Scammer Alert!

Just got a call this morning who left a voicemail that “a preauthorized purchase has been made against my Walmart account for a PlayStation 5 in the amount of $919.75. The caller (“Amelia”with a British accent - I guess Indian accents are a giveaway for the telephone scammers now) told me to “press one to cancel this purchase or to speak to a customer representative.”

SCAM! SCAM! SCAM!SCAM!SCAM!SCAM!

Under no circumstances press any number. Block the phone number. Mine was an 860 number from Hartford, CT.

The crooks are still out there folks albeit this time with British accents instead of Indian accents.

Another Doctor's Appointment Today

One of my many doctors appointments

 December is the month of follow-up doctor's appointments.

Today I have an appointment with my urologist. This is an annual follow-up appointment to check on my kidney stones and prostate cancer.

Last week I gave blood for my labs and also had an ultra sound. Hopefully I get a clean bill of health again this year. If I don't, then I am resigned to the next step in my life's journey.

I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2013. That's also when I had several kidney stone attacks. I survived both at that time by having surgery. I consider myself very lucky to have survived this long. I hope I have more years left but if I don't, I will still be grateful for the last eleven years, especially the last three years that I was privileged to be Bill's caregiver. Speaking of which, I am still grieving and now accept the fact I will grieve for my loss of Bill the rest of my life. 

Later this month I have my annual dermatologist appointment. Last year my doctor did find I finally developed skin cancer. That was on my ear.  He took it out which required three stitches. I've been going to the dermatologist for about forty years now.  I've always had the precancerous (keratosis) before. My dermatologists over the years have burned off those spots resulting in me leaving their offices like I was beat up. Well, I was actually.

After these doctor's appointments then it is time for me to prepare for my trip to Palm Springs with Pat in February. I have to say I'm not looking forward to this trip. Once I'm there I guess I'll be all right. It's just the preparation and the traveling by air. You know what a nightmare air travel is these days. My neighbors on either side of my house (I'm still getting use to saying "my" house when referring to Casa Tipton-Kelly) will collect my mail and keep an eye on my house. I also have Ring doorbell and inside cameras so I can "keep and eye" on MY house from afar, even in Palm Springs.  I guess my main reason for not looking forward to this trip is that I don't walk that well now and I'm just too comfortable here in my own home. When I was younger, I LOVED to get away. As much as I loved Bill it was good to "get away" every now and then. Not so much now, I'm perfectly comfortable here at home and yes, Bill's spirit is still here. I haven't changed anything in his bedroom including this T-shirt that he last wore at the hospice facility. I haven't washed it and I have left his room as it was when he lived here. Bill's ashes are also in his room. We're still together folks.

Well, time to get ready to leave for my appointment.

How I Relax

This is how I relax folks while I'm on my computer. I put on a good "Music For Shops" DJ. I love the continuous beat that blends one song into another. 

My subscription of YouTube is perhaps one of my best investments. I can access DJ's like Dj Ricardo Morro, and play their latest playlist on my iMac with my old (twelve years) Bose speakers with a floor subwoofer. 

At this time of my life I need to relax. My blood pressure is still high (154 over 80 this morning) so I need something to help me relax. Trump is in office the next four years so that horrendous fact is enough alone to keep my blood pressure high. There isn't much I can do about that other than keep a low profile and hope I outlive the son of a bitch. I would love to have a cat but having a pet at my age is just impractical. First of all, the pet will outlive me. Secondly I'm just one fall away from taking up residence in a hospital....again. Who would take care of my pet? No one, that's who. Another problem with having a pet is that I sleep a lot these days in my old age dotage, and having a pet would constantly disrupt those long periods of sleep which I so enjoy. I just got up from my daily one to two hour afternoon nap.

I've always like a music with a "good beat."  Remember the old "American Bandstand" days (from the Fifties in Philadelphia folks) with Dick Clark. I used to watch that show every day when I came home from school at 3:30 PM. I think the show ran for two hours daily until Dick Clark sold out and took "American Bandstand" to Hollywood. I stopped watching the show then. I was even on the show once in 1958. I along with about eight other teenagers won a one hundred word essay contest with the subject "Why I Would Like To Be On American Bandstand to Celebrate the Downingtown BiCentennial." Yep, I won for real. What I remember about American Bandstand was how small the studio in West Philly was and the long line of local teenagers waiting to get in. We (me and my fellow winners) of course got in ahead of that riff raff. The day I was there Dick Clark wasn't there. I don't know where he was but his substitute was Julius LaRosa, the old Arthur Godfrey alumnus. The guest singing group that day was The Royal Teens who sand "Who Wears Short Shorts." I don't know what I was thinking but I never thought to take a camera with me. Here's something that gets me. The people who organized the trip should have taken a group picture of us. Of course they didn't. That also reminds me of the time I won a trip to New York City when I was a paper boy.

