Mr Grumpy Here

 Time for a new blog but I haven't been feeling too well of late. Worse yet, my wife and I are supposed to start out on a driving vacation beginning tomorrow. We'll be circling Lake Superior going up and around through Ontario, Canada.

Do you need proof of Covid vaccination to enter Canada? I don't think so anymore. But what if you have Covid? Do they still let you in? I better do a Covid test to make sure that's not what's causing my aches and pains.

I have some KN-95 masks so I'll bring those too even though I don't think they're required in Canada. A Newsweek article reported this week that mask mandates are returning but when I clicked on the article it named places like Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as Lionsgate Entertainment in Los Angeles. I think the article is what you might call “clickbait.” I hate clickbait.

Being sick makes you grumpy. In my case, grumpier. My wife sometimes, actually quite often, calls me Mr. Negativity. I need to practice my smiling more.

When we watched our two-year-old grandson Lewis this week, I had him accompany me to the local grocery store to cash in three full bags of returnable bottles and cans, Michigan being one state where you can do this.

After I parked the car, I snagged an empty shopping cart and opened the back of my Chevy. A bag of plastic bottles and cans toppled over, spilling half their contents onto the parking lot asphalt. A few of them started making a run for it and I had to stop them from rolling down the hill just as the shopping cart was making a break for it too.

I had to corral the cart, keeping it close to me with one foot while I bent over to pick up the plastic bottles and cans still playing their version of “catch-me” on the pavement, by the way a very cruel game for seniors to be playing. About then a handful of glass bottles were about ready to roll out of the back, figuring they would rather commit returnable suicide by smashing themselves than to go through the recycling machine.

It was very frustrating trying to keep everything together but I managed. Now to get my two-year-old grandson. As soon as I unfastened his child seat restraints, he bolted away from me, getting into the back of the car where I couldn't reach.

I went around to the other side of the car, opened that door figuring it would be easier to reach him but he was inspired by the returnables' version of “catch-me” and was going to make it even harder on this old grandpa to get a hold of him.

I lost my temper, yelled at him, and grabbed his ankle pulling him mightily to where I could wrap my arms around the rest of him. “My shoe!,” he said, as he lost a shoe in the struggle. I immediately felt bad I lost my temper. Sure I had a headache, I was tense, irritable, but I shouldn't have taken it out on him.

Wasn't that a commercial way back when? Anyway, I hope I feel better soon. One good bit of news. My Covid test was negative.