Suzanne Olsen's Humor Blog - I don't offend some of the people most of the time

Category: Health Page 2 of 3

The Dieter’s Song

If you are like me, totally lacking in will power, then you’ve probably already fallen off the New Year’s Resolution Diet wagon.

I made up a song to help us both climb back on and ride that thing into the sunset – or at least until the end of January, which I think is a pretty good success rate for an impossible New Year’s Resolution.

This song is sung to the tune of the “59th Street Bridge Song” better known as “Feeling Groovy” by Simon and Garfunkle. If you’re not familiar with the song, here’s a link to listen (the commercial at the first is short): www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBQxG0Z72qM&feature=related

59th Attempted Diet Song

Slow down, you’re eatin’ too fast
You gotta make that salad last
Just pickin’ at the chicken bones
Lustin’ for more cause
I’m so hungry
Ba da da da da,da da friggin’ hungry.

Hello French toast
Whip cream flowin’
Can’t eat you – my belly’s growin’
Not one single bite for me
Do it do do do I’m so hungry
Ba da da da da,da da friggin’ hungry.

Got no cheese or booze,
No licorice or wheat
I’m starving and grumpy and feeling so weak
Let the morning scales drop all these pounds off of me…
Diet, I hate you,
I’m so hungry
Ba da da da da,da da friggin’ hungry.

Sing this tune when you’re tempted to gorge yourself. I hope it works better for you than it has for me…

Reading Heath Magazines Is Scarey Business

I was in a building permit office today waiting for a solar electric system plan review – which is strikingly similar to waiting for a jury to pronounce a sentence on you because you’re at the plan reviewer’s mercy, holding your breath that (s)he will accept the plans you’ve drawn and not ream you out with the words: “Looks like this is going to require engineering.” Because if (s)he says that, you’re immediately behind schedule by two+ weeks and your budget for the project will fly out the window like rays from the sun.

Since there is always a wait at these permit offices, they try to help you pass the hours with months’ old magazines. I picked up Shape magazine and within seconds found out I was at risk for glaucoma, skin cancer, and stroke – a victim of genetics.

Did you know that if you’re a woman who wears glasses, your risk of glaucoma rises – especially if it runs in your family (my risk came thanks to my grandfather who I affectionately called Pops).

Also if I wear sunscreen I’m more at risk for sunburn. Huh? According to the article, it’s because I may mistakenly think that I can stay out longer, or I’m not slathering on enough, or often enough, or maybe it’s because I got up on the wrong side of the bed. Scientists aren’t sure why.

I could have a stroke for any number of reasons, many of which I can’t do a thing about, such as having a parent whose had a stroke. Eating everything in sight also doesn’t help, apparently.

But  now I must digress from this intriguing health lament to let you all know, each and every one of you, that I just won $75 playing Bingo! I went out with a couple of girlfriends to Renner’s bar in Multnomah where they play Bingo on Wednesday nights. I went kicking and screaming – the place has been a little uncouth in the past with drunken bar maids slurring out the numbers and trying (unsuccessfully) to be stand-up comedians between calling numbers, but they have new management and it’s not as rowdy as before. Yes, there were a couple of comments about the Bingo “balls,” but it’s hard to blame the guy calling the numbers for that. It was quite fun, all the more so because of winning and the beer and the cinnamon whiskey and the Jello shots with whipped cream and loud music.

Whoo-wee! I must elaborate more tomorrow – right now the bed is calling so loud my ears are ringing.

Aging Gracelessly

As we age, our bodies go through changes. Some are good – like when I was pregnant and my hair got thick – and some are bad – like aches and pains and wrinkles.

But there’s one change I’ve recently encountered that is working out just fine. For some crazy, inexplicable reason, I no longer pass gas – I burp instead.

Please do not think I’m trying to be crude or indelicate. There are many people who emit gas but won’t admit it. I’m just relating the simple facts. I used to pass gas on a fairly consistent basis, i.e. whenever I was awake. I could even pass gas on demand, something I used in order to punctuate social interactions with my brother, such as:

My brother: “How do you like this shirt?”

Me: “Pffffffft.”

Or:

My brother: “What did you think of my speech?”

Me: “Pfffffff  ffffff   ffffff    fffff ffffft.”

As welcome as this communication tool was, it sometimes became a problem. Being gassy by nature was bad enough, but when I ate legumes (beans), which was every chance I got, it became nearly unbearable for my loved ones to be on the same street with me. I have emptied cars full of people when legume-propelled emissions erupted accidentally without warning, completely out of my control.

