Have you noticed? It's not only pickle jars that are more difficult to open these days. Have you tried to pry apart a 'zip-lock' bag of sliced Muenster cheese or Black Forest ham? Or even a bag of potato chips?! It is nearly impossible! And don't even get me started on those 'childproof' caps on my medicine bottles... you know what I mean.
I have come to realize that after one reaches a certain age one should not attempt to keep on doing those things which were nearly effortless in times gone by. For example, recently we had the "opportunity" to participate in the clean-up, fix-up, paint-up of a rental property. This is what I learned from that experience:1. If you decide to help paint, you should not get on a ladder to paint all the way to the ceiling. This is dangerous.
2. Because you are unable to bend over much nowadays, in order to reach down low on the wall you can sit on a little short stool. However, you will be unable to get up from there.
3. You should certainly never sit on the floor to paint the baseboards (see above).
4. Even though you wear "paint clothes" (you know what I mean... the jeans you never wear in public because they make your butt look big), and even though you go through the whole day without a drop of paint anywhere on you... as soon as you put on your jacket so you can leave this chamber of torture, you will lurch into a wall and discover that the paint is still wet there.
5. You will HATE the word "mini-blind" after you have thoroughly washed every slat of every blind in the house.
6. While replacing the cover plates on all the electrical switches and outlets, you will drop those teeny little screws over and over again. Eventually, at least one of them will fall into the heater/AC register located on the floor and be lost forever.
7. Your body will ache in places you didn't know existed and in ways heretofore unheard of.
8. You will curse the day you ever invested in rental property.
Putting all that aside... here we are on the Las Vegas monorail with Gus:
A very good day, April 3, 2010
