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COMSUBBBS
Posts: 3202
Location: Alexandria, Virginia | Subject: Lighthearted observation.
When you suddenly find yourself single and end up eating by yourself at a kitchen table where you sit across from an empty chair, your lifestyle changes. You eat a lot of SPAM...Don't get me wrong, I love SPAM...especially sliced thin on Brickoven white bread with mayonaise and pickle relish...You eat a lot of baked beans...sometimes cold, right out of the can....Peanut Butter and Mayo samidges....You make a conqueso dip out of half a can of Hormel chili and a jar of Velveeta...or jalopeno Jack cheese melted in your microwave. In short, you adopt the dietary regime of a waste management truck. And It doesn't take you long to recognize that by using paper plates, plasic plates, cups and eating utensils, doing the dishes is simplified. And you eat out a lot....I came up with some things that helped me out, when I went out to eat...First, I always carry 3X5 index cards....I write my order down directly from the menu, on the off chance that Wanita Chiquitta or Wing-Ding-Ho can find someone in the kitchen or the alley out back who understands English and can translate. If you hand them a written out order, they can't come back with,"You no say no chicken noodle zoop." or "No senor you deed not sey tosse an jellies." Works for me....Also I have figured out something that should go in the next Emily Post update. If the eating establishment uses paper napkins you can eat wearing your ballcap...Cloth napkins, take your damn cap off....If you want a lot of elbow room at a Waffle House counter so you can spread out your newspaper and read it...Announce in a loud voice that you have respiratory highly contageous airborne transmitted herpes and ask if anyone wants a face mask...That should empty three stools either side of you. Of course, if you happen to hit a Waffle House where three nurses are having a meal having just gotten off the 8 to 4 shift, you'll have to cobble together some cock-in-bull medical explanation involving the Desease Control Center in Atlanta...experimental drugs at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda and Oral Roberts "arise and walk" prayer cards. Never go in a food store when you're hungry. NEVER fill out one of those, WHEN'S YOUR BIRTHDAY? postal prepaid cards in a chain restaurant...ever! Why? Because when you least expect it, twenty English is a Second Language servers with come dancing out of some swinging door singing Hoppy Burff Dey Tooz You...hauling a bloody cupcake with a sparkler stuck in the sonuvabitch. Somehow, two weeks after your wife dies....word reaches Victoria Secrets and Fredericks of Hollywood and the wonderful catalogs suddenly dry up. ....And Playboy stops running articles about how to entice old gals in steel cable underwire bras, tummy tuck bloomers and support stockings to your cave...and starts running stuff about Porche cars, Bruno Mali shoes, $600 a jug French wine and SPF 2006 suntan oil. When you start cleaning out your house, it's like an archeologial dig. You find her unfinished grocery lists, her soiled lingerie in those plastic hospital bags...more damn duplicate house and car keys that you ever knew existed....Damn Saferway and Giant Food out-of-date cupons...Travel folders for planned trips after you retired....twelve tons of old ant-acid tablets....Norwegian cooking and craft magazines...partially finished knitting projects....and very familiar nighties and unmentionables. And in time...the only mail you get is marked OCCUPANT or HI NEIGHBOR.......These are survival tips for negotiating the Jungle of the All Alone. DEX |
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Master and Commander
Posts: 1324
Location: Oxnard, CA | Subject: RE: Lighthearted observation.
Amen to THAT Dex. For me it will be O Sole Mio for Thanksgiving. I will be alone. Will be the same for me for Christmas too.
The only thing I disagree with is wearing a ballcap in a restaurant, and I even saw a grandfather, a father and a son all wearing ballcaps in church. I asked myself why these gentlemen were wearing their ballcaps in the restaurant, and suddenly it hit me.
They ceased being gentlemen.
Thanks, Dex.
Jon |
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Master and Commander
Posts: 1405
Location: Houston, TX (Best state in the US) | Subject: RE: Lighthearted observation.
JrKrup, Skimmer - 2007-11-09 5:25 PM
Amen to THAT Dex. For me it will be O Sole Mio for Thanksgiving. I will be alone. Will be the same for me for Christmas too.
The only thing I disagree with is wearing a ballcap in a restaurant, and I even saw a grandfather, a father and a son all wearing ballcaps in church. I asked myself why these gentlemen were wearing their ballcaps in the restaurant, and suddenly it hit me.
They ceased being gentlemen.
Thanks, Dex.
Jon
I think you will find that is one of Warshot's pet peeves! It drives him bonkers to see men wearing ballcaps or hats at the table!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, I closed the post and then thought.....well...there are enough shipmates that have become alone and it has to be hard for them as holidays occur...notably Thanksgiving and Christmas, but also on anniversaries and birthdays too....and it struck me....since we are a fairly tight brotherhood, and have some pretty decent databases why we can't get something going so that our "lonely" shipmates can be included in our holiday activities.
