Cooking the NYTimes and Other Assorted Retirement Activities

We've been ripping our basement apart, a retirement activity if I ever saw one.  We demolished a powder room that we stopped using a couple decades ago--fortunately, when we opened the toilet, we didn't find any dead critters in there.  We pulled down sheetrock from waist-high down, which means ripping out the insulation as well.  There was a unused bar in the basement and it's now in the dumpster.  Finally we pulled up the carpet from the basement stairs.  That night, we sank into our matching recliners in the family room.  Dan looked wearily at me and said, "We're never doing that again." Damn right. Anyhow, while demolishing, I've had a lot of time to think, too much time perhaps.  Pulling down the powder room walls, I composed the following letter to my Congressman, Erik Paulsen (R-MN).  I originally intended to send it to all members of Congress and the President.  However, as I researched doing that, it became clear that members of ...

I'm going to begin with a disclosure that at least some of you are familiar with. Almost 25 years ago, our family and our framily, the Smiths, were in the Drake Diner in Des Moines when it was robbed and two people brutally murdered.  One of the bullet casings bounced off Voldemort's foot (see previous blog regarding Voldemort).  The oldest children were called to testify in court.  The memories can still cause my blood to run cold and my heart to beat faster than it should.  Every mass shooting invokes the memory of being under the table at the Diner, holding our youngests close.  The oldest children were seated at a booth directly across from the register where the murders took place.  I remember the first shot sounded something like a wait staff had dropped a platter of glasses.  Or maybe a light bulb had exploded.  The restaurant went silent.  My eyes locked with Jeanie's, sitting across the booth from me.  Slowly we sank to the fl...