Rant #3,926: My House

Today is kind of a weird anniversary for myself and my family.

It is the one-year anniversary of us living in our current residence, and it is about two-and-a-half years or so since we moved from our house to the apartment complex we are in now.

I can focus on both anniversaries here right now, but using general observations.

When my family and I moved to our house on Long Island in late summer 1971, it meant a great change for the four of us, since we all were born, lived in and grew up in New York City.

When we moved out to Long Island in late July 1971, it was a real and true mind shift for us.

My parents finally had the home they wanted, in a safe environment, unlike where we came from, which was in such disarray that it prompted this move.

For my sister and I, it was a new beginning, one that was fraught with many potholes, in particular for me, because we moved just before I was starting high school, a time in one's life that is full of so many changes to begin with that any additional upheavals can be striking, and it certainly was for me.

Flash ahead more than 50 years, and I still lived in that house, this time with my wife and son, with my parents living in the same house.

When my parents passed away, my family and I were in for new changes and a new reality, that being that we had to leave our home, and leave it as quickly as possible.

My health problems started right then and there, but we found a nice, new neighborhood to live in, and we moved into our first apartment here a few weeks after my mother died, with me hobbling and really, there was nowhere else for us to go.

Then exactly a year ago today, we relocated within the same development to a much larger apartment, and while I wasn't hobbling anymore, I certainly did not know what the future would bring, and that hobbling led to more maladies that I can't comprehend.

Anyway, let me say right away that there is nothing like a house.

Moving from an apartment to a house is a daunting task, but it is doable.

Moving from a house into an apartment is more involved, more intense, and much more involved--

Especially when I, myself, lived in that house for the better part of 50 years.

We were darn lucky. 

We found a development not too far away from where we lived, but in another town and another county, which has posed its own problems.

I can still frequent places that I used to when we lived in the old neighborhood, and I still feel like I still live in that old neighborhood.

But it simply isn't the same as living in a house ...

I have grown to enjoy where we live, enjoy our apartment, enjoy our terrace, and enjoy being where we are now.

I still wish that things could have turned out differently, that we still could be in that house, but I guess it simply wasn't meant to be.

I have been near the old house, but I have never purposely driven by it.

It is not ours anymore, and I have no interest in seeing what it looks like now.

I am firmly ensconced where I am, so why look at something that isn't ours anymore?

It makes no sense, to me at least, so while I have had opportunities to do so--we are only about 3.5 miles away from where we were--what would be the point?

As Dorothy said in "The Wizard of Oz," "there's no place like home," and that is just so true.

And home is not in a house anymore, it is in an apartment, and that is my home now.

Thinking back to when I was a kid in Rochdale Village, when we would invite someone over to our apartment, we would say variations of "come to my house," or "let's go to my house," or something like that, even though the word "house" was used in place of "apartment."

I never remember uttering the word "apartment" in such instances, and all these years later, even though my "house" is my "apartment," things haven't changed that much.

My house, my apartment, is my home, and that is the way it is, and the way it will always be.

Rant #3,925: United We Stand

More tests.

More frustration.

More, more, more. 

How do I like it?

I don't, but it is for my betterment.

I know that, but I haven't had this many tests since graduate school, or maybe even grade school.

Whatever the amount of tests that I had back then, those were certainly happier times than now.

Right now, I feel that not only isn't my body right, I am in something of a brain fog--

But like I said the other day, I am determined to beat whatever it is that is ailing me, and beat it to a pulp--

No matter how long it takes.

And is that sentiment one that we share about what is happening in the Middle East?

And did anyone really think that the U.S. and Iran would come to any sort of agreement?

I am afraid that this conflict is one we can't win, but we can't lose either.

I think that we, as a nation, have to understand that the Arab Middle East is not the West in any way, shape or form.

We desire them to have Western values, but these are classic third world countries, governed by one thing, and one thing only:

Their religion, and their abject hate of all Western values.

This is a different enemy that we have fought in the past.

This is an enemy that doesn't care if it dies, because in death, they consider themselves to be martyrs, giving themselves up to Allah.

And their people, and those Arabs throughout the Middle East, are not people that will rise up in unison and stage uprisings to rid their government of its rulers and become more Western.

It is not happening with the Palestinians, it is not happening with the Iranians, and it is not happening with the Lebanese.

