This is that most glorious time of the year when the leaves begin to fall and the bountiful fruits of our spring labours will soon be stored away and later shared around our kitchen tables long into the harsh months of winter. Certainly, our fall is a most blessed time of the seasons for giving thanks but also a chance to enjoy the glimmering aura of the Northern Lights, hopefully a long and bugless Indian Summer, as well as ample time to clean up the yards and neighbourhoods, and to transform our garages and sheds into the winter mode.
While many always look forward to the invigorating fun of raking leaves into massive piles for the kids to destroy, while most of the leftovers of the annual yard and garden dig-up, clip, and clean-up can be taken up to the transfer station and neatly dumped into the various piles for compost and recycle. Fall is also a great time for lots of casual walkabouts among nature’s slowly changing seasonal hues, and it is also great to see so many community-minded folks taking along a garbage bag to casually pick-up the unwanted discards and junk of the summer. Many of us will also gather together our miscellaneous treasures and host a year-end garage sale, where more room can be made for the new treats and toys of Christmas and cold weather fun, while adding to someone else’s precious collection of old and new odds and ends.
Now let’s have a little fun.
There will be many who will now vow that before the rigours of winter arrive and we become couch potatoes we will promise to head for the nearest gym to try and lose a few pounds or make sure to find a cold weather activity that will keep us in shape until spring. Personally, I try stay fairly trim by Golden Age bowling, vacuuming and venturing out for coffee at every opportunity.
Always trying to impress my buddies, I decided to change the name of our household “john” to the “gym.” This way I can inform them that the first thing I do when I get up every morning is head for the gym. I will make sure and tell them all that we will always be best friends (because they know way too much about me); and that we will continue to be friends until we are old and senile, and then we will be new friends.
• Questions of the week. Why don’t you ever see the headline, “Psychic wins the Lottery?” and why is a man who invests all of our money called a broker?
• Sign on the back of the big guy’s truck: “I don’t skinny dip, I chunky dip.”
The dinner party
His wife hosted a dinner party for a bunch of their friends, some of whom they hadn’t seen for quite a while, and to which everyone was encouraged to bring along their children. All during dinner his wife’s best friend’s six-year old was staring at him sitting across the dinner table and could hardly eat her food while being mesmerized by him.
He checked his shirts for spots, felt his face and teeth for pieces of food, and patted his hair into place but absolutely nothing would stop her from staring at him. He tried his best just to ignore her, but it eventually became too much for him, and he finally politely asked her, “Why are you staring at me?”
By this time everyone at the table had noticed her behavior, and went completely silent waiting for her response. In a rather loud and inquiring voice the little girl replied, “I’m just waiting to see how you drink like a fish.”
Store signs that we will never ever see again
• Sign on the donut shop. Your name is not Calvin Klein and you are obviously not an underwear model, so if you want service here, please pull up your pants.
• Auto repair price list: Ping/ping/ping ($35 an hour); Plunk/ping/plunk ($50 an hour); Clunk/ping/clunk ($125 an hour); Thud/clunk/thud ($200 an hour); Clank/thud/clank ($325 an hour or you better trade-her in.).
• Swimming notice: State Law strictly prohibits underwater smoking.
• On Christmas morning she’ll be happy with new Hoover vacuum cleaner.
• The harder a wife works, the cuter she looks.
• More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette; and now available for 15 cents a package are “Cocaine Tooth Drops” for instant relief.
• Our family is always happy because we eat lard.
Don’t put away the summer toys yet, as there will still be lots of time for a few more rounds of golf, a game of tennis, and whatever you choose to enjoy in your sassy light and breezy wardrobe, but please take a sweater at night, and have a great week, all of you!
— Hammertime