If I knew of a shipmate close by who would appreciate an invite to a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, he'd certainly get one.
Ok...let's here from some of you with database skills and people skills if we can make some changes here.
Edited by Stoops 2007-11-09 6:07 PM
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Old Salt
Posts: 256
| Subject: RE: Lighthearted observation.
Dex:
Remember, you have more friends than you know. Start going to church socials,
that way you you'll get invites from the ladies who are in the same boat as you're in.....Make a list of the best ten things you've ever done....and do them again.....or, more fun..make a list of the worst ten things you've and TRY to do them again.....
Actually, skip the last two items and go back to the church socials......
In the winter, visit someplace warm....watch the sun rise and set.......Key West, FL
is good place to do that....look east in AM and west in PM from the same beach chair. Read ten books you've always wanted to read........
Best regards,
Tincanman  |
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COMSUBBBS
Posts: 3202
Location: Alexandria, Virginia | Subject: RE: Lighthearted observation.
I'm working my way out of the hole...It takes a while. I've found that like qualification. When you lose your love, there's no way to speed up the process. It's not like totalling your car and heading to the dealer to get another one the next day...you have to get all the boxes on your grief recovery card signed off. It takes time...and you have to saddle up every dragon in the barn and saddle break the sonuvabitch before you reach daylight. I wrote that post above for everyone out there clawing their way to daylight after losing someone they've spent half their life wrinkling up bed linnen with. It was a "lessons learned" diatribe....It's like playing the holes on life's golf course...just trying to point out the sand traps, water hazards and where the rattlesnakes hang out. As for ballcaps...After Solveig died, ballcaps kinda became my link to continuity...sort of my Linus security blanket, Pooh Bear symbolic link to stability and the familier. Wearing a ballcap she gave me, made me feel gfood...Stupid? Yeah...Made absolutely no sense? Yeah...But, it made me feel good. A lady I was dating, told me that wearing a cap when dining was rude, inappropriate, ungentlemanly, improper and on par with nekkit people who live up the Orinoco River and sleep in trees. So when we went to the HARD TIMES CAFE I took my hat off and sat it next to me on the booth bench...Alice (Who has the bust development equivalent of twin Sealy Posturpedic's) came by...picked up my REQUIN cap and put it on my head..."Jeezus Dex...didn't know who you were." I was out of uniform. Hey...if they have paper napkins, wear your goddam cap...cloth napkins take it off and wear clean socks. I now have a lady friend...she drinks her coffee black...enjoys sunrises, sunsets, stray cats, a glass of port before bedtime...bought her last box of sanitary products twenty years ago...likes John Wayne movies...pork barbeque...watching cable news...is a great cook...likes to take overnight trips...and makes me rake leaves. We're comfortable around each other. Didn't mean to sound like I needed help...Jeezus, I've always needed help, but not that kind. Bob, take it easy...God gave you a submariner's heart. DEX |
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Senior Crew
Posts: 131
Location: Communist Humboldt County | Subject: RE: Lighthearted observation.
Suggestion. . . . You're close enough to Groton to attend their annual TG that they put on every year. I'd like to someday be able to actually volunteer to anything they needed done on that special day. That sounds like a blast to me. Introduce your lady friend to the delights of a boat sailor's Thanks Giving gig plus you'll be able to weed out if she thinks you and everyone is a little strange.
Personally I think Clystie, my 82yr old mother and I will probably go out for a dinner so they can have all the turkey they want and I can have my noodles because the last time I had Turkey it got stuck in my throat for 22hrs and that scared hell outta me so thats not in the cards. I stay with what I know won't get stuck for every more. I may make a couple of my wonderful Apple pies so I can give one to a couple special friends for TG.
Hope this post will help you out a little.
PEP |
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COMSUBBBS
Posts: 3202
Location: Alexandria, Virginia | Subject: RE: Lighthearted observation.
PEP, I'm doing great. What I was attempting to do, was make light of the feeling of abandonment one feels when he or she, loses a spouse. It was not a cry of help...a solicitation of sympathy...or a number five dry fly floated out on the pond of lonely hearts. That's why I posted it under the title Lighthearted Observation....I'm past the SPAM samidge....cold B&M beans stage of recovery...and have found an old gal with support stockings and her own AARP and Medicare cards, who likes her back scratched, rubbed and kneaded....who makes a shrimp casserole that is about as good as dishes come. I'm doing OK...Didn't mean to sound desperate or on the brink of setting fire to myself and jumping off a bridge....But, it is always nice to have boatsailors out there ready to toss you the rope of human kindness and concern. That's one of life's golden chits....kinda like finding a gold coin in the pocket of a Lucky Bag purchase. An old chief who racked in the Forward Room once said..."When you boil all the rah-rah bulls**t out of being a submariner, it gets down to the simple fact that in the final analysis, all we've got is each other." PEP and Bob, Thanks....the value is found in the offer. DEX |
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Lighthearted observation.
