These Sentences Will Make You Laugh

Paraprosdokians are sentences with surprise endings that will make you laugh.

If there's a will, I want to be in it.

Since light travels faster than sound, 

some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

If I agreed with you,

we'd both be wrong.

War does not determine who is right, only who is left.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit;

wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

In filling out an application, where it says,

"In case of emergency, notify......"

I answered, "a doctor."

You do not need a parachute to skydive;

you only need a parachute to skydive twice.

I used to be indecisive but now I'm not so sure.

To write with a broken pencil is pointless.

No matter how much you push the envelope,

it'll still be stationery.

A dentist and a manicurist married;

they fought tooth and nail.

England doesn't have a kidney bank

but it does have a Liverpool.

A will is a dead giveaway.

He had a photographic memory 

but it was never fully developed.

When she saw her first strand of gray hair. she thought she'd dye.

If you jump off a bridge in Paris, you're in Seine.

quotes for the week

These quotes for Memorial Day may be a date late, but it's never too late to honor those who have served and who are serving now.

How I Spent My Birthday

You can tell by the one-slice-of-cake picture that I spent my birthday on my own. Being in the vulnerable age group, I'm still sheltering in place.  You may wonder how many candles there would be if I pictured a whole cake.  I'm not saying except that I'm a year older than I was two days ago.

Here's how I spent the day:
5:30 Woke up, fed the cat, washed hands singing the birthday song, appropriately "Happy Birthday to Me."  Went back to sleep.

7:30.  Woke up again, read the news on my phone.  Oh no, a speech pathologist has violated social distancing.  See the Atlantic: "Secret Lives of Social Distancing." Would I do that?  Sounds very un-speechpatholgistish.

8:00.  Grabbed my breakfast off the door handle.  (All our meals are delivered to our apartments.  No dining room service.)  Found a new kind of orange muffin to enjoy with coffee and scrambled egg.  Threw out the apple juice.

8:20 Cleaned kitchen, remembering to wipe down the counters.

8:30 Retired to my bedroom to read the Houston Chronicle.  Lots of virus news. Did the Jumble.  First three words in about sixty seconds but struggled with the last one: KRBEMA.  Can you figure it out? If you did, how long did it take? Answer at the end of the page.

9:15 My actual birth moment.  Now I was really another year older.

9:20 Read email, wrote details of my day so far so I wouldn't forget them for this blog.

9:30 Unwrapped amazing birthday cake from Milk Bar in New York sent by my kids.  It was so well-wrapped, it took me 20 minutes to open it.  Got some frosting on my finger.  Delicious.

9:45.  Showered and dressed.

10:30 Left (sneaked out) for my birthday outing.  Went to the drive-in window at the bank to deposit my stimulus check.  Not sure why I got one, but I"m not giving it back.  Went to the cleaner to pick up a bedspread that has been there for three months.

11:15 On my way home. Oh no, the train!  How could I forget that a train usually comes by on Saturday mornings about this time? This one moved fast.  I have waited as much as 30 minutes.  Once a train stopped on the tracks and just sat.

11:50 At home again.  Talked to my children and to my cousins.

12:45 Ate a quick lunch

1:00 Downstairs for my Saturday canasta game.  Won today.  Of course I did--it was my birthday.

4:00 Picked up mymail.  Talked to another cousin on FaceTime.  Read some more news on my phone.  Wondered will the virus end before my next birthday?

5:30 Played Mah Jongg online.  Did not win. Watched final episodes of The Americans Season 5.  I am addicted tot this series.  Alas, only one more season to watch.  Will have to find a new series.

7:00 Dinner and delicious birthday cake for dessert.

7:30 Watched the news. More of the same so I fell asleep.  Woke up when Scandalous, the story of the National Enquirer was on.  Fell asleep when it was over.  The end of a wonderful birthday even though we're still locked down.

Answer to the Jumble: KRMEMA=Embark.

quote for the week

Things to do in Isolation

Texas is reopening.  I'm not ready to venture out.  My age group is discouraged from getting out and frankly the only place on my joining-the-world list right now is the nail salon.  I desperately need new nails.

If you're a widow alone at home, especially if you're a recent widow, these are tough times. Here are a couple of interesting places I've found on the internet:

Isolation Journals:  If you journal and are running out of things to journal about or even if you've never journaled but have always wanted to write but never found the time or thought you had anything to write about, well here's your solution.  www.suleikajaouad.com  She sends a prompt every morning at 5:30,  Does anyone get up at 5:30? Never mind.  It will be in your email even if you get up at noon.  Her prompts are fun and stimulate your creativity.  

If you like to listen to qujirky podcasts, you might enjoy www.everythingisalive.com  Thiese podcasts "interview" inanimate objects.  My favorite is an interview with a can of coca cola.
The latest I listened to was an interview with a restaurant mirror. 

And I recommend New Tricks for Old Dogs, another podcast at www.olddogspodcast.com After some short pieces about current events, each podcast features an interview with a senior citizen.  (I''m partial to these guys because I am one of the seniors they inteviewed.--#24.

swww.thegreatcoursesplus.com  has all kinds of courses.  You can start with a free month and then decide if you want to sign up for an unlimited number of courses per year or you can buy a DVD from the original company at www.thegreatcourses.com  I've probably listened to a hundred of their courses.  Or you can google Curiosity Streamwww.curiositystream.com  or www.audible.com to listen to books or www.quibi.comwww.quibi.com for all kinds of shows on your phone.