They voted in Hamas, they voted in Hezbollah, and they are OK to be governed by terrorists.

And if they are so comfortable with this leadership, we have to be mindful of that, that Western values aren't coming to the Arab world in these Middle Eastern countries anytime soon, if at all.

As much as we want it to happen, it simply isn't, and we have to understand that.

The fight that we--and Israel--are fighting is a good fight, a correct fight, but I am afraid it is going to lead nowhere, or at least not to the result we want it to come to.

Without help from Europe and our allies, and without any help from any of the Arab countries, we seem to be fighting a war not only with Iran and Lebanon, but amongst our own people and the world.

And with rising inflation, gas prices going over $4 a gallon, and everything going up exponentially each and every day of this war, it is a conflict that I am afraid, even though it is just, is simply going to lead to an uprising among our country's citizens.

I have said it before, and I am going to say it again:

To play on an old phrase we all learned in high school, "The pocketbook is mightier than the sword."

And when average Americans like you and I are spending more dollars than we can afford to simply get through each and every day, we are losing the battle amongst ourselves.

How much longer can we take it?

And when Tiger Woods can call the president when he gets picked up for DUI, who does the average American call when prices are rising to an outrageous level?

There will come a point when we, as a nation, are going to have to take a step back from all of this, and really see what is in our best interests.

We have weakened this enemy, but we have not destroyed them; and their people are simply too weak to take over where we started.

I am sure if we had our druthers, at this point in time, we would love to push that button and totally annihilate them, but that isn't happening any time soon or at all.

So we have to prepare for our endgame, and Israel--which would love to push that button, too--must prepare for its endgame, too.

That does not mean giving up, it means understanding the situation, while continuing to monitor it and take action when necessary, and plan to move on.

The threat will still be there, but it will be weakened ...

Mightily weakened.

The American public has just so much patience, and that patience is getting thinner by the day.

And our allies should absolutely be ashamed of themselves at their behavior during this time when we all should be pulling together.

In their future times of need, we should act in kind.

We are in a world where things are topsy turvy, where good guys are bad guys and bad guys are good guys.

We--the U.S.--are the good guys here, but you wouldn't know it by our allies' reactions to what we are doing to rid the world of these terroristic regimes.

So be it.

We have a great friend in the Middle East in Israel, all the other supposed friends we have there really aren't that at all, and like the old song said,

"United We Stand, Divided We Fall."

Now, onto more tests ... 

And I think that we, as a country, are in for more tests, too.

Rant #3,924: Hope and Deliverance

Another week, another set of medical tests--

Which will lead to still more tests--

And still more tests after that.

And the cost--

Don't get me started on that.

It is kind of never ending, but I know that it will all lead up to me being healthy, so I just have to put up with it.

I mean, it is Monday the 13th, not Friday the 13th, so it is all good.

This past weekend, I was still suffering some after-effects from the PT scan I had, so I had to bow out of taking my son to his bowling league on Saturday morning.

My wife has just been so good about everything--my Rock of Gibraltar--so she took him.

The PT scan left me tired, and still slightly irradiated, so I just felt it was better that I took at least the morning off, giving me one more day to get back firmly in the saddle.

Physically, I wasn't up to par, and probably mentally, too, since I will hear about the findings of the test this morning--

While I receive another test, and prepare for a future test where my doctor has to sign some papers to give me the go-ahead to have this test done.

But enough about that--

How about that Artemis splashdown!

The re-entry into our atmosphere and the splashdown were probably the most difficult tasks of that entire project to accomplish, and they did it!

I was probably asleep when it happened, but I was so happy that they made it.

This project will be a stepping stone to our eventual landing on the moon once again, after a more than 50-year wait.

I was mesmerized by the moon landings as a kid, and I will continue to be mesmerized when it finally happens again, supposedly in two years.

I hope that I am well enough to enjoy something like this, so now is the time to get better.

Closer to now, I have my daughter's wedding coming up in October, which to me, is as spectacular as the Artemis project in some ways.

I am really looking forward to this occasion, and I just hope that I am well enough to fully enjoy it.

My health, the Artemis project and my daughter's wedding are linked by one thing:

The unknown.

Right now, I don't know about my health and where I stand with it;

Any project the size and scope of Artemis--where we will be going back to the moon and then Mars--always creates an unknown that we have to encounter and surmount;

And my daughter's wedding also has something of an unknown factor in it, as any wedding does.

