Home Opinion Mine Creek Revelations by Louie Graves: Let me whine a bit

Mine Creek Revelations by Louie Graves: Let me whine a bit

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MERRY CHRISTMAS. We at the ‘News-Leader’ sincerely wish for you a splendid, blessed Christmas, and a healthy, happy New Year.

Best season’s greetings from JR, myself, Pam, Tracy, John, Tasha, Terrica and the night printing and circulation crews. I don’t care how old you get, Christmas stirs up a feeling of anticipation.

Let’s all take a deep breath. Slow down and enjoy the times. Maybe even a little bit of white stuff.

With a bright face let us meet up with the new year.

Mostly, let us all joyfully celebrate the birth of a child in a rude shed in a small Middle Eastern village.

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OF COURSE, IF IT’S almost Christmas, then it’s also time for my annual visit by a respiratory infection.

I do not know where I ‘caught’ this thing. I’ve been everywhere and have shaken a lot of hands, and that means I could have passed it on to you before I even knew I had it.

It always begins with slow realization that there is a tiny feather just barely brushing some point deep in the back of my throat, just out of reach of coughdrops.

I have come to recognize the feeling. When the feather tickles, it only takes about one day for me to start coughing uncontrollably.

I attribute my propensity for coughing to the surgical removal of uvula (the thingy that hangs down in the back of your mouth), tonsils, stalagmites and possibly other non-essential stuff from my throat back in the 1980s when it was fashionable.

The surgeon was sure it would cure my snoring. The snoring has returned, but the uvula and tonsils haven’t.

It sometimes takes several trips to the doc office before I can get a prescription strong enough to make a dent in that danged respiratory infection. This is not helped by their observation of my temperature — consistently 97.6 degrees.

But if I complain enough I usually get a strong prescription.

Before that great day happens, I spend a lot of time whining about my illness to anyone who will listen. This year I asked both of my Facebook friends if they knew where I could get some radioactive heroin.

I was needing something strong. Radioactive heroin sounded like just what I needed.

I always refer to my annual unwanted respiratory guest as the ‘Epizootic.’ Borrowed the term from somewhere long ago.

“I’ve come down with the Epizootic,” is what I always whine.

If it gets real bad, I call it the ‘Zootic.’ It affects northern hemisphere only.

But if it moves south, it becomes the ‘Tropizootic.’ In Spanish, it’s pronounced Montezuma’s Revenge. It is awful. It’s amazing how cold bathtubs can get in the wintertime. When I get Tropizootic I sometimes must spend the night under running water in the bathtub. But enough of that.

My co-workers love it when I get the Zootic. I stay away from work a lot, and I lose my voice.

Things are going to be different this year because this year the doc surprised everyone and prescribed radioactive heroin.

“Put on some lead gloves and pack that stuff in his nose real good,” he instructed his nurses. “And don’t be so gentle.”

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HOW DRY I AM. With less than 2 weeks remaining, our area is about 10 inches below normal rainfall for the last quarter of the year, alone

October — actual rainfall, 1.46 inches; normal, 5.58.

November — actual, 1.04; normal, 4.81.

December – (thru the 18th) actual 1.60; normal (whole month), 3.30.

Recap: Last quarter of year — actual, 3.00; normal, 13.69.

It’s so dry that even the live Christmas trees on sale are brown.

Our average rainfall for the whole year is almost 54.5 inches; to this point we’ve had a drop more than 45 inches — leaving us more than eight inches below average ainfall with less than two weeks to go.

SOURCE: National Weather Service, Shreveport.

Forecasts of ice and snow may help the actual total some, but probably not much.

I keep forgetting that, if you are a birdlover, it is just as important to make sure water is available as it is to put out food.

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THINGS I LEARNED from opening email:  The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.

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WORD GAMES. The twins: High and Mighty. They are so picky, picky about everything, and they act as if they are better than everyone else. In fact, they act high and mighty.

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HE SAID: “We got to the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, at the end of a poor year for this country. We had Vietnam. We had civil unrest. We had the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. But we went around the moon and saw the far side for the first time. A script writer couldn’t have done a better job of raising people’s hope.” Jim Lovell, astronaut

• • • • • • • • • •

SHE SAID: “It’s funny how we ‘do’ Christmas. Christmas is not something that we do, it is something that was done. It celebrates the long awaited arrival of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. We had nothing to do with it, but what we can do is praise God for the coming of the Lord, who washed away the sins of the world by dying on the cross.” Monica Johnson, screenwriter

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SWEET DREAMS, Baby

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