And for those of you missing your bridge or mah jongg or canasta games, you can always play online. 

And how would we survive without Zoom?  Aren't we lucky Zoom came up before we were stuck at home?

Stay safe. 

quote for the week: Girlfriends

In an evening class at Stanford University the last lecture was on the mind-body connection--the relationship between stress and disease.

The speaker, head of psychiatry at Stanford, said that one of the best things a man could do for his health was to be married to a woman; whereas, for a woman, one of the best things she could do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends.

At first, everyone laughed but he was serious.  Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other deal with stress and other difficult life experiences. Physically this quality "girlfriend time" helps us create more serotonin--a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling of well-being.

Women share feelings whereas men often form relationships around activities.  We share from our souls with our sisters, friends and evidently this is very good for our health.

He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging or working out at a gym.  There's a tendency to think that when we are exercising we are doing something good for our bodies; but when we are hanging out with friends we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged.

Not true.  In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physcial health as smoking!  So every time you hand out to schmooze with a gal pal, just pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your health.

We are, indeed, very blessed.  So let's toast to our friendship with our girlfriends, including grandmas, sisters, mothers, cousins, aunts.  Evidently it's very good for our health.

Happy Mother's Day

To all moms:  Even if you're sheltering in place and can't see your kids in person, I hope you've visited on Facetime or Zoom.  My family met on Zoom and it was lovely.  The independent living facility where I live treated all the moms here to an afternoon tea (or champagne for those who preferred it) and a lovely plant plus a poster for each one of us with pictures they got from our families.  My son spent hours going through my blog to find just the right pictures.  Thanks, Michael.  And thanks to all of you--Michael and Tiffany and Gabby and Lori for making this a wonderful, loving Mother's Day even though we couldn't be together in person.

quote for the week

You know the old saying, "May you live in interesting times."
Well, we're doing that now for sure.

This quote is by an Atlanic staff writer, James Parker.  If you want to hear him reading it, you can Google The Atlantic.

Coronavirus Prayer

by James Parker

Dear Lord,

In this our hour of doorknobs and droplets,

when masks have canceled our personalities

in this our hour of prickling perimeters, sinister surfaces. 

defeated bodies and victorious abstractions,

when some of us are stepping into rooms humid with contagion

and some of us are standing in the pasta aisle,

in this our hour of vacant parks and boarded-up hoops,

when we miss the sky-high roar of the city

and hear instead the tarp that flaps on the unfinished roof,

the squirrel giving his hingelike cry 

and the siren constantly passing, 

to You we send up our prayer as follow:

Let not the heebie-jeebies become our religion,

our new ideology with its own jargon.

Fortify us, Lord.  Show us how.

What would your saints be doing now?

Saint Francis he was a fan of the human, 

He'd be rolling naked on Boston Common.

He'd be sharing a bottle.  No mask or gloves,

sheilded only by burning love.

But I don't think we're in the mood

for feats of antic beatitude.

In New York City and in Madrid

the saints maintain the rumbling grid.

Bless the mailman and equally bless

the bus driver, vctor of steadfastness.

Protect the bravest the best we've got.

Protect the rest of us, why not.

And if the virus that took Jahn Prine

comes as it may for me and mine

although we've mostly stayed indoors,

well--then as ever, we're all Yours.

Until urther notice,

Amen.

W

Books of April

Actually I read only one book in April, but it was 755 Kindle pages so I get a pass on that.

The Mirror and the Light by Hillary Mantel is the third book in her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell.  I loved the first two--Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies--this one not as much.  Here we see Cromwell at the height of his power as Henry VIII's closest advisor.  This book was slow-moving.  One Amazon reviewer likened it to plodding through mud.  We get a lot of English history, a lot of Cromwell's memories of his abusive father and finally in the last quarter of the book, the pace picks up and we see Cromwell's fall and his beheading.  The book has gotten some wonderful reviews.  Her first two both won the Booker Prize.  Maybe this one will, too, if the judges have time to read it.

Z is for ZZZ

Z is for ZZZ.  Blogging A to Z month is over.  Back in 2021.  I'll be back on my regular Sunday post and Tuesday quote sessions.

Y is for Years

Y is for Years.  All I can say is that it seems like years since I've had my nails done or my hair cut.

Years teach us more than books.

Berthold Auerbach

Who expects small things to survive 

when even the largest get lost?

People forget years and remember moments.

Ann Beattie

The years teach much which the days never know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Years are only garments,

and you either wear them with style all your life

or else you go dowdy to the grave.

Dorothy Parker

e

B

X is for Xrays

X is for Xrays.  Couldn't find any quotes I could relate to COVID-19 except I suppose a  chest Xray would show the virus in your lungs.

The shoe is very much an Xray of social comportment.

Christian Louboutin

The theater is a spiritual and social Xray of its time.

Stella Adler

Mozart's music is like an Xray of your soul--

it shows what is there and what isn't.

Isaac Stern