Retirement Transitions - Forced Feeding

As my husband and I inch closer to the final stage of our transition into retirement (the actual downsize to a Vermont condo,) we’re seeing changes to our usual daily patterns. When I was still working, we ate dinner together perhaps once a month. In the final weeks before the house was listed for sale, Jagdish began spending one weekday at home, helping me prepare for the listing. We would then have dinner together and he’d head off to his store for the evening.

Last week, his car once again developed problems with the starter. (He’s had two put in over the last few months.) Turns out, there’s a massive oil leak that has been dripping onto the starter and finally killed it off. We debated whether to even bother fixing the car, since we’ll be trading it in for a more weather-worthy Subaru once me make the move. Jagdish decided to spring for the fix, but our service center can’t get to the oil job until next week.

This has led to another change in how we schedule the day. I’ve been driving him to work in the morning. I go back for him shortly before the national news comes on at night. We have dinner together as we watch the news. After dinner, he takes my car back to his store so he can drive himself home at midnight. (Or whenever he decides to tear himself away from his muse of choice.)

We both agree that it’s a pleasant change to be spending this time together. It’s also providing a good test run for how our life will be once we’re in Vermont. I see it as “forced feeding.” Right now, we have no choice about eating together twice a day. Soon that will become three times a day.

When the novelty wears off, will we both be looking for excuses to run errands and book meetings at meal times? More likely, we’ll be wearing matching his-and-hers aprons and experimenting with exotic cuisine in our condo’s kitchen. For two people who never cook, we have a considerable number of cookbooks. Their spines have never been cracked, but that will change.

I can see it now: I’ll specialize in recipes that include wine; he’ll do the ones that incorporate Indian spices. We’ll force feed our test concoctions to one another before we inflict them upon our guests.

Consider yourself warned, if you’re one of those planning to visit us. If you’re expecting to use gluten intolerance as an excuse to pass up one of our specialties, forget it. We’ll have that covered, too.

Retirement Pains - Dem Bones

For the past two weeks I’ve been undergoing physical therapy for severe pain in my back and arm. This is my first experience with PT.  The focal point of the pain seemed to be a spot just to the left of my right shoulder blade. It radiated through my armpit and down my arm to my wrist.

I thought all the lifting and carrying done as part of prepping the house for market is what caused the pain. Since my neck also bothered me part of the time, I assumed my condition was complicated by how much time I’ve been spending on the computer. An added factor is that the store where I usually get my 3.25 magnifier glasses has lately stocked only half-glasses. Those require me to tilt my neck back when I look at the screen.

My physical therapist believes that my neck is the primary source of the problem. She’s convinced that a disk is involved, but confident we can work out the kinks without my needing surgery. She is therefore spending a good part of the PT time working on my neck.

This naturally puts me in mind of that old song “Dem Bones,” (or whatever the title is.) You know, the song that goes: “The head bone’s connected to the neck bone, the neck bone’s connected to the shoulder bone,” and so on. What I keep hearing is “The neck bone’s connected to the wrist bone.”

My home PT is comprised of a number of exercises that involve repetitive stretching or scrunching.  The PT at their location employs a variety of devices.  One is an oversized tootsie roll-like thingy that I put under my back to help stretch things out as I lie on the floor. Then there are long strips of tubing that look like shredded balloons. They’re attached to the wall and you pull on them.

This week my therapist proclaimed that I’ve made excellent progress in the side-to-side mobility of my neck, but that the vertical stretching needs more work. To help with this, she puts me in a pneumatic traction device that pulls on my neck to elongate it and reduce the pressure on the problem disk.

She doesn’t realize that anything remotely resembling a posture issue is a lost cause with me. My freshman year in college, we were required to take posture pictures. Clad in our underwear, we stood on the marked spot while the phys ed instructor snapped our best attempt at good posture. The photo was developed with a white line up the middle, showing where our spine should be.

My spine meandered to and fro from that line with what can only be called willful abandon.  I was classified as having “Backward C-curve Posture,” also known as a sway back, and was assigned remedial posture sessions. Oh, the shame of it!

Back then, I had long hair that I often wore in a knot on top of my head. In an attempt to get me to stand correctly, the phys ed instructor would pull on my top knot. Up I would go, but as soon as she let go, my spine settled back into its familiar backward C. In theory, if you didn’t pass your posture picture, you couldn’t graduate.