One of two pictures I still have of that trip to New York City in 1958. I think I had eight black and white photos on my Kodak Brownie camera, these are the only two I could find. 

I did make it to the top of the Empire State Building of which this is not a photo of but I was impressed with the General Motors building back then which shows you how easily I was impressed back then.

There were about a dozen of us paperboys who won the trip, our chaperone of course didn't take a group picture. I took some scenery pictures which are almost totally useless these days. I'll look for one to include in this post. I never thought to take a picture of myself or my fellow twelve year old paperboys. 

Twelve year old me with my trusty paper boy bike which I used to brake by riding the pedals backwards. Believe it or not I never once fell off that bike even after using it for five years to deliver newspapers daily after school. And no, I never folded my newspapers and threw them either at the door of my customers or the lawn. I always put the newspapers in side their storm door or under their mat. No one told me to do this but I thought it was a good idea. I was born with empathy folks, unlike our current president and many of our fellow human beings these days. Some might look at this as a curse (having empathy) but to me it was the only way I could live even though at times in my life that empathy was taken advantage of as a weakness and others thought to exploit it. Something I didn't realize until late in life but that's why we are here folks to learn. And believe me I have learned. 

Boy, did I stray off the subject here or what? Not really because while I'm typing this nostalgia I'm listening to Dj Ricardo Morro! 

Maybe in my next life I'm come back as one of the escorts of trips. Today I just finished sending out the rest of my personalized desk calendars that I make every year. I use photos from my previous year when I make the calendars. I think I was a photographer in my Previous Life. I know I LOVE taking pictures for posterity. Gives me a great deal of pleasure. Most of my friends often complain that this habit of taking photos and now short videos annoys them but I just ignore their complaints. Not only do I like to take photos and videos I like to receive them too. Rarely does that happen even though I often ask for them. Just this past week I asked a former classmate of mine to take a group photo of our class of 1959 Annual Christmas luncheon. 

A Christmas Luncheon December 20, 2005 of me and my boss and co-workers at First Financial Bank. I asked the waitress to take this picture. It works!

In past years I took all the photos of our class reunions. I can't do that now because I don't travel like I used to. I also asked my former classmate to include himself in the photo. The last time when he remembered to take a photo he took it himself and didn't included himself in the photo. I gave him a tip "Ask the waitress to take the photo." So what happened this time? Of course he forgot. 

This is what it looks like when I take the picture myself. From December 20, 2005, twenty years ago!!

I guess some people just don't have the same priorities that I do. Even Pat, who I love, even mocks me for taking so many photos. I've learned over the years to brush off those complaints because many a time I go back and look at those photos and videos and relive those wonderful experiences. I especially love looking at these photo and videos now at my age, now that I'm coming to an end in this life and about to either embark on a couple hundred years in the spirit world or maybe be reborn immediately, in which in my next life I'll have my latest iPhone and I can take a ton of photos and videos! By the way, wouldn't it be wonderful to have photos and videos of your past lives? I hear that when you die you get to see a replay of all those scenarios. That's something else I'm looking forward to when I rejoin Bill in the spirit world, at review of my past life this time around.

Did anyone spend anytime listening to this DJ? Or is it just weird me? To think that back in the eighties (1980 to be precise) I used to go to the after hours gay clubs and position myself next to one of those four foot speakers and totally absorb the beat of whatever playlist the in house DJ was providing all us drunken gay guys looking for Mr. Perfect in All The Wrong Places. Ironic for me because here I had Mr. Perfect the whole time at home, Bill.

Christmas Cards Completed!

Finally! I completed my Christmas cards!

This has always been one of my favorite Christmas holiday activities, preparing and mailing my Christmas cards. 

I've been doing this since I was a teenager. Over the years my Christmas card list has evolved many times. Most of the people I mailed Christmas cards too when I was in my prime are gone now. They are in Heaven or the Afterlife. I miss all of them. Many of them is how I used to keep in touch at least once a year. Of course soon I will be with them. I have a feeling this is the last year I'm sending Christmas cards.

Bill and I had stopped exchanging gifts about fifty years ago. But we always exchanged Christmas cards. Bill knew I liked sparkly Christmas cards and he would put forth a major effort to find that perfect sparkly Christmas card to give to me. Each year it became harder and harder to find that "just right" card but we always managed. The last year or two, with Bill's eyesight gone, he would make his own card with a big black magic marker telling me how much he loved me. And you know folks, those cards, even without the colorful sparkle, were the most beautiful cards I've ever received. 

