NEW YEAR DAWNING                                         DECEMBER 21, 2015

Skip Christmas!

I need to start thinking about the future. This present tense is lousy. There should be no bandages on the left leg nor on the right elbow in another couple of weeks. It will be a new year dawning, so it is time for me to think about some resolutions. It’s silly that I haven’t cut the umbilical cord which is hooked up to the Wound Center at Eisenhower Medical Center. They are sick and tired of me around there, and I have certainly had them up to my ying-yang — and all the nurses coming to the house every few days to dress the wounds. Those nurses probably are sick and tired of seeing me in my “night” attire — even if they come late afternoon, I wait to dress in “day” attire after they go on their way to some other hapless individual.

Before I leave this year, I’ve just got to tell you about circumstances in general around here. This Coachella Valley has many hiking trails for people to get lost, or even get dead. Visitors to the valley are usually the ones who end up needing to be rescued — they don’t take enough water, or maybe they get stuck overnight on the mountain with not enough clothing for warmth, or they lose their way. So the Riverside Country rescue people are called with the helicopter, with the fire engine, the “bus” (ambulance) and so forth. This exercise costs the county taxpayers probably $150,000 minimum (my guess.) I have thought about this for a number of years, and feel like it’s time to put up some signs. There is a stretch of beach along the coast north of San Francisco where there are terrible rip tides and the sign on that beach: “Swim at your own risk. There are no life guards to save you.”

I don’t know why I wandered off my soap box, except I was thinking more about one certain hiking trail over by Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage — they named it “The Bump and Grind.” The authorities have posted signs — put up gates, etc to close this trail off. The hikers bother the Big Horn sheep who live up there, but do you think that stops the hiker? No, it doesn’t.

I have a similar situation right here on Dandelion Drive. I have my own “Bump and Grind” trail right here in this house. For the New Year there will be signs posted at critical areas on the trail.

“Meli — watch your step, do not dare take the path to the right here, or left as the case may be. You do so at your own risk. Those handsome 9-1-1 hunks will not take a call to this address, nor will the ambulance, nor fire engine drivers (who aren’t bad to look at either.) EMC will not take you in. Medicare is crabbing about the costs.”

I had a few thoughts tumbling around my brain, and somehow one idea kept coming up. This is BRAIN TO MELITAS: “Stop reading those murder mystery thrillers. You are definitely wasting your time. I order you to ask Amazon to send you two Kindle books: “Boost Your Brain” by Majid Fotuhi, MD, PhD: and “How to Improve your Memory”

(Boost your Brain Power and improve your memory for Life!) by Joel Kirkhoff. Then study them!”

Now there you have it. You know what I will be doing until New Years — reading and studying those two books, head buried in my two Kindles, trying to get the brain jump-started so it will be able to find some new, old tales to spin for my Dear Friends out there, and whom I dearly love.

Happy Holidays to one and all.

MELITAS FORSTER                                       Mondays with Melitas