I’ll admit I enjoyed, to some extent, the leverage my gastrointestinal proclivities afforded me. Such as:

My brother: “I’m not moving.”

Me: “You better or I’ll fart.”

Recently, however, I have been burping, rather loudly, from the very depths of my internal areas. These things are audible from three rooms away, but they lack the persuasive qualities of gas. On the other hand, they don’t cause me nearly as much misery, especially after eating legumes, so I am not complaining. This is one thing Mother Nature got right.

Growing Old with Barbie

I was tutoring at the high school a few weeks ago and the kids were asking me to review their essays. One of the topics they could select to write about was “politically correct Barbie.”

The kids were saying things like: “I think Barbie is unnatural in today’s world. Nobody looks like that anymore.”

Back in the day we all looked like Barbie. All the girls had giant pointed objects on their chests, mostly made of foam rubber we called “falsies” or wads of toilet paper, but we all had the look. We were all skinny, too – I don’t know why. I ate like a horse, I guess literally  – because it was tons of mostly vegetables.

Today’s politically correct Barbie would have giant, rounded things on her chest revealed under tank tops layered over tank tops. She’d have long flat hair and wear clothes that didn’t match. She’d have on flip-flops even in the snow. And she’d have rolls of spare flesh bulging over her low-slung jeans like muffin tops. She’d also have a skin-tight top that showed her bra straps and maybe the bra itself.

And the older Barbie would have a V-shaped bottom with granny panty lines under polyester pants that did a lousy job of covering her cottage cheese thighs.

If you haven’t guessed, I am in a foul temper. I find that somehow I went from a bubbly 19 year old to a woman of a certain age, and I’m mad as hell about it. This was NOT supposed to happen to me. I told myself in my teens and twenties that I would refuse to grow old. I would be Peter Pan. “The only reason people age,” I said to myself, “is because they quit exercising and give up the fight, and that’s not going to happen to me.”

Please indulge me. This is me talking to me.

“Listen up. All you need to do is lose that 10 extra pounds and you’ll feel like a girl again.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“And it’s always been true. You have to promise to lose the weight and get the spring back in your step.”

“But I’m too tired.”

“Shut up that incessant whining. Just DO it!”

Okay, to shut this inner voice up, here is my pledge. I will drop 2.5 pounds a week for the next 4 weeks, starting today. Then my clothes will fit and I’ll regain my energy and I’ll start looking like the old Barbie, except I’ll still have to use toilet paper for my chest to resemble hers.

I’ll let you know how it’s going, and I apologize for the crabby blog. Even we humorists need to take a vacation on occasion. Oh, and I got a fortune cookie today that said, “You are a bee-och.” Just kidding, I just love the way that sounds. It really said, “You are covered in cottage cheese and will soon meet a nice pineapple.” Just kidding again. It really said, “You have a keen sense of humor and like to have a good time.” That is so true, except today. Today I’m an old hag carrying globular fat around my waist and saddlebags on my thighs who can barely get off this chair to drag myself to bed. But tomorrow, as I start inching my way back toward Barbie, I will be in a much better humor. I can’t wait!

Parade Day

I went to the Rose Festival parade on Saturday. It was great seeing all the people. The parade was entertaining, too.

Even though it’s free to watch the parade on the street, I think they must have some admission criteria.

(1)  You must weigh 100 pounds over your ideal weight.

(2)  You must sit in a flimsy aluminum lawn chair with legs bowing under the strain

(3)   When you struggle to your feet, the lawn chair must remain attached to your bottom until someone pries it off

(4)  You must wear a very loud printed top one size too small.

There are more horses in a parade than you see on any farm, many of them with rodeo queens. Quite a few of these ladies met the same criteria as (1) and (2) above, except substitute the word “saddle” for “lawn chair.” The horses of the biggest gals were stopping and snorting and trying to walk backwards. The queens tried to make it appear that they were manipulating the horses on purpose, but I knew these horses were putting up a fight. They were thinking, “There is no freaking way that I’m walking on this hard pavement when my back is bowing so much that my belly is practically scraping the ground. I am backing out of this situation right now.”

These robust queens were nothing compared to the dance teams tromping by. Who on earth picks out those stretchy polyester dance uniforms? Listen up, dance uniform picker outer, If the majority of your dance team is made up of girls in the plus to jumbo size range, there must be some other fabric that will camouflage their insatiable craving for Moon Pies and Big Gulps. Look for some corset-like material that will smooth them out rather than those gaudy things that accentuate their every layer of rolls.