I need to provide some context here. I was a freshman well before Title 9, and there weren’t many opportunities for women to engage in sports in college. This was just as well, because most of my peers saw phys ed as punishment. It was required only during one’s first year and the bloomers we had to wear were… well, bloomers.

Unlike most of my classmates, I was happy to sign up for sports like sailing (a club activity.) I tried to get fencing going, at which I had excelled in high school, but that was fruitless. I participated in an archery contest one weekend as a favor. There was one student who had the skill to win an individual prize, but they were short a warm body to field a team. Since I’d done archery in high school, I gave up my Saturday to enable the team to compete.

All of this served me well when the results of my final posture picture came in.  Even though my spine continued to play hard to get with the white line, I was stamped “passed.” They told me they knew I wasn’t doing this on purpose, that they knew I didn’t “have attitude” about phys ed like certain of my classmates.

I wonder what they would think if they could see me in my traction collar, or rolling around on the log. They’d probably think they should have pulled harder and longer on my top knot.

Retirement Musings - Driving & Marriage Equality

We’re in the middle of a heat wave, as is much of the country. Yesterday was one of the five all-time highest temperatures ever. Not the kind of weather that motivates me to do any serious writing, even though my basement office is one of the cooler places in our non-air-conditioned house.

The new Time magazine arrived in today’s mail, so I rifled through it for inspiration. There were a number of interesting tidbits, several of them clustered around a common but non-retirement-related topic.

The one appropriate tidbit (also heard on the evening news) is that grandparents keep children safer by a factor of two than parents do while driving. That’s right, the little ones are twice as likely to get injured when their parents are driving. You might expect that us older folks have more accidents than younger ones, and you’d be right. Apparently, we focus those mishaps on the times we are driving without the grandkids.

It seems we pay more attention when we know we have precious cargo on board. This naturally leads me to think that once we retire to Vermont, I should borrow my grandniece as often as possible when I’m running errands.

The non-relevant topic for which I found several items is gay marriage. You’ve probably already heard that same-sex marriages will be legal in New York State beginning tomorrow, July 24. New York’s Mayor Bloomberg is forward thinking enough to open the license bureau on Sunday and waive the waiting period so couples can get married the first day that it’s legal.

Expecting a barrage of applications, he implemented a lottery for the 764 applications he felt the bureau could handle. Time highlighted this number. As it turned out, the 823 couples who actually applied by the deadline could be handled by keeping the bureau open a little later. Bloomberg made it happen, but after Time went to print. Kudos to New York's mayor for not only being fair, but being romantic.

Former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani was also quoted on this topic in Time.  “I think that the Republican Party would be well advised to get the heck out of people’s bedrooms.” Good ole Rudy--ever the pragmatist, if not the romantic.

My favorite tidbit on gay marriage comes from--of all places--Nepal. Time shows a photo of a lesbian couple being married in a Hindu ceremony there. They quote a Nepali lawmaker, who says they’ve “built a brand for the gay tourists. If they want to visit a location which is exotic and rich in both tradition and natural beauty... then Nepal is the place.” Capitalism and romanticism--now that’s a marriage made in heaven. Or at least at the top of the world.

Yes folks, Nepal welcomes gay couples, while my current home state--Rhode Island--remains the only state in New England that does not recognize a gay couple’s right to marry. (I’m not counting Maine, because those folks are so far out there geographically that they might as well be in Canada.) The most Little Rhody could muster is Civil Unions, despite having a number of openly gay lawmakers and a hetero governor who was willing to sign a marriage equality bill. So the home of the Independent Man is an island indeed.

Did I mention that my husband and I are retiring to Vermont?

Retirement Transitions - A Taste of Together

Today was an unusual day, even as retirement goes. I will be having an open house tomorrow morning for the realtors and for my neighbors. Although the physical therapy has reduced my neck and arm pain considerably, I’m still limited with regard to how much physical work I can do.

My husband has been taking one day a week away from his store to help with things that need to be done to prepare for our eventual move. He stayed home today to help me clean the house. While he vacuumed the first floor, I vacuumed the second, so we weren’t even on the same floor of the house for most of the morning.

When the heavy cleaning was done, we went out for a relaxed lunch. After lunch we went grocery shopping together, since I shouldn’t be lifting heavy things like jugs of litter. Our shopping adventure was a little bit of “in the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king.”

