Those of you who have been keeping up with my life, on my blog, might feel as if you have gotten to know me by now. You probably do have a good idea about my likes and dislikes. I recently wrote about my long time abiding love of summer tart, red, cherries. If I had to pick my favorite fruit of all time it would most likely be summer cherries. Oh I like them dried too. Guess what? They are supposed to be good for you too. Yes, I know the sugar in cherries make them bad for a diet but in summer when I see delightful, tangy, cherries, in a bowl on the kitchen counter I have said it before and I will say it again, it is something I just can’t ignore without grabbing one or ten of them. Then, today, one of my Facebook friends, who knows very well that I adore cherries, sent me a video of a person cutting a few beautiful looking red cherries in half. What do you think was in the middle of the cherries? Worms!!!! Little, tiny, white, worms. The person in the video cut many perfect looking cherries in half and 99 % of them had little white worms in them. Now how in the HELL (excuse my language) am I ever going to enjoy a cherry again???
Something happened very similar to this with a summer favorite of mine, fried chicken. Every once-in-a-while I like to treat myself to a piece or two of fried chicken and coleslaw. For me, I can’t have one without the other. Now, I also have a particular thing about fried chicken. I like it cold. In other words, I like cooked fried chicken the second day. I like it cold from the fridge with a cup of nice cold coleslaw sprinkled with a generous amount of salt and pepper on both the chicken and the slaw. I usually only buy this maybe three times a year. I’m not stupid. I know fried chicken isn’t dietetic or particularly good for one’s heart. Still, it is something I look forward to having in summer usually, with cherries for desert. One more thing, I don’t make this myself. I buy it from a fast food restaurant like most of us Lazy Americansdo in summertime when they don’t want to toil over a hot stove. Then I saw it…. I saw another video on Facebook. There was a video of a woman sitting in a fast food restaurant; she peeled the crispy fried chicken skin back on a piece of her chicken and what was underneath the skin? YES, you guessed it … LITTLE, WHITE,WORMS, squiggling about. Even thinking about this video makes me sick all over again. I haven’t been able to have a piece of chicken in several months. To be perfectly fair … the chicken wasn’t from the famous fast food company that likes to give you your chicken in a bucket. The chicken was from another fast food spot. Here is the worst part of the story. I can’t remember which other famous fast food chicken restaurant that was the star of the story. I only remember it was one I haven’t visited recently.
This leads me to a very different subject. As my readers who frequently read the posts on my blog might know, I am in a search for the perfect apartment. What makes this a very difficult quest is that I am very particular in my tastes. To add to this difficulty is that I have pets and my son is living with me for the moment and my “was-band” (husband that was) showed up unexpectedly and is sleeping on my chaise longue at the moment. That isn’t all. I have to move in five weeks and two days, and, last but not least, I have a small budget for the move and for my monthly rent. Now, originally I thought that I should move to a spot near a large body of water and a beach that I could walk along. After searching most of the beaches in the United States I narrowed it down to the Southern tip of Texas. It is a cute little resort town with a long walk-able white sandy beach. I saw a few very nice apartments with lovely views. The apartments are almost the same size as my present apartment. They have large, lovely pools and a gym, wood floors and newly remodeled kitchens. So what’s wrong with the new possible apartments???
Do yourself a favor if you have made up your mind about a new apartment or really if you are going to get anything new that you have seen on line, DON’T…. LET ME SAY THAT AGAIN, DON’T READ THE REVIEWS. So my beautiful newly remodeled apartment is on the first floor and it has mice. Not one mouse, the last renter killed 12 mice and the management doesn’t seem to think it is a problem. The second apartment with, the view of the beach, has bugs, all kinds of bugs… bed bugs, ants and cockroaches. The renter couldn’t stand it and left after four months. The third apartment was really nice but there are never any parking spaces when the renters arrive home from work. There is no assigned parking. The renters are given a sticker but if you have a guest who manages to find a space anywhere in the complex the management puts a boot on your guests’ tire and charges $350 to remove the boot. Apparently, this happens all of the time.
One thing that I have learned after reaching the age of 60 and beyond; is that there is almost always going to be that famous, well known, “FLY IN THE OINTMENT that ruins perfection.” This doesn’t surprise me anymore. Youth is great. Young people look at everything as if everything is going to be great and perfect, and sometimes it is for a moment or two or three but then wham, bam, there it is, just waiting for you to notice it, the fly swimming around in your nice pretty bowl of ointment. It might be that handsome man, with the great smile who simply adores you. He adores you because you are so different from his wife, who is home taking care of his five children, which he forgot to mention, when he asked you out. Or, if you are a young man and ask that nice, sweet girl you met at church, out on a date. You didn’t know she would order three bottles of expensive wine and drink them all by herself, now did you? What about the shiny, new used car you bought that comes with everything except a new timing belt that just broke and wrecked the transmission?
Now, don’t get me wrong. There are some moments and there are some days that are perfect. These days stand out in our minds and probably even get better with time. One of the really great things about being over 60 is that we learn how to go with the flow. We aren’t shocked or surprised when things or people aren’t what they seem. Now, I can bend with the wind. That’s how I have lived to be this old. I just scoop up that fly and toss it out. I keep the ointment and use it until it is all gone. What’s the harm of a fly here or there, anyway?
Until Next Week…
Is There Sex After 60? (Navigating Single Life After 60) 