In stark contrast to your American dance team, you have the ones coming from Portland’s sister cities in Korea and Japan. These wisps of girls sport bright, NON-STRETCHY uniforms that make them look toned and healthy. They practically float over the ground along with the colorful flags they wave. You could package a dozen of these girls in one of our dance uniforms and still have less bulges.

The size of these kids used to shock me, but I’ve gotten used to it. I look for other things to shake my head at, and I was not disappointed this time. I witnessed something at this parade that I could not for the life of me figure out. When the horses walk by, there is a cute golf cart decorated with signs like “Pooper Scooper” and “Road Apple Patrol.” One such cart lost sight of its purpose and went IN FRONT of the horses. As luck would have it, a horse decided let loose a thunderous amount of baseball sized steamy green chunks in the middle of the street right in front of us.

The crowd groaned and looked around for the Pooper Scooper, but then we remembered it had already gone by, so we thought another one would be along soon.

In the blink of an eye, a mom to the left of us prodded one of her little boys to run out in the middle of the street and stand by the steaming cluster for a photo op. He didn’t want to, so she offered him $5. He slowly walked out there and stood beside the heap while she trained her camera on him. Then she wanted him to interact with the pile – pretending to step in it, fall in it, be surprised by it, etc. He dutifully complied. His littler brother ran out as well and they pretended to push each other into the pile. Most of the crowd sat with our jaws hanging open at this supreme white trash display, but some, the biggest and brightest dressed ones, encouraged the boys to dance around the turds and really whoop it up.

About that time the Marine Band came around the corner toward us. They were all grim-faced discipline. “Do you think they’ll step in it?” I asked my daughter. “No, surely they’ll move over,” she said. “Don’t call me Shirley,” I snapped.

The marines kept their eyes straight ahead and tromped right through the pile, the cuffs of their pants dragging turds along as they marched. The crowd moaned. I felt my cereal rising up like mercury in a thermometer. Not one marine flinched. There could have been a dead possum lying there and they would have squished right through it.

The rest of the parade was anti-climatic after this. The Boy Scouts came next, and they dodged the pile like it was a nest of rattlesnakes, parting like the Red Sea until they got around it. Same with the rest of the groups. Those turds lingered through the whole parade, taunting everyone who passed. My biggest regret was that I gawked at those two boys rather than whipping my camera out and taking a picture, because who’s going to believe that really happened?

Baggy Eyes

I have a perplexing problem. I have awakened this morning with bags under my eyes. The perplexing problem is that I ONLY get bags under my eyes if I wake up and then go back to sleep. It doesn’t matter if I’ve only slept 3 hours or if I’ve slept 12 hours, I will not get bags under my eyes if I sit up right away. In other words, for those of you who still give a rip but aren’t comprehending what I’m saying, it is not the lack of sleep but the LACK OF GETTING UP that causes the puffy swelling under my eyes.

Here’s a pop quiz. You don’t know me, but can you guess what one of my top ten favorite things to do in the universe is? If you cannot guess this, you have the brain of a cabbage. Nothing personal, it’s just the truth.

Answer: Lying in bed is one of my favorite things to do, no matter what time I wake up – even if it’s 7:30 and I have a 7:45 appointment. I like listening to the birds, planning my day, trying to remember what day it is, and pretending to stretch my ankles and legs to buy more guilt-free time under the covers.

I could do all of this sitting up, and I do that when I’m going to be seeing people early in the day. By “people” I mean individuals who haven’t seen me looking like this and gasp when they first see these golf balls under my eyes. My family and friends, of course, have seen it and no longer suck in air and bug their eyes when they see me, for the most part.

If I have an early appointment, I have to get straight out of bed, or at least sit up. I’ve been doing this all my life because I got these bags even during college. I can tell you that the last thing I wanted to do after a late night fraternity dance where I’d spent the evening with my favorite party companions, Jack Daniels and Ezra Brooks, was jump out of bed. I found on those occasions that it was way more practical to just stay in bed all day rather than worry about being seen with bags that look like bubble gum bubbles hanging under each eyeball.

I just went to Google to find out why we humans get bags, and Google says it’s because it makes it easier to carry our groceries. I redefined my search and found out that it’s because there is fat under the eyeball that does not want to be discriminated against. The fat under the belly, in saddlebags, under upper arms, etc. gets to show itself day in and day out. Why does the fat under the eyes have to be hidden? That’s what eyeball fat wants to know. So it chooses to show itself, especially as we get older because it gets more and more pissy about it as the years go by.

