Retirement My Butt!

So far this retirement gig has been kind of busy. I thought my golf was screwed today because of the presence of Sneedlet One. Daughter Sneed reminded me that Sneedlet goes to daycare and that I could take him there while I played golf. Duh. So bright and early this morning I hauled the little hyena to his daycare center. I expected the worst concerning his cooperation with the whole idea, but I was pleasantly surprised that he went more or less willingly. All I had to do was to agree to buy him some doughnuts on the way and promise to take him to McDonald's after I picked him up. And not just any McD's mind you, one with a playground. I'm sure that most, if not all of your modern child-rearing experts list bribery among the recommended parenting techniques. Golf was blistering hot today, made worse by the four ancient, very slow guys ahead of us. I tried to drink a lot of liquids, but no matter how much I drink, it is never enough. I had three jumbo iced teas, two big cups of water and a Gatorade during the golf. I drank several more glasses of iced tea at lunch and I still felt dehydrated. A smarter guy would have stayed home, but Merle Sneed and smart aren't usually uttered in the same sentence. I bought a golf pass today, good for the remainder of the year at our city courses. The city sells them to lure players to the courses during the hot time of the year. If I only play once a week for the rest of the year, I will have saved a few bucks. The pass let's me play Monday through Friday as much as I like. Pretty sweet deal, unless I give myself heat stroke. During lunch the Seafood King got a call from one of his managers saying that someone had tried to break into one of the restaurants during the night. The miscreants cut every wire they thought was a phone line, apparently trying to disable the alarm. The phones, fax, credit card machines and internet were all kaput. The big deal was the credit card machines, the life blood of the restaurant business. As he was relating the problem to Some Guy Named Bob and me, he suddenly remembered that I could probably fix it. When he got to the word "do", as in "do you think you can go over there", I knew my goose, or at least my prospects for a nap, was cooked. This had disaster written all over it, chiefly because I was supposed to pick up Sneedlet. The last thing I wanted to do was drive to a seedy part of town to fix someone's broken stuff, especially with Sneedlet in tow. I suggested that he might want to call the phone company first, but he said if it was his wiring, rather than the phone company's that was cut, he would get nailed with hefty charges by Ma Bell. Friends, on the other hand work for cheap or even free. Being a wonderful human being, I went and got my tools and some supplies, picked up the kid and headed over to the 'hood. And what a mess it was. You just can't find a professional burglar anymore. In the movies the crooks carefully cut just the exact wire that disables the alarm. In real life some methhead whacks everything in sight, and then discovers that he can't get the security door open anyway. To make matters worse I had to squat in the sun trying to sort out a bazillion wires, chopped off to different lengths. All the time with a cranky child on my hands. He refused to wait inside the building, so I had to pull the car up next to where I was working and let him sit in it with the air on and the car running. I had visions of being the guy trying to explain to the cops how the carjacker got the car with the kid inside. It took about 90 minutes to get things running again, but in 107 degrees, with no shade it seemed longer. Of course one of us didn't forget about McD's. We had to stop on the way home so that he could eat a few fries and make friends with some strange kids. We finally made it home at five, just in time to go visit Son Sneed in the hospital. Son Sneed seems better, but he always seems better when he is locked up. He thrives on the structure. He said if they would give him internet access, he could stay permanently. Instead they are going to try Electric shock Therapy, now called Electric Convulsive Therapy. We continue to hope for the best. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor