If there is a hell … and I am in fact bound there … the perfect torture would be sitting in an airport, waiting for a flight that is delayed. Originally, say, it was scheduled for 11:42, boarding at 11:02. It is now10:30 and I have been sitting at the gate for almost an hour trying to ignore the guy in the next row talking loudly into his phone, closing the deal of the century. Seriously, don’t you wonder if there’s no one on the line and these guys just want to sound important. There is a gaggle of business folks returning from a convention, bursting with comradery and yucking it up about something that happened as they finished the day in the hotel bar. There’s a family with three adorable kids who just got off a connecting flight and are so full of energy spontaneous combustion is not out of the question. They squeal and laugh and run. I love kids but I hate airports which cancels out the love of kids. As I am fetching my Bose noise cancelling headphones from my carry-on, I look up just in time to see the departure time click from 11:42 to Delayed 12:05 on the flight status board. Shit! And over the next two hours, the flight delay will advance maddeningly in 20 minute increments until either the flight is cancelled or, finally, blessedly, the loudspeaker announce We will begin boarding in 20 minutes. But wait. This is hell! The flight delays go on for eternity and the businessman never stops talking and the conference goers laugh louder and louder and more adorable kids show up and my headphone batteries are dead. I would be pulling out may hair if I had any.
I bring this up because at 9:30 am we were just getting ready to leave for the airport to send Christmas with our grandkids in Texas. For three lovely years they live only ten minutes away, so enjoying Christmas morning with them didn’t require trips to the airport. But now they live in Texas and we have to fly to see them. Fortunately, my daughter texted us that our flight had been delayed just before we were ready to leave for the airport, so I was spared. After three delays, it looks like we will be leaving two and a half hours late (since the incoming flight is finally on it’s way). So, here I sit, passing the time by writing this post and grateful it’s just another day at the airport. But of course, our outgoing flight could still be delayed due to weather in Dallas (believe it or not, it’s colder there than it is here in Utah). But I know we’ll get there eventually because my wife is entirely too good to be sentenced to airport hell.
Yesterday, we needed to get my wife, Muri’s, car smog checked and registered. Unlike smog check and registration in California, here we can do it in a single stop at any authorized shop. And we can generally do it without an appointment and in fifteen minutes or so. When we walked into our favorite auto shop, Tunex, the manager said, How are you? I instinctively answered, I’m good. When I went back to the sit next to my wife in the waiting area, she looked at me with a twinkle in her eye and said, Liar! Hmmm. Well, the truth is we have been going through some difficult times and my answer was a lie. The incident brought me back to a vacation in Clearwater, FL. My kids were really kids back then and my daughter, always a social butterfly, made friend with a girl her age in the pool. We soon met her parents and began to hang around with them. Her dad was Scottish and spoke with a brogue that was sometimes hard for these American ears to understand. One afternoon, he looked at me and said, When you folks say, “How are you?” you don’t really mean it, do you? It’s just a way of saying hello. Of course, he was right, and we had a good laugh about it. 
On the last day of December 2021, I retired. There was no retirement dinner, no gold watch, just an emailed letter to my business partner stating that I was retiring and the business was now his. We really hadn’t had any business since early in the year … my only responsibilities had been maintaining contact with certain websites that allowed us to work for the government. So, there is really no change in my days to mark the occasion. But even at 77 years old, it feels odd. For over thirty years, I have written in a journal most morning, a remnant of something Julia Cameron called Morning Pages in her book, The Artist’s Way. It was part of a plan to bring out my Inner Artist, and indeed it did. I took classes in creative writing, published a short story and wrote a novel (unpublished). I began painting and photography. I started this blog that has over 2000 posts on it and another to display my art. At the end of my pages each morning, I would write four letters (M for Mystic, A for Artist, S for Scientist and E for entrepreneur). In a small attempt to keep some balance in my life, I would order the letters to correspond to the extent that my previous day was occupied with each of the four. For example, S, A, M, E would mean that most of my time was spent on Science and Art, while spirituality and business were less important. 
If you’ve read the opening post on Oldereyes – Bud’s Blog, you know I offer you the opportunity to choose how you would describe me after reading a post: Sage, Curmudgeon or Fool. I believe that sometimes I have the wisdom to be a Sage, although no one has ever called me one, and I try hard not to be a Fool. But I am convinced that being a curmudgeon … an ill-tempered old person full of stubborn ideas or opinions … is the natural state of the aging male. I do my best to keep my curmudgeon Inner but as I curmudge about more things, that gets harder and … I swear … after a half century of marriage, my wife can read my mind anyway. One of the things I’ve gotten more curmudgeonly about is television. There used to be shows my wife Muri and I watched together. MASH. Taxi. Hill Street Blues. I miss those times but if I try to watch her shows with her these days, my Inner Curmudgeon fights his way out and makes snide comments, and eventually, she sends me away. 
Older Eyes 