LET'S GO TO THE DOCTOR - MORE RETIREMENT FUN!

One benefit of retirement is that you have extra time for medical tests. You may believe that there will be extra time for sleeping longer in the mornings or lingering over cheesecake at lunchtime, but this is not true. You have to be up early to get to your medical tests before the doctor has time to fall two hours behind in his schedule, thereby throwing off your afternoon nap plans.

One thing doctors are concerned with is measuring things, such as your blood pressure, which goes up because you have to drive on the highway to get to the doctor’s office, and your weight, which goes up because you reward yourself with doughnuts for taking such good care of your health that you go to the doctor All. The. Time.

Before you retired you probably made many fun plans to travel and to have lunch with your friends. This will not happen because the warranty will expire on your body a week after retirement and you will spend all your time at the doctor learning about replacement parts as if you’re an old Chevy. Also, your friends are at work and get inexplicably cranky if you ask them to go to lunch at ten so you can get home for your nap.

Sleeping is important in retirement because you have to make up for 40 years of waking up at ten minutes until dawn and thinking, “Is it Friday yet?” and pining for retirement because you don’t know yet about the doctor visits and medical tests. The one time you can’t sleep in retirement is when the doctor sends you for a sleep test and your eyes stay wide open for eight hours because you’re in a strange bed, hooked up to 100,000 wires, and are busy wondering what sort of noises they’ll hear when you’re asleep.

Then they tell you to relax.

That’s a good time to take your blood pressure.

The Beast Within

Aunt Nette is like a busybody savant. She can tell the last time you called your mother, how you treat your children, and can rate your love life on a scale of one to ten just by listening to you order hash browns at the Waffle House.

“Scattered and smothered,” I told the waitress, slipping the menu into the metal holder behind the napkin dispenser.

Looking across the table, I’m tempted to apply the same order to Aunt Nette. She is scraping egg off the laminated menu with a polished nail on a finger laden with hand-me-down diamonds, and lecturing me on my child-raising abilities.

“You should call more often. I never hear important news until it’s too late.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

She flicked away a piece of petrified yolk. “I hear the baby is walking now.”

The baby is 20 years old. “Okay so maybe I’m slow with updates. Follow me on Twitter and you can read everything in sentences short enough to slap right on the gossip chain.”

“What those boys need is more parental involvement.” She dipped her paper napkin in her water glass and began to polish her fork.

“The last time I had parental involvement with these kids, I lost three lives."

"You should use caution in dealing with children."

"All I did was pick up a video game controller. Then I blew myself somewhere over the rainbow in a blinding blue flash."

The only reason my children aren’t listed as serial killers in police records country-wide is that there are still those officials who refuse to admit the impossibility of a zombie apocalypse.

"You do know they’ve been studying the best method for slaughtering the undead.”

“They were Boy Scouts. They want to be prepared.”

“They’re prepared for a swarm of mercenaries, an invasion by aliens, and a world-ending zombie attack. What they’re not ready for is an English test or a quiz on fundamental dinner etiquette.”

“You could probably learn some things from them. Remember when I stayed the weekend at your house? The boys and I found a new respect for each other.”

“Oh, really? And how are you a better person since that weekend?”

She sipped coffee from a stoneware cup leaving Pink Poodle lipstick on the rim, crossed her beige stockinged ankles under the table, and leaned forward with a prim smile to perform an airborne example on a pretend video game controller.

"I beast at Borderlands.”