I have a budget project.
It’s for accounting class.
Obviously.
It’s a pain in the ass.
Obviously.
We have to make up numbers.
Technically, we research.
I have actuals from projects.
So, a hard drive search.
Painfully.
We’re still in business,
So I should get an ‘A’.
I have to make a completed event
Appear it would be a successful day.
I’m pulling for a ‘B+’.
We are going to get an RV.
It is time to hit the open road.
We will go wherever we wanted.
We will be Grandparent Ninjas,
Swooping in to visit and vanishing.
Off to discover America on the open road.
We would have no schedule to meet.
Sleep wherever we wanted to sleep.
Stay as long as we liked.
Vanish with the wind.
We learned some of the lingo.
I signed up for all the emails.
We watched all the RV programs.
We yelled at all the families
Who obviously picked the wrong unit.
I started a blog because I was serious.
I began mapping our planned journeys.
We would retrace some of the long roads
We had previously traveled by car.
This would be so much less stressful.
Finally we started looking at RVs.
I wanted a Class A like Willie’s bus,
Just with less smoke.
My wife wanted a travel trailer.
She didn’t want to be a bus driver.
Some RVs seemed a wee bit small,
Especially for larger people.
Then, my wife reclined on an RV bed,
With her relatively bad back.
She said, “Where will you sleep?”
We both considered driving with forty feet
Of metal following behind on every turn.
We’d both backed into things in cars.
I wondered how to determine bridge ratings
Before we plunged into a raging river.
Soon we realized it was convenient to
Sleep wherever you wanted to sleep.
Stay as long as you liked.
Have coffee and breakfast in the morning.
We will save a lot of money not getting a RV.
This savings will help cushion the sadness.
Much of the savings will end up going to
Our friends at Hampton Inns worldwide.
We’d drive beds with us but they have them already.
Since we don’t have to drive our beds around,
The rest of the RV savings fund goes to
Our friends at Southwest Airlines.
They go pretty much where we would have driven,
And they actually go faster than my wife.
I’m sad we are not getting an RV.
On the other hand, I can afford the groceries
My wife can fit inside a car, even a rental.
I’m not sure how much of Carfagna’s
She could have fit inside a toy hauler.
I hear my wife gently breathing.
I hear the dogs rustling around.
I hear the owl calling outside.
I hear the rain hit the ground.
I hear the water in the pipes.
I hear the A/C turning on.
I hear leaves falling.
I hear grass on the lawn.
I hear the ducts expanding.
I hear the monsters creep.
I hear the alarm sounding.
Now, I can sleep.
No pony.
No party.
Low-carb cake.
Annual physical.
Kill me now.
My final request (one of them.)
Today is my 59th birthday. Happy Birthday to me. Last Saturday, I attended a funeral. It’s getting a little close to home.
The only way for me to deal with death is to laugh. I hate death. I hate sadness. I don’t like crying. I don’t like being in a room with lots of sad people. So, I want to prevent that at my funeral.
Now, some may say it’s unlikely there will be much sadness at my funeral, but I’m trying to be optimistic.
I don’t want a preacher with a couple of readings and a generic homily with my name stuck in a few places.
I don’t want a “Celebration of Life” since that just means “boring-ass funeral.”
So, I want my services to be fun (or at least different.)
One of the interesting (or bizarre) aspects of cremation is that the ashes don’t have to end up in only one container. More than one of the bereaved can receive a portion of the deceased as a memento (“souvenir” seemed crass.) For an extra fee, you can have ashes sealed in a locket, so you can match your relatives to your outfit.
This has been discussed twice now, coincidentally at two different Italian funerals. This is why so many Churches in Italy have so many pieces of so many Saints. Divide and conquer.
I am planning to be cremated when my time comes, and hopefully not before. Since I am not a small person, there may be an excess of ashes. So, this is my last request, which my wife predictably refuses to honor.
Wait for my wife to be acquitted of my murder on grounds of temporary (or permanent) insanity.
Cremate me. First, put some microwave popcorn in my pockets so I have a snack while crossing the River Styx, then cremate me.
Divide my ashes into ten urns. There aren’t ten people who care enough to want a piece of me – again, see the Italians: “You wanna piece of me?” – but they’re not for people, they’re for pubs. They’re the stops on my progressive wake. A progressive wake is a pub crawl to the Hereafter.
Mark the urns:
Deliver each urn to the appropriate pub. (I didn’t choose any outside the Metroplex or on a cruise ship, so this should be doable on an afternoon.) The delivery person might want to wrap the urn in a box and address to me, with a good tip to the bartender and a promise that it will be picked up quickly. This would probably be more acceptable than to ask, “Can we leave a small jar of dead guy here for a few hours?”
Now, you (my mourners) are ready to hold the progressive wake.
At my memorial service, hand each of the five or six people that show up a map with all the pubs marked. You could also show them the map at the bottom of this discussion, or give them a link to this page.
Call an Uber or two for the participants (don’t drink and drive!)
Once all the pubs are visited and all the urns collected, return to the memorial service. Apologize to the hosts from the funeral home for the slight delay.
Record any eulogies that are given. If the participants followed the spirit(s) of the Progressive Wake, they may be good blackmail material or at least they will be funny.
Dump all the little urns into one big-ass urn. Have someone with allergies do this, so there will be some tears at the service, after all.
Bury me none on the lone prairie.
Progressive Wake
I’m fifty-nine years old today.
365 days until a meaningful one.
I think I need a nap.
Then it’s “Get off my lawn!” practice.
All the numbers that I just copied,
Say “This info furnished to the IRS.”
That’s so nice and easy.
The Feds don’t have to guess.
If they have the info already,
And they design the forms to fill.
Why don’t they just do our taxes?
Then just send us out our bill.
My birthday is this Tuesday.
I will spend it recovering from taxes.
Oh, such fun is my birthday!
I will be fifty-nine years old.
Too young to die,
Too old to work at IBM.
My party is not on Tuesday.
My party is this afternoon.
My family celebrates on weekends.
My family is weird that way.
The government moved holidays to Monday,
And my parents misread the memo.
So, today is my party.
Yee haw!
I still won’t get a pony.
Damn.
Maybe Tuesday a pony will arrive.
I’m not holding my breath.
Who can hold their breath for two days?
Weekends should be restful.
A time to recharge and relax.
This weekend, my schedule is not.
I have mentoring, a funeral,
A birthday party and more mentoring.
Plus, homework and taxes.
Can’t I just go to work instead?
Someone once said that
The two most common elements
Were hydrogen and stupidity.
This person did not have a Chihuahua.
If he had, the phrase would have been
The top three elements, and the
Most prevalent of all would have been
lovely, shedding Chihuahua hair.
I went to Peoria, Illinois on business.
It was far away from hearth and home.
I had my computers and my clothes,
And in my suitcase, Chihuahua hair.
My wife is having a midlife crisis.
She dyed her hair purple and blue.
The crisis was just a cover story.
She just wants to know which hair is hers.
If my wife had replaced Neil Armstrong,
The quote for history would have been
“That’s one small step for man …
Dammit! Where is all this hair from?”
Really?
Do you need to ask?
Unfiltered Thoughts 