Can you see me now?

I’ve been working at home for three or four weeks having fun and a good time with Elijah, my almost 4 year old grandson who’s living with us.

We play together a lot and one of Eli’s favorite games is for us to sit in our walk-in closet, in the dark, taking pretend trips on boats, airplanes, cars and motorcycles, sometimes stopping to eat his favorite foods, ice cream sundaes, corn dogs and macaroni and cheese …each of us takes turns driving…we learn to drive when we go on green light, slow down on yellows and stop on the red lights…once in a while he’ll pretend to do the cooking and make whatever we had for breakfast, lunch or dinner earlier…

Sometimes he’ll want to play big bad wolf or little red riding hood; we take turns being the wolf …in the dark he has fun making wolf noises and most of all he likes to say he isn’t afraid of the dark…

I remember teaching my daughters not to be afraid of the dark by taking them into the garage, turning off the light, walking around by feeling the car and work bench and getting safely back to the door …OK, you’re probably thinking what a weird dad or grandpa I am, but as a little kid when my dad babysat us he played hide and go seek with me and my sister, and when we were ‘it’ and his turn to hide he’d hide behind a door, turn off all the lights and scare the crap out of us when we walked into rooms…we were maybe around three years old and my sister hated him for years later…when I got married and had children I told myself to teach my kids not be afraid of the dark.

Elijah and I do other things beside hide in the closet…we have terrific times at the park where he rides his two-wheel Skoot bike, plays on swings and snacks on ice cream, candy and other junk I buy on the way to the park…I’ll try to remember to bring carrots and healthy stuff one of these days…

Its fun getting him tuckered out ready for a nap when we get home…once in a while I join him in a snooze too but it’s usually a good time for me to do some work…

I love being a grandpa, much more so these days than years ago when my wife took care of some of our other grand kids…back then I got back from work after they left and I hardly saw them…

I like working at home…and I owe it all to the great recession.

Who would have guessed?

DAWN OF THE CRONY

For too many years I’ve had piles of candles on my birthday cakes but always less than the right number…I’ve never had a cake large enough…On my last l birthday I found 6 candles on one side of the cake and 9 on the other…even that was like a baby inferno.

It’s going to get worse…the big 7-0 is sneaking up on me.

In a few months I’ll be turning 70 and I’ve never felt better even tho I drive over a parking lot curb once in a while. I remember my Dad turning 70 and I thought wow, he’s an old guy. Now 70 doesn’t feel that old anymore and I don’t feel like I’m 70 unless I look in the mirror; and I rarely do that except to work on my comb-over and I won’t be doing that for too much long either.

I’ve always known that if I lived long enough I would be 70. I can hardly remember my other big birthdays like 40, 50 and 60 but I’ll never forget this one if I make it to my birthday. Turning 70’s been foremost in my mind for a long time and I began writing this early for my own satisfaction in case I croak before.

In the L.A. Times obituaries I read too often that people my age die of ‘natural causes’ all the time; sometimes no disease is mentioned. It’s scary reading about people dieing for no other cause than being old. I’m going to love getting birthday wishes from my undead friends.

I’ve always been a car lover and in recent years totally new models have come out: cross-overs, SUV’s, hybrids and smart-cars. I’ve always taken pride in knowing car names but have you noticed how many of them now have just initials or logos making it almost impossible to know what kind they are? What makes me know I’m getting old is seeing cars that have unusual and unbelievable equipment on them like backing-up rear-view-TV’s, even some that park themselves... it's not hard to handle GPS’s and CD players with dozens of speakers all over. My favorite are DVD’s that keep children quietly occupied. We have a DVD player in our car and the grand kids love to watch movies on long trips... we love the quietness. The only thing that hasn’t changed is: “Are we there yet and how many more miles?”

I’m thinking of buying an E-book so I can sit in the living room with my wife while she watches TV; with it I could read James Patterson and Clive Cussler best sellers without turning on a bright light.

The other day I spent a few hours in a used book store and bought a bunch of paperbacks…a few of them will be hard to read because of small font sizes; I’m told that with E-books the font size can be adjusted… I could get used to that… but I have to do some hard thinking before buying one.
There’s a lot of pleasure in reading traditional books because I like their smell and feel and I like to high-light and jot notes in the margins…plus they make good doorstops.
(Note: The used book store is behind Coco’s restaurant in Laguna Hills...when you buy two books at half the cover price the third book is free…such a deal!)

I’ve been blessed to have worked for and with great people since I began my business, are you ready for this, in 1971. I still have clients who have been good friends for years… I even have relatives I can call friends. (And it’s not because most of them live in Montreal.)

I’m thankful for having played golf with the best golf pals a guy can have. Being older you have to put more work into golf, like hitting the practice range a few times a week and I know that, but mentally I don’t want to keep doing that anymore. Maybe that’s why I love to read more and more... sitting outside in the shade, sipping lemonade and reading a book is very cool and almost as much fun for me as golf used to be.

Joining me in celebrating 70^th birthdays are Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Paul Mc Cartney and Mick Jagger who is reported to have said several grandchildren ago: “I’d rather be dead than sing ‘Satisfaction’ at 45”.

This is the year that I’ll be getting rid of a lot of stuff… I’m ready to acknowledge I have too much and I need to live more simply. I’ll celebrate my upcoming birthday with family and friends and have a nice quiet dinner…well, maybe not that quiet…It’s the year in which I’ll dance to my own songs.

It’ll be the celebration of my entering life as an official old Crony…

Gloria Steinem said it best on her 70^th birthday:

”This one has a ring of mortality”.

What next?