Jagdish’s arthritis makes it difficult for him to walk fast, so he rolled the cart along slowly, cane in hand. Walking is the one thing I can do pain free, so I moved along quickly. But if the item we needed was high up or heavy, I had to wait for him to catch up and put it in the cart.

He had planned to help with the lighter cleaning when we got home from shopping, but a staffing SNAFU in his store required him to go back there as soon as we had unloaded the car. As I went about the dusting and tidying up, I reflected back on the day we had together.

It was a day of mundane chores--nothing worth writing about really. But there was something oddly pleasant about just having him in the house with me, even on a different floor, as we went about our tasks. The chance to talk about nothing in particular over lunch was a special treat.

For most of our twenty plus years of marriage we’ve both been workaholics. For the past six years or so, we were lucky if we ate dinner together once a week.

Since we’ll be downsizing to Vermont, at least four hours away from his store, we’ll be spending a lot more time together. It’s almost as though we’ll have a new start to our marriage. If today was a taste of how those days will be spent, I think we’re both going to like retirement.

Now, if we can just find someone to buy this house...

Retirement Specials - National Ice Cream Month

A special on The View alerted me to the fact that July is National Ice Cream Month, so designated by President Reagan in 1984. The special featured what can only be described as an orgy of sampling exotic flavors from ice cream purveyors around the country. The flavors included such unusual ingredients as bacon, jalapeno and alcoholic spirits like whiskey and vodka.

Not to be outdone, I’ve scoured the countryside to find ice cream flavors developed specifically to appeal to the senior palate (and digestive system.) You won’t find these on The View's website. In fact, you won’t find them anywhere except RetirementSparks. In celebration of National Ice Cream Day (which is tomorrow, the third Sunday of July,) here are the top ten flavors for the over fifty crowd.

1. Apple Sauce

A perennial favorite, this is made with a vanilla base and has swirls of Granny Smith applesauce with just a hint of cinnamon. This flavor is rumored to be the source of the expression “How do you like them apples?” but we wouldn’t bank on it.

2. Oatmeal Delight

Another popular flavor, Oatmeal Delight has a low fat vanilla base, with clumps of oatmeal, whole raisins and a soupcon of nutmeg blended into the perfect texture. Enjoy it morning, noon or night. Guilt free.

3. Prune Whip

This over-fifty choice has a butter cream base with pureed prunes swirled throughout. It’s double churned for extra air, extra lightness, extra… never mind.

4. Liver Spots

This is another vanilla-based treat, this time with carob chips throughout. It was originally served at Patricia Murphy’s in New York City and was named for how it looks, not how it tastes. It’s still available in selected restaurants, but only until 5 PM.

5. Maalox

Immediately recognizable by its bubble gum pink color, this is a combination of strawberry and peppermint. You’ll love the soothing way it coats your tummy. It’s best eaten slowly and in small spoonfuls.

6. Fiberberry

A conglomeration of the more popular berries, this flavor has a peach base and a generous amount of blueberries, blackberries and strawberries mixed throughout. Be sure to have toothpicks and floss at the ready, so you can pick out all those little seeds that will be left in your teeth. Oh, and did we mention you’ll be getting your daily requirement of fiber in one generous serving?

7. Poached Eggs

This may not sound tasty, but remember that eggs are a key ingredient in ice cream. Made with double the usual amount of cream, Poached Eggs is a decadent way to get protein into your diet without challenging your dentures, caps or whatever other hardware resides in your mouth.

8. Bananayama

One of the most mellifluously named flavors for seniors, this banana-based treat has honey-laced yams mashed throughout. High in potassium and anti-oxidants, richly colored, Bananayama is simply the bees knees.

9. Sorbet Surprise

For those who are lactose intolerant, this tangy sorbet made especially for those over fifty is a special treat. It’s non-dairy and has a surprise in the middle of each scoop. We’d tell you what that is, but then it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it.

10. Decaf Espresso

This flavor has all the intensity of Espresso, but with the caffeine removed. You can eat an entire quart after dinner and still fall asleep at 9 PM. In case that’s important to you.


That rounds out our list of ten ice cream flavors especially for seniors. Be sure to have a big scoop of something rich and creamy and icy cold tomorrow. Do it for the Gipper.