Look, I am not linking the gravity and weight of my health or my daughter's wedding with this outer space project--

Artemis is something completely different, something that people will talk about for generations after, while my health and my daughter's wedding are just personal family footnotes--

But that unknown factor is there for the three of them--

And they are actually linked together by something else--

Hope.

Hope that they all succeed beyond our wildest dreams.

And I wish that for the brave astronauts who man the Artemis capsules, my daughter and her future husband, and for myself.

Hope leads to good things, and hope always triumphs over the unknown.

And even though I might be damaged goods, I will always have a lot of hope, that things will turn out the right way.

How can I think anything else?

Rant #3,923: The Boxer

My personal health situation remains up in the air.

I have so many medical appointments coming up that it is truly head spinning.

I am absolutely not well right now, but I guess I could be worse.

When you are healthy, relatively, your entire life, and then you get hit by everything including the kitchen sink, it kind of makes you crazy.

Today, I have to go for a PT scan, or what they call a pet scan, and that should tell me something about my lungs.

Something turned up on a catscan where I have a spot on my left lung.

It doesn't necessarily mean cancer, and a lot of people have this, I have been told, and it often comes up as not much of anything.

But I know that some people who have not smoked have gotten lung cancer--

Barry Manilow is one of these people ... comic Andy Kauffman also, and he died of lung cancer having never smoked.

So it is just another mountain I have to scale, and I am obviously hoping it is nothing.

If it is something, let's get it taken care of, so I can move on to the next mountain.

Yes, all of this is quite depressing, and right now, I don't know which way is up, to be quite frank about it.

And as I have said a million times, and probably will say a million times more, this is not what I envisioned retirement to be.

I know that I am not fully retired to begin with, but I have had a very difficult retirement, and it just seems to be getting worse and worse and worse.

My family tries to keep me strong, and it is very difficult on them.

I have a good resolve to move on and surmount these challenges, but I keep on getting hit where it hurts, and it is tough to wake up with a smile each day.

And dealing with all the doctors and their staffs is another story altogether.

(As an example, on Wednesday, I made an appointment for another catscan, and the person I made it with got the date wrong--by a full month! 

Happily, I was able to see the mistake and change the date, but I mean, c'mon now, do I speak another language than the English you supposedly know?

Complete incompetency.)

It really puts you on edge ... everything is on my head right now, and I don't really think it should be that way.

Then there are the little things, things that somehow become big when nothing else is working out right.

On Tuesday, among other things, I had to deal with my computer's printer, which was not printing anything that I put through it.

It took about an hour for it to work correctly; I tried everything to get it going--

But out of desperation, I replaced the two ink cartridges I was using, and I got it going again.

Sounds simple, but when everything else is cratering, this just adds another brick to the load.

I find that I cannot relax, that I am always in motion ...

But my energy level is not what it normally is, which makes it that much harder.

I really pushed myself on Tuesday.

Way before the printer problem, I had to go to the pharmacy; I went to the supermarket and bought another box of matzohs, since what I had ran out; I decided to go to the record store for a little while, since it was a stone's throw away from my final destination, which was the dentist, as I had an appointment for a cleaning.

I did it all, but my stamina simply isn't there, and it was all I could do to not fall asleep when the technician was cleaning my teeth.

I got home, did some work, and tried to relax ...

But then I had the printer problem, so that was a no go.

On Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning, I know that I started to talk in my sleep again, so I moved myself to the living room, where I relaxed, somewhat, and from 3 a.m. to probably about 4:30 a.m., that is where I was, so I would not wake up my wife with my chatter.

I went back into the bedroom and fell asleep, but my wife told me that I did wake her up.

The bottom line is that my quality of life right now is not that great, but I am determined to beat whatever ails me, whether it is one thing or multiple things.

Wednesday was a better day than Tuesday was, as was Thursday.

I had much more energy and I was able to do things that I wouldn't have been able to do earlier in the week.

It has given me strength, and has enabled me to feel better about myself and my situation.

I promise you that I will beat this, beat it to a pulp, and move on with my life.

It might take awhile--I am not a patient person--but I am going to beat all of this as best that I can.

I expect to look at this Rant a few years down the line and say to myself, "Remember when?"--

And shake my head that I had to go through all of this stuff, but that I was able to get through it.

