first, she tells me that the doctor has suggested a medication called Phenergan. It’s an antihistamine used primarily as an anti-nausea medication. Into my IV it goes and I get out of bed. I immediately feel dizzy, but I attribute it to the fact that I have been flat on my back for over 24 hours at that point. But as we began walking, it became apparent that I was as high as a kite.

The nurse walked me back to my bed, where Bill was waiting. The room was spinning. I was having hallucinations that included Bill looking like an infant and leaning over me. My lips wouldn’t move when I tried to talk.

Bill acted calm, but left as soon as he could without facing the danger of The Bad Husband Award. I never took LSD, but I’m pretty sure I know what it’s like. Needless to say, I was stuck in that bed for a half day longer.

I was freed that night, and also allowed to begin my eating regime. Best of all, they removed the IV since I could now take liquids by mouth. It allowed me to sleep better and to not have to worry about Phenergan accidentally being put into my IV again.

I’m fit as a fiddle and glad to be back home.

Nana is taking a short break. I’ll be back soon.