Retirement Health - Smile for Longevity

I pride myself on being a “glass half full” kind of person. My husband has pushed this concept even further with his “overflowing glass” perspective. Numerous studies have shown that having a positive attitude boosts one’s immune system. The results: less illness and faster recoveries.

The latest Oprah magazine has an article that provides yet another tool for a retiree’s quest for longevity—smiling. That’s right, the more you smile, the longer you’ll live. What’s more, the broader your smile, the longer your lifeline.

Unlike my other favored sources of posting ideas (the New York Times and Time magazine, to name just two,) Oprah the magazine does not cite the source of the study being reported. But we all know that Oprah the person would not lie to us, so I’m sure this smile information is rock solid.

We are told that the method used was to look at photos of 230 baseball players in an old issue of Baseball Register. The players with “bigmouthed beams” outlived the glum ones by 7 years; they outlived the players with “partial smiles” by 4.9.

We’re not given any guidance as to what qualifies as partial vs. bigmouthed. I’m guessing it has to do with either the number of pearly whites that are exposed, or perhaps the percentage of facial width that the smile takes up.

I’m actually less curious about that information than what possessed the person conducting the study to go to the Baseball Register in the first place. Are baseball players friendlier than football stars? They probably have more teeth than hockey players. But why use athletes in the first place?

Perhaps they started with photos of Miss America contestants and then realized that they all had “bigmouthed beams,” hence providing no range of data to measure. (And shame on those of you who were thinking “big headlights.”)

This brings me to another point brought up in the Oprah article. They identified two types of smiles—genuine and fake. “Big whup!” I hear you saying; “we all knew that.” But I’ll bet you didn’t know that you can weed out the phonies by looking at their eyes. A genuine smile causes—and I’m quoting here—“a facial muscle called the orbicularis oculi” to contract, “crinkling the skin around the eyes.”

Supposedly, you can’t fake an o.c. contraction. (Keep it clean now.) So when you see lines at the corners of the eyes, you know it’s a genuine happy face. Frankly, I’m not so sure about this. I’ve seen a lot of people, women in particular, who’ve spent far too much time in the sun and are left with permanent crinkles around their eyes. But since this post is about extending your own life, it really doesn’t matter whether other people are sincere.

This of course leads to the question: What can we do to help us smile more often and more broadly? And OK, I suppose more genuinely, otherwise we might not get the health benefit. One simple way is to read RetirementSparks on a regular basis. (Sorry. That’s shameless self promotion and quite rude.)

We do know that positive attitudes and good moods are contagious. (Oprah does cite a source for this: the British Medical Journal.) Hang around with happy people and you’re more likely to be happy, so pick your friends accordingly. This simple screening of potential friends can help: “Are you a glass half full or a glass half empty kind of person?” Go with the half full (or overflowing) every time.

Practice smiling in front of the mirror. The Oprah article says that smiles are contagious. So even if you start with a fake smile, when you see it in the mirror, pretend it’s someone else and just smile back. So what may have started as fake will become genuine. (This is my own idea, not Oprah’s, so if it works, give me the credit.)

There are other things in our lives that usually bring a smile: little children and animals come to mind. If you don’t have any of these in your own household, visit a local playground or dog park. You can smile vicariously at the antics of the offspring and pets of others. Just be careful you don’t look too creepy doing it. Not everyone reads Oprah, so you could have a hard time explaining your motives.

Of course, there’s always one of my favorite ways to bring a smile to my face. Open up a nice bottle of wine, sit back, relax, and just smile, smile, smile.

Retirement Games - Name That Paint Color!

By now you must have read at least one of my posts bemoaning the lack of character in the paint colors my Realtor and her stager had me use in my kitchen. They want everything to be as neutral as possible, so we don’t alienate anyone. As a marketer, I feel we’re missing the opportunity to engage our key target audience (someone who will appreciate turn of the century architecture.)

One of my go-to sources for posting ideas had an article that offers a compromise. In the June 30 New York Times, Katharine Q. Seelye wrote about how paint companies are changing the way they name their colors. Per Ms. Seelye, they’re doing this to capture consumers’ attention. They’re now using names that, among other things, “summon a memory or evoke an emotion” or represent the consumer’s lifestyle. The names rarely have any relationship to the colors they represent, and it’s OK if they sound negative.