I am a fighter, and I am not down for the count just yet.

Not by a long shot.

Have a great weekend, and i will speak to you again on Monday 

Rant #3,922: The End of the Road

It is finally over.

The Gilgo Beach murderer has pled guilty to committing eight murders of prostitutes over a number of years, closing a chapter on one of the most grisly murder sprees in recent memory.

I won't mention this person's name, but what he did was just beyond belief--

And he did it all supposedly under the noses of his family, and in particular, his wife.

This is truly hard to believe, but he supposedly did all of these horrid things while his family was away on vacation numerous times--

When the cat is away, the mice will play, and in this case, the rat played, acting as a normal suburban dad, but with a terrible secret--

Hiding in plain sight.

I have always thought that his wife had to have known that he was at least fooling around, and about the best you can say about her is that she simply didn't know to what extent her husband was doing what he did.

No, she evidently wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but even their daughter said she believed her father committed these heinous crimes.

The son is a special needs person, so it is difficult to say if he even comprehends any of this.

And yes, the crimes supposedly happened in a ramshackle home in Massapequa Park, my former stomping ground.

Massapequa Park has had funny and ever-changing lines over the years--it is all politics--but suffice it to say that the Massapequa Park I lived in for more than 50 years was on the clear other side of the part of town where this brute and his family lived.

But whatever the case, isn't he just so nice sparing the victims' families, and his own family, of a trial, where more grisly details would be sure to come out in the open?

Nice guy, isn't he?

Now that there will be no trial--just a sentencing for him in mid-July, certainly putting him in jail for the rest of his horrid life on the taxpayers' dime--what is next in this horrible story?

You just know that the victims' families are going to sue the murderer and his family for damages in a civil court--

I believe one has already done that.

The murderer's wife has already received $1 million for her story, and you just know that that type of money--and any further monies that she gets for her story--will be the subject of one lawsuit after another.

I think the family knows this, as they all have their own attorneys standing by if need be.

Further, I just hope that the home where all this stuff happened doesn't turn into the latest version of "The Amityville Horror" house, where the home became such a tourist attraction that it had to be torn down and streets renamed so no one could find it.

The neighbors of this family don't need that, and hopefully, people will be more civil and that won't happen like it did to the other house.

As it is, who would buy such a house to begin with?

You figure the murderer's family cannot possibly live in it anymore--

Does it have extra worth as a house of horrors?

Who knows.

But what happens next is anyone's guess.

The preponderance of evidence was against this guy from the get go, so a trial would have just put people through more pain, so I have to say that the murderer, as grisly as it seems, probably made the right decision--

For everyone.

Massapequa and Massapequa Park have such a horrid reputation as settings for some of the most notorious and infamous crimes of recent vintage--remember the "Long Island Lolita" and the Jessica Hahn travesties--that it could be a prime stop on any "true crime" road trip.

But don't blame my old neighborhood for these horrid crimes.

As usual, it is the people in these areas that do these horrid things, and who knows what spurred on the Gilgo Beach murderer to do these heinous atrocities?

And without a trial, we probably will never know--

Which is not such a bad thing.

Rant #3,921: Fly Me To the Moon

Amid the turmoil that the world is going through right now, we have a sense of wonder flying above us, as the Artemis II spacecraft navigates around the moon.

It, and its four-man crew, have ventured deeper into outer space than any human has up to this point in time.

They did exactly what they set out to do, and now they are coming home.

I was always enraptured by these space missions, from Gemini through Apollo and beyond.

My uncle was an engineer during the Gemini program, and he sent over materials to us--which are, unfortunately, long gone--about the project and its intent to lay the groundwork for the United States to eventually land on the moon.

After making incredible strides to fulfill President Kennedy's vow to land on the moon by the end of the 1960s, we did just that, but after the first one, these missions simply did not ignite too much interest, and for more than 50 years, the space program was pretty much inert or relatively inactive, although many interesting things were done in the ensuing decades, projects that have led up to the current one--

And subsequent ones that will find us landing on the moon again.

But that first moon landing ...

It was just something else.

Here is what I wrote in Rant #2,411, July 19, 2019, about that first moon landing.

"On July 20, sometime after 9 a.m. in the morning, Buzz Aldrin crawled through the command module Columbia to the lunar module Eagle, to power on the module, the capsule that would take him and Neil Armstrong to the moon's surface.

