Odds and Ends Again

Sometime in the spring, I took the Verilux, “Sunlight in a Box,” light bulbs out of my closet office and replaced them with those energy saving florescent ones.  The Verilux bulbs just burned too hot for summer and used up way too much energy.  But just now I took out the energy saving ones and put the Verilux back because they have gone and screwed with the clocks again.  I remember last fall being bothered by the lack of light.  That’s when I bought the Verilux, I think.

I am not the only one screwed up by the clock change.  Right now the cat downstairs is meowing its head off because she thinks it’s time for me to give her kitty-kat treats.  I don’t know when we started giving the cat those treats, little brown chewy things, about the size of a mouse turd.  But we started and she is in the habit now of getting them and let’s you know when exactly it is time for her to get them.

She is supposed to get them around 5:30.  If she doesn’t get them at five thirty, she meows and then stares at you. But she is meowing now at 4:30 because they went and changed the clocks.

I give her six treats each time.  I count them out—not letting her eat them, till I am done counting—one, two, three, four, five, six.  I make a rectangle out of them, three on each side.  I am trying to teach the cat how to count and something about geometry.  But so far I have noticed no increase in her mathematical abilities, though she does apparently know how to tell time…as long as they don’t change the clocks.

I know it’s fall when they go and screw with the clocks, and in the couple of weeks before that I get to thinking, it’s time for my flu shot.  I get all panicky thinking I will not get my flu shot.  I know the Brothers do not entirely favor the flu shots, and other people I have met swear they will never get one because they think they might die if they get a shot.  So far I have not died, though I have been getting a flu shot, once a year for about maybe 30 years.  Honestly, I don’t know if these flu shots work or not; but if I don’t get one I am sure I will get sick and die.  So I got one at the University…that’s one reason I have gotten so many flu shots.  At the University you usually don’t have to wait in line too long.

The only time I got sick from a flu shot was back with Gerald Ford and the swine flu.  They were like advertising, get your shot, get your shot, because it’s the swine flu and if you catch it you are getting to get as sick as a swine.  Isn’t a swine, a pig?

Why didn’t they call it the pig flu?  I supposed swine sounded more elegant.  I think a guy who herds swine is called a swineherd and not a pig herder.

But I got sick from that swine flu for about 12 hours and then it went away just like that.  But some people did die from that flu shot for sure.

That was in 1976.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*