Google also said the bags come from too much salt or other random excuses that don’t fit my situation. Then they talked about cures, which all sound unpleasant. One is surgery. Not for me, Miss I-Hate-Needles. Another is putting cold tea bags or cold cucumbers on the eyes – or asking someone to cold cock you. The resultant swelling and bruises will distract you from the bags.

The final cure was rubbing Preparation H on the bags. In case you live in outer Peoria and don’t know what this medication is used for, it’s supposed to reduce the painful itching and swelling of hemorrhoidal tissue.

I just went to Google to find out how to spell that word (I don’t want to type it again) and discovered that men are rubbing Preparation H all over their torsos before they go out to clubs at night because tightening things up, they think, will help them “get lucky.”

Now there’s a blog topic! But to end this one, please tell me if you have this same problem and what you do about it. Not the problem of getting lucky, silly, the problem of bags under your eyes after staying in bed. I wonder if going back to bed in mid-morning has the opposite effect – it might get rid of the bags. I’m going to test that out right now and I’ll get back to you.

Aren’t Hospitals Great?

I was visiting my brother in law in the hospital and was impressed by the comedians coming and going. Practically everyone who came in the room had a comeback for any comment we made. You’d think they’d heard all our questions before.

While I was there I made up a riddle that I think is quite clever. Feel free to impress your friends with it. Where is the only place you can be in bed all day without getting any rest? A hospital.

I was there for about four hours, and it was a veritable freeway in there. We never did figure out who was who – people brought in water, pills, just stopped in to say “How ya doin?” The only ones we were sure about were the phlebotomists because they had long fangs and carried fat needles and said, “Excuse me, I vant to suck your blood.”

Which reminds me of an old joke that we used to love to say when we were kids. A man invited the Count to his home and asked, “Count, would you like some wine?” The Count replied with a wicked laugh in a thick, Transylvanian accent, “I don’t dlink vine, I dlink BLOOD.” We thought this was the funniest thing in the world, but I guess you had to be there. It doesn’t type out as funny as it sounded in person, especially when the Count swings his fake cloak in front of his face.

Speaking of kids, is there anyone who did not stumble across some Ex-Lax and think it was a chocolate bar when you were a kid? I found a “chocolate bar” on my grandmother’s dresser and ate a square. It was so good I ate another, and then another. Not too long afterward I was making chocolate syrup in the toilet.

The nurses gave my brother in law some stuff to relieve him. “Your goal is to go three times, and then we’ll talk about releasing you.” So he drank the stuff they gave him and pretty soon he went to the tiny, in-room restroom. When he came out, he was quite proud. “One down, two to go!” he said brightly. When the nurse came in, he couldn’t wait to tell her.

“What color was it?” she asked excitedly, as if he were telling her he’d just seen a unicorn.

Where else but a hospital can you talk about BM’s and everyone thinks it’s totally acceptable? Can you imagine being at work or at a party and having this discussion?

“Hey, where have you been?”

“In the bathroom. I’ve been a little plugged up, you see, so my doctor gave me some pretty tasty stuff and I’m very relieved to say that I’m flushing again after three days, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful. Bob and Carol, I want you to me Ben, here. He’s just taken a crap after a three day drought.”

“You must be so proud of yourself, Ben. Just out of curiosity, was it brown? The reason I’m asking is that just the other day I was reading an article in Bowel Health Quarterly that the color is very important.”

“You don’t say!”

However, even though we were in a hospital, I can tell you that today I was not comfortable with the direction the conversation was going. He might be my brother in law, but I do NOT need to think about him on the toilet. I’m going to have nightmares tonight.

But other than that, my visit to the hospital was quite pleasant. There is never a dull moment. When there was a small lull in activity and we were about to resort to having to watch the TV that was mounted in such a way that you’d get a crick in your neck after a couple of minutes, a man came in the room and asked if he could test the fire alarm. At first we said, “Absolutely NOT!” But when he started begging and I could see he was about to break into tears, I finally said yes. He put this long stick with a cone on the end up to the fire alarm and must have blown some smoke into it because the alarm went off. Woo, that was some excitement for a couple of seconds until he disarmed it.