At about 1:30 p.m., the astronauts were in the Eagle module when it separated from the mother ship on its trek to the moon.

After several computer glitches, at 4:18 p.m., the phrase "The Eagle has landed" came into the lexicon, as the capsule holding Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon.

Much had to be done before either man could actually walk on the lunar surface, and more than six and a half hours later, the time had come.

The hatch opened. Armstrong exited, backing out of the module with Aldrin watching for any glitches. Armstrong turned on the module's TV camera, so mankind could join him in his endeavor.

At 10:56 p.m., Armstrong's feet met the moon's surface, and he uttered the immortal lines, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

For the next two and a half hours or so, Armstrong--joined by Aldrin on the moon at 11:11 p.m.-- collected moon rock samples, planted the American flag and a plaque commemorating this accomplishment, and simply cavorted with the majesty of where they were and what they were doing. They also took a phone call from President Richard Nixon.

By 1:11 a.m.on July 21, it was over."

Here on earth, I was fully engaged in this project.

It was as if my comic books had come alive.

I could not take my eyes away from the screen, watching Armstrong and Aldrin doing their thing on the moon.

But after a few more moon landings, it was over, and it seemed our love affair with space travel was over too.

Here is what I lamented in Rant #2,413, July 23, 2019, about the future of space travel.

"I hope that we have a chance, during the next 20 years or so, to go back to the moon in a manned expedition.

I don't think that people will galvanize around visiting that orb as we did as a civilization back in 1969, but I do believe that it will be a simply stupendous thing if we can visit the moon once again.

Perhaps it can be, literally, the jumping off point for a manned expedition to Mars, but even taken without that caveat, wouldn't it be great to have our astronauts back on the surface, doing experiments, surveying earth from that perch, and just having fun on the moon's surface ... while we all watched with utter glee?

I think it would be a great idea, something to bring all of us together as one once again.

And who would be this generation's Neil Armstrong? Would NASA stay with the status quo, or would a minority be the first one to walk on the moon, or maybe even a woman?

Who knows, and really, it doesn't matter at all."

Incredibly, we are now one step closer to visiting the moon once again.

I don't know about you, but I can't wait for that dream to become a reality.

I have heard that this will happen in two years, in 2028.

I will be 71 then, and while I was just 12 years of age in 1969 when we first did it, that sense of wonder has never left me--

And I know that when it happens, I will be just like I was back in 1969--

I will be watching it all play out on TV, every moment, every step, every nuance.

I just can't wait--

Can you?

Rant #3,920: Simply the Best

One test down, many more to go.

And this test went well, so perhaps that is a good omen.

There are many more to go, but this one is out of the way.

Onto other things...

How many people have Catchy Comedy?

It is basically a classic sitcom rerun channel, showing "The Dick Van Dyke Show" to "The Brady Bunch," and everything in between.

On Sunday nights at 7 p.m., they are doing something outside the box, but in line with the Catchy Comedy theme.

They are devoting just about an entire Sunday evening to Lucille Ball, and her vast TV legacy.

"Catchy Loves Lucy," hosted by her daughter, Lucie Arnaz, features an all-Lucy block of programming, which includes not only her sitcom legacy--"I Love Lucy," "The Lucy Show" "Here's Lucy" and even "Life With Lucy"--but also commercials, radio spots, home movies and TV specials starring the comedienne.

Each week has a different theme, often highlighting her co-stars, including Vivian Vance and Gale Gordon.

All of it is tied together by short anecdotes by her daughter.

There is really a treasure trove of stuff here, from the classic sitcom episodes to long forgotten TV specials.

Lucy continues to be the "grand dame" of American television even years after her passing, and from the 1950s to the early 1990s, she was probably the most ubiquitous person on TV, appearing in every TV format possible.

Sure, some of it is cringe-worthy, some of it is dated, but let me tell you, a lot of it is really funny even decades after the fact.

Today's comedy simply cannot hold a candle to what Lucy and her writers brought to the airwaves, and this series demonstrates that loud and clear, in black and white and in color.

If you have a chance, I would highly recommend tuning into this series.

It shows Lucille Ball at her best, at her worst, and somewhere in between ...

And demonstrates that there has never been anyone like Lucy, and there will never be another Lucy in our lifetimes or anyone's lifetime.

"I Love Lucy" ... forever.