I smell a marketer behind this trend! The Home Depot’s merchandising VP for paint articulated my compromise nicely when she stated that “Emotional color names in neutral shades and color combos are crucial for successful home sales.” Thank you, Lyne Castonguay. Since my house painting is now complete, it’s left to me to come up with emotional names for what are mostly bland, unemotional colors.

Let’s start with the kitchen, which has been painted Fossil (walls) and White Dove (cabinets and trim.) I’m naming this combination “Truffle Season in Piemonte.” My sister and her husband took his sister and me there during truffle season. The weather was overcast, so the vistas were a hazy, grayish white. That’s also the color of white truffles as they are shaved onto your risotto. While my potential buyer is mentally savoring truffles in Piemonte, perhaps she won’t notice the lack of granite countertops and designer appliances.

The entry hall and stair tower have mostly bittersweet orange and white striped wallpaper. It’s subtle, as stripes go, but it runs on and on up three stories in the tower. If it were a color, what comes to mind for me is “On Hold for the Social Security Office.”

The living room is wallpapered light blue with pale coral medallions. If it were a color, it would be “Quiet Walk on the Beach at Sunrise.” There’s even a Coalport china bowl filled with sea shells on the sideboard. The dining room has been painted a spicy color that borders on neutral. I’m calling this “Learning to Do the Tango.” That should highlight the open spaces in the entry and dining areas; there’s room enough to tango.

The master bedroom has muted wallpaper with soft sprigs of flowers. It gives the impression of being painted cream, as in “Homemade Eggnog at Our Tree Trimming Party.” The main guest bedroom has been painted Parchment, but I’ll call it “Love Letters from Your First Boyfriend.” That should make buyers notice the bay window with its romantic seating area. The smaller guest room has nondescript wallpaper (off white with fine blue plaid lines.) I’ll name this “Pedal Pushers You Wore to Band Camp.” (Don’t ask.)

The third floor bedroom that is newly painted is pale yellow (Lemon Whip) and the bathroom is pale green (Green Tea.) I’m renaming them “Remember When Whole Foods Was Bread and Circus” and “Lunching with Friends at Whole Foods.” There are two Whole Foods within two miles of us, lest we forget; reason enough to buy the house just for that.

I haven’t named the colors in every room, but I feel that I’ve covered the ones that will matter most to my target audience. If my office area weren’t paneled in faux wood, I’d color it “Where I Go with My Glass of Wine When I Need Inspiration.”

Speaking of which, here I am at my computer. Now if I can just remember where I moved the wine when the stager banished it from the dining room…

Retirement Nutrition - Chia Fiber Alert

Recent TV ads for chia seeds have caught my attention. Yes, these are the same chia seeds used in those ubiquitous Chia Pets that just won’t go away. I call them counter top topiary for the masses. It seems those seeds have exceptional nutritional value, in addition to their decorative use.

First and foremost, according to the ads, they’re an excellent source of fiber. At this point in our lives, who isn’t interested in finding new sources of fiber? I’ll try anything to keep me from dependence on those daily doses of Metamucil that were a staple of my mother’s diet.

Some quick surfing of the Internet informed me that chia seeds were an important part of the ancient Mayan and Aztec diets. Those cultures prized chia seeds as a source of nutrition and energy. The chia plant Salvia hispanica grows throughout much of Central America and southern Mexico.

In addition to its benefit for fiber, chia is a great source of Omega 3 fatty acids, which promote circulation and cardiovascular health, and (according to some websites) helps reduce inflammation due to arthritis and may even prevent Parkinsons. “How great a source of Omega 3?” (you may be asking.) One ounce of chia seeds has more than two and a half times the Omega 3 as the same amount of flax seed (4.9 grams vs. 1.8.)

As for soluble fiber, an important aid in fighting high cholesterol, an ounce of chia seeds delivers 10.6 grams of fiber, while 3/4 cup of oatmeal gives you just 2.8, and an ounce of flax seeds provides 7.6. I read that chia seeds can absorb about ten times their weight in water and will turn to gelatin if left long enough. This leaves me wondering if Chia Pets look like they’re wearing too much product as their “hair” grows.

As if omega 3 and good fiber weren’t enough, we’re told that chia seeds have three times the calcium as a stalk of broccoli and scads more protein than an equal amount of kidney beans. (No mention of how it compares with beans on musical side effects.)