At regular intervals of about 2.5 minutes apart, various staff members needed to know what my brother in law’s blood pressure was – and it was never the same or even close, even though he was just lying there. They also kept him hooked up to a monitor that beeped every thirty seconds for no other reason than to remind us that there was no peace and quiet to be found in this den of sickness.

Luckily, after his third trip to the john, they told him he could go home after he gave a play-by-play of the size, shape, consistency, and color of the intestinal discharge (or “poop” in lay people’s term). It was the first time on record that my brother in law was NOT full of sh–.

Truth be told, I’m gonna kindof miss it up there in Room 377D.

Lousy Dentists

I do not like dentists. I used to despise going to them because it hurt to get my teeth cleaned. I didn’t like to floss. The hygienist raked that floss between my teeth like she was sawing through a redwood, and I’d be sore and bleeding for days. I also didn’t appreciate the lectures I got about flossing. They were always so hateful about it.

“You haven’t flossed, have you?”

“Yes, I flossed just before I came here.”

“And when was the time before that?”

“Uh, I think you did it that time.”

“Why don’t you take better care of your teeth?”

I felt like a miscreant.

Now I floss all the time. I discovered these little packages of sticks with floss on them that I use constantly in my car. I’m driving down the road, flossing away. It’s a great invention.

These days my loathing of dentists comes from their apparent incompetence. I say apparent to be nice, because the last couple of ones I’ve had have been awful. One ended up doing a crown on a tooth that I thought he was only going to cosmetically improve. I didn’t realize I was getting a crown until was done and got infected and he wrote me a referral to see someone to have a root canal. Fortunately I didn’t go to the appointment and instead found another dentist who gave me penicillin that cleared it up.

Unfortunately, she decided I needed a bite adjustment and ground down my back teeth to the point that my front ones banged together the whole time I was talking, which led to agony and finally getting braces to bring the back teeth up. Two years of that and my teeth are working again. My orthodontist did a good job, but he’s not a dentist.

When he took the braces off the crown, part of the fake tooth came away, so metal is showing. I went to my regular dentist (the one I started going to after the bad dentist ruined my bite), and he told me he didn’t want to bond over the missing part that tooth needed a crown and I should just have it done at one time.

“But it’s already a crown.”

“No, that’s your regular tooth.”

“Then why is there metal there?”

“I’m not sure that’s metal.”

“It is metal.”

“It can’t be metal, because it’s not a crown.”

“But the dentist who put it on said it was a crown and it got infected and he said I needed a root canal.”

“I don’t know why he’d call it a crown. It’s not a crown.”

It’s hard to argue with logic like that.

I’m not sure how these people got through dental school, but I’ve sure had a lousy string of dentists in the last few years, and it’s leaving a very, very bad taste in my mouth.

Mom’s Medical Myths

Tonight I had to take my daughter to an Urgent Care because she spiked herself in track. That sounds like something illegal or immoral. It doesn’t sound like the name of a rock band, however (inside joke).

I’m not sure how you spike yourself on the side of the leg just under the knee, since it has to be done by one of your own feet wearing a track shoe with spikes, but she was pole vaulting and found a way. She came home limping and bleeding with a bandage the size of a sheet of paper on her leg.

Unfortunately, her timing couldn’t have been worse because my son was coming over for dinner for the first time since he moved out, so I was preoccupied making hamburgers. “We’ve got 24 hours to get you stitches if you need them, so we might as well all sit down and eat,” I told her.

I don’t know where I got the 24 hour rule, which is much like the 5 second rule of letting food drop on the floor and being able to pick it up and eat it. Within 5 seconds it doesn’t get any dirt or germs – after  that it’s infested. This is a handy rule with small children because they are constantly dropping food, either by accident or on purpose. If it’s an accident, like if it’s candy, they cry but you can cure that immediately by saying in a very chipper voice, “5 second rule!” and pick it up and give it to them. If they’ve dropped it on purpose, like if it’s broccoli, then you can say in a flat voice, “You know the 5 second rule,” then pick up the broccoli and put it back on their plate so they learn they’ll have to come up with something more creative to get out of eating “healthy” food.

If some of you reading this think it’s disgusting that I have picked food off the floor, let me assure you that it is a common practice among the mothers I know, and we are not meth moms.

Anyway, we had a rather pleasant dinner, and fortunately for my daughter, my son was chomping at the bit to leave because he had a friend coming over, so we went directly to the clinic. They looked at her gash and said, “Yep, she needs stitches.”

A rather cute, very young doctor, who I had passed in the hall earlier and, I’m telling the truth, he winked at me, came in and examined the wound. He smiled with dimples before he told us that he would be injecting pain killer right into the wound itself. We gasped.

