A Day in the Life

       Several days ago the remote for the kitchen TV disappeared.  I looked all over, searched through the trash can, but I’ve been pretty much getting along without it  – about all I watch in the kitchen is CNN, and these days it’s all Donald Trump anyhow.
      To set the background – I take hot baths every morning and night, with a book on the bath tray.  Right now it’s The Vicar of Wakefield, and I’m about to email a friend who’s an English prof, because I can’t figure out -- is that novel for real or was it intended as what Jane Austen called a “burlesque”?  But I digress.
       So this morning I happened to take a good look at the portable phone I keep next to the tub, thinking maybe it was time to re-charge it back on the stand – and whaddye know – it was the remote for the kitchen TV.
       I've been making jokes about Old-Timers-Disease whenever I have trouble remembering a word (usually it’s nouns, incidentally) but this morning for the first time I got genuinely scared.  That was just too close to the classic car-keys-in-the-freezer for comfort. 
      OTOH, I had remembered to send my kids the “I’m still here, it’s okay” morning email.  And I did remember to take the antibiotics before I headed out for the dentist – said driving not quite as simple as it sounds.  When old friends meet now, just about the first question is “So are you still driving?”  That’s the big dividing line, the next question being “but what about at night?”  Sorry, digressing again…
      It occurred to me that the electric Smart, which is in the garage, might not be the best bet, for the dentist’s office is in Bushnell’s Basin, an old Erie Canal village out by the Thruway.  The Smart doesn’t have all that much range, and the Thruway doesn’t come very close to Rochester.  That was a getting-even by Governor Thomas E. Dewey, after the Rochester publisher Frank Gannett went after the Republican nomination and showed up at the Convention with a live elephant.  I remember as a child seeing pictures of said elephant on some front page.
      So with just a cane I tottered out to the Chevy on the driveway, only to find I’d brought the wrong car keys.  Back to the house, during which trip it was clear I'd forgotten to take the morning painkillers.  And the garage-door opener doesn’t work right, and I keep forgetting to call the repairman.  But anyhow –
      Let’s skip right to the dentist’s office, where I manage three steps, wobble in, hang up my jacket(painful right arm will no longer stretch up to those hooks, as usual installed by six-foot workmen) only to be told by a smiling receptionist that my appointment is for tomorrow.  Today is Monday.

She phoned the pharmacist so I could pick up more meds for tomorrow.  And so back to Rochester, where I circled Wegman’s parking lot til I spotted one of those Helpers and got him to leave a shopping cart right by handicap parking.  And where, when the prescription still wasn’t quite ready, I went over and bought – it still feels pretty weird – a single baking potato.  Weight .68 lb.  Cost 69 cents. 

Bought two bags of groceries in all.  And the pills still not ready, I tried the do-it-yourself blood-pressure machine.  126 over 61. Maybe this would be a good day to buy a lottery ticket after all.

      But I didn’t.  Drove home, realized I usually unload groceries right into the rolling cart from the garage. Eventually figured out how to get those two grocery bags up the driveway anyhow.
     And it’s not yet noon, so I guess this is just a Half-Day in the Life.