DIARY
Summer health, wellness and
other topics
by
Robert LaFrance
A decade or so ago, someone in the
provincial government of New Brunswick decided that the Department of Health
should be renamed the Department of Health and Wellness. I just remembered that
and have been trying for some time to figure out the difference between health
and wellness. If you know, email me at BobBewildered@W-Mail.ca.
Kidding.
My friend Flug’s nephew Igor joined
the Canadian Armed Forces last December and did what no man should ever do –
Igor asked his friend Arnie to look after his, Igor’s, girlfriend, and don’t let any male predator
get near her. Of course we know immediately what happened – Arnie and Igor’s
girl Sheila got together and co-signed the ‘Dear John Letter’ to Igor who was
serving on a frigate in the north Atlantic. Arnie added a little note at the
bottom: “Thanks a lot for the present, old buddy!” Igor didn’t get the note
until his ship stopped at Marseilles, France for supplies. He smiled, because
Arnie’s former girlfriend Julianne was waiting at a church on Rue d’Arbres,
Marseilles, where they would be married. Igor and Julianne had been planning
this since last summer. Devious or what?
Someone asked me last week what was
my favourite poem. Since my youth my favourite one has been “Stopping by woods
on a snowy evening” by Robert Frost, with number two on my hit parade being
“Sestina of the Tramp-Royal” by Rudyard Kipling. There! Now you know all about
me. Except for the word ‘snowy’ in the first one, those poems are top dogs in
my book. In my younger days, when I wandered around Canada from east to west to
far north, I often read the Sestina poem that ends like this: “It’s like a book
I think, this bloomin’ world, that you can read and care for just so long,
until you get the page you’re reading done, and turn another, likely not so
good, but what you’re after is to turn ‘em all!”
I have mentioned before in these
pages that I have got to be the worst slob in Christendom and have seen no
reason to revise that assessment. I put on a pair of clean trousers and within
minutes I have spilled something on them – almost always something that won’t
come out in the wash. If I had more than two shirts I would have to change
every hour because of the dirt and stains. My first wife was in despair because
she did the laundry (and still does, since I remain married to her against all
odds) but it says in the fine print of the marriage contract “thou shalt put up
with that klutz”. One day I heard her talking to a friend and saying: “You
know, marriage isn’t a word; it’s a sentence.”
It is curious that some people
consider that they have a big problem when in fact it’s mere nothing. Last
evening the news came on and once again it was Donald Trump, Russia, Canada-US
trade talks, North Korea, Putin, global warming, pollution, forest fires and
the Russians who have absolutely no shame. Ignoring all that, I spent at least
three minutes tracking down and murdering a big fat housefly. Any person’s
problem is important to HIM.
This morning Flug decided he would
do some gardening and told his wife Jellaine that he was going uptown to look
for a hoe. She misunderstood. Flug should be able to come home by Monday.
Here in New Brunswick, hardly a day
goes by that we don’t hear once again that people who should be in nursing
homes are taking up hospital beds at ten times the cost. In that same news
report was the remarkable statement that one of these patients would only cost
the government $45 a day if he or she had home care. I know that government
bureaucrats are much smarter than I, but I wonder why the new Victoria Glen
Manor in Perth-Andover had to be built with five fewer beds than the old Manor?
Each of the two modules contain 30 beds, but surely someone could have
suggested adding another module and making it 90 beds. But as I said, they’re
smarter than I am. Aren’t they?
I had a question for Flug, since
he’s also smarter than I am: “What is the different between heart surgery and
open heart surgery?” I was assuming that in the latter case the chest is opened
up, but I was put right by my old friend, who used to be a barber on Parliament
Hill and had several surgeons among his clientele.
“Not for the first time, Bob,” he
said kindly, “you don’t know your bum from a hole in the ground. It’s not
called open heart surgery until the surgeon works on your heart while using
bypass equipment, like a heart-lung bypass machine…Got any lemonade?”
-end-
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