“It’s a very short needle,” he said reassuringly.

“Oh yeah,” I said, “like that’s going to make a difference.” I continued to joke and kid around, getting a snicker out of my daughter here and there. Apparently to the medical staff, however, this was no laughing matter.

Part of the reason my daughter was snickering was because I had informed her earlier that the gash, swollen and on the soft, puckery tissue of the inside of her leg just below the knee area, looked like a woman’s private. She shushed me, of course, but as the doctor squeezed the wound and prepared to stitch, there was no denying the resemblance. I told her to take pictures with her phone, and when she showed me the first one, a close-up of the gaping wound just prior to the first stitch, it looked like pornography.

We watched him sew her up, which he did with delicate precision using a needle shaped like a U, pulling at the skin on the side with tweezers that made us both cringe, and slipping the U through then repeating on the other side before tying the whole thing in several carefully engineered knots. If I had been young and single I would have said, in a heavy southern accent, “Oh, doctor, you have such wonderful hands.”

Instead I made pleasant conversation. “Good thing she’s within the 24 hour rule of getting stitches,” I said to show how medically astute I was.

“Oh no,” he said. “Only 6 hours,” after that she risks serious infection.” My daughter scowled at me because I had forced her to sit and eat before getting medical attention. “Well, we’re still safe then, since it’s only been two hours since it happened.”

I did not mention the 5-second rule.

Even the Dogs Are Falling Apart

My friend, Laurie, and I walked our dogs together this morning. Her dog, Pepper, is a 14-year-old standard poodle who’s getting down in his back. Actually he’s pretty spry for his age, and I’ve wondered if some of his “medical” complaints are due to Laurie being overprotective. She says he’s deaf, but he seems to selectively hear just fine. “Pepper, let’s go,” gets ignored. “Pepper, do you want a treat?” gets an immediate response. She would say I’m not be honest here, and I’d be the first to admit it.

Here was our conversation: “Oh my legs are so stiff,” I said. Laurie tried to one up me. “Yeah, I’ve got a stomach ache and no feeling in my finger where I whacked the tip of it off slicing apples.” Used to be we’d one-up our escapades – how many lemon drops we drank or tables we danced on. Now it’s how many trips to the doctor or bowel movements. I’m just kidding about this last one, but it sounded funny. Also kidding about what Laurie said because, honestly, I can’t remember from one minute to the next.

Just as I said, “We’re falling apart,” Laurie tugged on Pepper’s leash and he tipped over. Tipped right over like the idiot Burger King commercials that show a couple of guys in a pasture tipping over the Burger King guy. I refuse to eat there because of their recent ad campaign, which is a shame because I used to love their breakfasts. I guess with their newer ads they’re going for a demographic that doesn’t include people who aren’t stupid.

Whoever heard of cow tipping anyway? It seems mean. Cows are so sweet-looking with those big brown eyes. Did you see the Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl? I know, they had about 30, but this was the one with the little Clysdale playing with the little calf.

That calf was so cute looking through the fence, and all I could think of was, “Your horsey friend is going to be in a green pasture or a stall with two feet of fresh hay while you’re crammed in a semi-truck on your way to being a burger at Burger King.” I did not say this out loud because I didn’t want people throwing M & M’s at me since I was the only vegetarian in the crowd.

When they showed the calf all grown up, it was a Texas longhorn, which according to Savieur Magazine is mighty good eating. I don’t know if you could tip a longhorn, but why would you want to? Grown cows still have those big brown eyes, and they’d let you walk right up to them because they are naturally sweet, and a couple of sissy girls could tip one so why is this considered manly?

So Pepper falls right over on his side, and Laurie rushes to his aid. The poor guy can’t get his back feet under him because I guess he does have hip problems after all. She had to un-tip him, which involved trying to shove him up off his side and then lift up his hindquarters which, I’m sure if we walk tomorrow, will be the basis of a new back injury.

It was rather sad for a little bit, but the dog, either embarrassed or tired of hearing, “Are you okay, Pepper, are you okay?” took off running and jogged practically the whole walk. We had to step up our speed a notch, which was hard on our aching bones and joints, but since it was 36 degrees out, I wasn’t too sad about getting done sooner.

Oh, I just realized we won’t walk tomorrow because I’m planning on skiing. With any luck Laurie’s back will heal by Thursday.

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Copyright © 2021 by Suzanne Olsen