Miss Cynthia and I spent a couple of days at the beach for my birthday. We enjoyed the galleries and came face to face with art of all kinds.
I went for early morning walks on the beach and enjoyed Seaside before most others were awake and out on the streets.
My most memorable moment, among many, was when I popped three ibuprofen in my mouth while walking into a gallery (back was hurting something awful). When I swallowed, two went into my tummy, and one into my bronchial tube. I tried to sneak out of the gallery to go die, but Cynthia saw me with that urgent look on my face and followed me. I drank water, stayed calm, and within about five minutes I finally coughed it up while sitting on a park bench on the streets of Cannon Beach. It blew out of my mouth into my palm like a slimy bullet. Cynthia looked at me and said, "promise you'll never take pills without water again." "I won't" I said. She said "No, I want you to say the whole sentence." After three attempts at satisfying her with variations of this promise, I sat for a while, spitting and sputtering. Later we laughed about what passers by might have thought as Miss Cynthia badgered me like a witness in a court room. "Say it! Say the whole sentence!" I'll bet someone had a fun reflection over dinner about it.
So I will continue to live past my 50th Birthday. Let's see what we can do from here. One thing is I'll always take pills with water. Maybe I'll eat better, get more exercise, and rest more, too.
Hey, here's a poster my brother, Scott, had in high school. I've kept it all these years and had it tacked on walls in my studies, my garages, and I don't remember where else. Now it's probably almost 40 years old, aged, a little tattered. Pretty cool actually.