Holiday Eating Tips

HOLIDAY EATING TIPS

1. Avoid carrot sticks. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Holiday spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they're serving rum balls.

2. Drink as much eggnog as you can. And quickly, it's rare. You cannot find it any other time of year but now. So drink up! Who cares that it has 10,000 calories in every sip? It's not as if you're going to turn into an eggnog-alcoholic or something. It's a treat. Enjoy it. Have one for me. Have two. It's later than you think. It's Christmas!

3. If something comes with gravy, use it. That's the whole point of gravy. Gravy does not stand alone. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat.

4. As for mashed potatoes, always ask if they're made with skim milk or whole milk. If it's skim, pass. Why bother? It's like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission.

5. Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of going to a Holiday party is to eat other people's food for free. Lots of it. Hello?

6. Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Year's. You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do. This is the time for long naps, which you'll need after circling the buffet table while carrying a 10-pound plate of food and that vat of eggnog.

7. If you come across something really good at a buffet table, like frosted Christmas cookies in the shape and size of Santa position yourself near them and don't budge. Have as many as you can before becoming the center of attention. They're like a beautiful pair of shoes. If you leave them behind, you're never going to see them again.

8. Same for pies. Apple, Pumpkin, Mincemeat. Have a slice of each. Or if you don't like mincemeat, have two apples and one pumpkin. Always have three. When else do you get to have more than one dessert, Labor Day?

9. Did someone mention fruitcake? Granted, it's loaded with the mandatory celebratory calories but avoid it at all cost. I mean, have some standards.

10. One final tip: If you don't feel terrible when you leave the party or get up from the table, you haven't been paying attention. Re-read tips; start over, but hurry, January is just around the corner. Remember this motto to live by:

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate and wine in one hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming " WOO HOO what a ride!" MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Ron's Many Homes

 

2124 Spruce Street, Philadelphia PA. My apartment was on the top floor to the left. I had to walk up four flights of stairs to get to my apartment. I doubt I could even walk those stairs now. I can hardly walk up my stairs here at Casa Tipton-Kelly.

Now for the Christmas countdown! 

Yesterday I completed ordering my annual personalized desk calendars for 2025. I send one of those desk calendars to my close friends. These are my Christmas gifts. That and a personalized Christmas card. I have the cards ready and this year I have the dreaded Christmas Letter that I'm sending out. I usually don't send out Christas letters but this year I want to inform my friends that I'm flying solo this year. I'm informing them that Bill is gone. 

I'm not sure if I'm going to put up a Christmas tree this year. I only put up a colorful Christmas tree last year for Bill. Bill, with his macular degeneration, was legally blind but he could see colors and the colorful lights of the small aluminum tree I put up in his line of sight gave him comfort and pleasure. I was going to put up that tree again this year but it would just be another reminder to me that Bill is gone for the rest of my life. Ron is flying solo again, for the first time since I was twenty-one years old. 

All my life except for that brief year and a half period from when I got out of the Army in January 1963 to March 1965, I have always lived with other people.

Me standing in from of my small furnished efficiency apartment at 388 Madison Street, Coatesville, PA where I lived from April 1963 to February 1965. My apartment was on the bottom floor to the left of where I'm standing. Bill took this picture of me many years later. This apartment is where I came out to my Mother when she caught me with my married boyfriend one Saturday morning and I told him to hide in the bathroom. Regular followers of my blog know THAT horror story. So much drama. 

From the Grand Central Station of my Tipton Family Life before I joined the Army at eighteen years old to those three years in the Army with I lived with hundreds of other guys, I've never lived alone.

Me, many years later, sitting on the stoop at 120 Washington Avenue, Downingtown, PA where I grew up. Our family and an apartment on the second floor of this building. It was grand central station. This is where I developed my obsession to one day have my own back yard. Funny, how these steps now seem so small but when I was a kid with my brothers (below) back in the Fifties, they seemed so much bigger.

Me and my two younger brothers and some other neighborhood brats back in the Fifties when we were the Terrors of the Neighborhood

A fairly recent picture of 120 Washington Avenue, Downingtown, PA. We have the second floor front apartment. My aunt and uncle and their kids lived on the top floor and another aunt and uncle lived in the second floor rear apartment. Lots of Tipton's in that building. As I said it was Grand Central Station. I never had friends over. I was too ashamed. That apartment building was in the white trash section of Downingtown. Still is to this day. I'll always remember the rent. $22.50 a month for that cock roach infested apartment. 

