Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Time is a terrible thing to waste

This is in the nature of being a confession. (Note: I am even equivocating on the subject matter). So let me just come clean. This is a confession. I have been a lazy bum for almost a week.

For ninety years, I was an industrious little bee, bed-ridden or not. At 91, I caved ( temporarily, I hope) and just laid back and closed my eyes at every available opportunity. I know I am of an age when I can forget chores, and goals, and deadlines, but I have lived too long with a to-do list to be suddenly faced with a blank note bad. It is bad for the mind and worse for the soul.

Last Friday night, after I dozed through Washington Week, I didn't know what to do with myself. My son had sent me a stack of wonderful books for my birthday, and I felt too dumb to start reading them. I'm not talking Proust (I've always been too dumb to really understand him); I'm talking Alter and Remnick; wonderful writers I thoroughly enjoy. So, I firgured I'd watch an old NCIS.

My brother had told me, a few years ago, that these are good episodes to kill an hour. To kill time... ( kill time!) horrors, that is a punishable infraction. It worked, and I fell in love with Mark Harmon, my new friend, " Leroy Jethro Gibbs". It's like pistachio nuts, you know you can't eat just one pistachio nut. If you don't get that, it's because it is an inside joke--Abbie and Gibbs and mine.

Well, I watched an episode I had watched twice before, where the Iranian mother-in-law and Mike, Gibbs' mentor, sit on the same deck and watch their joint grandchild playing with her mother.

Three viewing of that is only one too many--- but here I am, back in the land of the living.

Thank the good Lord. Blessed be.




3 comments:

  1. Love cousin Mark and your brother did have some sage advice...you can think of your closing your eyes as another nit of Harmon sage advice " sleep on it".. a great piece of wisdom I have found/

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  2. I love NCIS and I really love that scene too. Even though there are differences between them their love for their grandchild was mutual. Glad to hear you are still doing well. Very belated Happy birthday!

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  3. I`ve found a new love - Horatio,CSI Miami - he is ubercool. I also love the Floridian landscape and colours which at the moment is a bonnie distraction from the cold,wet,dark and miserable climate we`re forced to live in across the very big ocean (and a couple of small seas) which divides us!(Not long now until February, it`s all downhill from there!)

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