They’re also a rich source of potassium, magnesium, iron, and more. The full list sounds like the labels on all the vitamins we take every day in our household. Maybe I can just substitute chia seeds for my handful of pills and my daily banana. Those on gluten-free diets will be glad to know that chia seed flour can be used as a 1-to-1 substitute for wheat flour in any recipe.

Armed with all this impressive information, I purchased a supply of these magic seeds and added them to our diet. We’ve had them sprinkled on our cereal and in our yoghurt and mixed into tofu burgers. It turns out there’s a darker side to this wonder food that the ads don’t share and the websites don’t report.

Two weeks into my experiment, I noticed some hairy side effects. Suddenly, my navel was sprouting chia grass. Likewise, my husband’s ears and underarms. We were becoming human Chia Pets. At first I tried trimming the sprouts, but the more I trimmed, the thicker it came in. Now we looked like human topiaries.

Fortunately, once we stopped ingesting the seeds, the growth died off. I share this sad tale with all of you so that you won’t be suckered in by the ads, as I was. Sadly, there is no magic bullet for getting enough soluble fiber and Omega 3 fatty acids. My advice: stick with your flax seed and oatmeal. And wash it all down with a nice glass of wine.

Retirement Medications - No Longer Vicodin Virgin

News flash! I am no longer a Vicodin Virgin. I think every one in my circle of friends and relations has taken that pain management medication at some point, but until yesterday, I had not.

My back and neck had been bothering me off and on lately. I attributed it to all the hefting and hauling of stuff from the upper floors to the basement in preparation for putting the house on the market. The house was finally listed on Thursday, and that’s the day my body gave out. It’s as if it knew all the work was done and it was finally okay to fall apart.

With the holiday weekend coming up, I didn’t want to risk a visit to an ER if things didn’t improve. I’ve spent enough holidays there with friends and family members. My own doctor was taking a long weekend, so I saw another doctor in his practice. She diagnosed severe muscle spasms, said she could actually see the swelling in my neck area on the right side. I left with prescriptions for hydrocodon and acetaminophen (generic of Vicodin) and cyclobenzaprine (generic of Flexeril.)

Since I’d never taken either of these medications before, I decided to carefully read the paperwork that came with them. By the time I finished, I concluded that I might as well spend the next few days in bed.

The medication for my muscle spasm advised me: “If your condition does not improve in 2-3 weeks, contact your doctor.” I have news for them. If my condition doesn’t improve in 2-3 days I will have killed myself or I’ll be in jail for attempting to kill someone else.

I noticed that both meds list drowsiness and dizziness as side effects. What they really mean is you are so tired you sleep most of the day. And night. This is actually a good thing. My neck and back pain were so severe that I couldn’t find a position that would enable me to sleep, so I can use a few days rest. As for the dizziness, have you ever been on the Tilt-A-Whirl at an amusement park? If you remember how you felt when you first stepped off that ride, you know how you feel on these meds. So much for driving.

Both meds indicate constipation among the possible side effects. I suppose if it’s strong enough to stop the spasm in my back muscle it could pretty much shut down all the muscle activity in the body. But wouldn’t that lead to diarrhea? I decided I don’t really want to know.

Both also warn: “Don’t… do any activity that requires alertness until you are sure you can perform such activities safely.” There’s not a heck of lot that I do that doesn’t require alertness. Even this post, for example, requires me to coordinate my fingers on the keyboard so I hit the right letters. Which pretty much gets me back to sleeping. Or maybe watching TV.

Hydrocodon can cause nausea. Once again, I’m befuddled. My pain was so severe at one point that I actually thought I was going to throw up. I was looking forward to having the pain medication help me get rid of that symptom, not cause it.

Cyclobenzaprine notes dry mouth as a possible side effect. They should have warned that you’ll get so thirsty you’d fight the dog to drink out of the toilet, if you had a dog.

My favorite part of this reading material is the long list of possible drug interactions. I’m disappointed, but not surprised, that I can’t have wine while I’m taking this stuff. You can learn a lot by reading about the drugs that are contraindicated. I had no idea there was a class of drugs called “narcotic antagonists.” What does that mean? Does morphine smack acetaminophen in the face and taunt: “C’mon, sissy pants. Whatcha gonna do about it?”

I know what I’m going to do about it. I’m going upstairs to take my evening dose of both meds and then I’m going to bed. Again. But first I’m going to put a large pitcher of water on the night table.