I always yearned to live alone but when I did, I didn't like it, not at all. I thought I would but I didn't. Oh, there was one other time I lived alone that I actually did like it. It was a brief eleven month period in 1980 from January to November. Our house was being built in Pennsylvania but not completed so I had to rent a fourth apartment in center city Philadelphia at 2124 Spruce Street for $150 a month. I actually liked that. Bill with our two Pomeranian dogs lived in the unfinished house in Pennsylvania until construction was completed. I think the difference this time was that I knew it was only temporary that I would be living alone. 

Oh, there was one other time I lived by myself. A furnished one room efficiency apartment in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The grand Victorian house in Shadyside, Pittsburgh where I resided for about three months in 1960 before I moved back to my hometown because I was just too lonely in Pittsburgh. 

I had an eight dollar a week apartment where I had to share a bathroom with four other apartments! I hated that. My room was on the right, first floor. The bathroom was on the second floor and invariable someone was always in the bathroom when I wanted to use it. If I did happen to get the bathroom to myself, then someone usually was knocking on the door asking "How long are you going to be?" Folks, that's one time you don't want to be rushed. I hated it.

I'm experiencing the loneliness of living alone again but this time I'm getting used to it. Probably the big difference is that I know I won't have years and years stretched before me living alone. At the rate I'm going now (falling asleep at 8:30 at night), I won't have all that many years left. Back when I was twenty-one, I wasn't too happy about sixty or seventy years ahead of me with the prospect of living alone.

Notice how I start out with the Christmas subject of this blog posing and I veer off to living alone? That's the way I compose my blog postings folks. Whatever train of thought winds its way through my overloaded brain. 

Another apartment my family lived in. The rent here was $0.0. We lived on the second floor (that my Mother on the porch with her canary in the cage getting some fresh air). The deal here was that our family was given free rent to live above the offices of Gindy Manufacturing Company (my father worked for David Ginsburg who was a trailer manufacturer). Our family were the de facto "watchmen" for the manufacturing company building which was right next to this red brick building. My mother was about to save enough money for our family to rise out of abject poverty and finally have our own, albeit very small (1100 square feet house) with three and a half acres of land. The year was 1958 and I finally had my own "backyard!" Only got to live in that house for a year though until I joined the Army and I was back in "apartment" (barracks) building. 

This is an aerial view from the Sixties. My one remaining brother lives there now (the one I don't talk to, he's lost to the MAGA cult). He has spent thousands of dollars to remove ALL the shrubbery because he's too lazy to trim and keep it up. The property used to be beautiful now it looks like a Martian landscape). 

1075 Hopewell Road, Downingtown, PA 
my bedroom (finally had my own bedroom!) was the middle awning room

Will Pat and ever live together? I doubt it. We're way too set in our ways, both of us. Oh yes, we'll still get married but we'll have a long distance relationship. And that is fine with both of us so anyone reading this blog thinks I'm up to having someone else move in here at Casa Tipton-Kelly, you can have another think coming. It ain't happening. I've already severed my relationship with one longtime acquaintance who was making the moves. It ain't happening. That person was already trying to run my life. It ain't happening. No more reporting where I go, when I'm coming back and all that freedom that one has to give up when sharing living arrangements with someone else. I didn't mind with Bill because we loved each other. I'll have have that love or love somebody that much again. Never.

Have a great day everyone! 

Trump Nominates Crazy Eyes for FBI Director

Donald Trump has nominated Kash Patel for FBI director.

Hey Trump voters! How do you like Trump's cabinet picks so far?

Matt Gaetz, child sex abuser.

Pete Hegeseth, accused  rapist.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., former herion addict and vaccine denier.

Now Kash Patel, AKA "Crazy Eyes." 

Kash Patel, one of the main architects behind the January 6th attempted overthrow of a lawfully elected president. 

Kash Patel, who has promised to "go after" those in the news media he doesn't agree with.

Kash Patel, totally unqualified to head the FBI.

Trump thinks he won a mandate to appoint whatever clown he wants to senior cabinet posts. To Trump their only qualification is total obedience to Trump.

Now the test is to see if any of the Republican senators has enough balls to stand up to Trump and vote down this traitor, Kash Patel. 

I doubt it. 

Perhaps the two women senators (Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski and Maine senator Susan Collins), two woman who actually don't have balls, might vote against confirmation of Crazy Eyes. 

So Trump voters, proud of yourselves for this embarrassment you have inflicted on the United States of America? 

Actually Trump voters, I have another question for you. Why actually did you vote for Trump? Because you could't vote for a woman? Couldn't vote for a biracial woman? Is that it? Or that you just couldn't vote for a Democrat? A liberal? 

Are you really THAT afraid of a transgender woman playing on the girl's volleyball team? 

This is the America we live in folks. At least he didn't appoint Lurch.......yet.