We prefer to make lemonade from life's oversized lemon tree.

After the very revealing Neila's Silly Ass incident, I resolved to put $500 into a fund for the ultimate guitar every time a Flozzie did something idiotic or disgusting. The fund swelled quickly.

What's the ultimate guitar? Well, a custom-ordered Paul Reed Smith Private Stock masterpiece, of course. Content with my guitar collection - the costliest piece was just $1525 - I would never spend Private Stock money on myself without some other factor greasing the rails.

My favorite guitars now are superb, but none are perfect – there is some box unchecked on each of them. The PRS Private Stock will be perfect, built exactly to my specs. It's not a good value – only a small gain over their typical stellar quality will be realized at great cost – but hey, this one is not about value.

ICU, I Hear You 
In the Baylor Intensive Care Unit, Neila, my cousin Marylin, her very loquacious husband, and I went out in the hall as the staff worked on Dad, his life winding down. For ten minutes Neila yapped, in that shrieky cackle of hers, at levels simply inappropriate for the ICU, a place where people where people are resting, tremble with fear and sorrow, die, wait to die, and try to not die.

I was astonished. How can someone who is, at least in some ways, a nice lady be THAT inconsiderate to others in pursuit of mere smalltalk? If one place demands the utmost consideration, it's the ICU, The Temple of Mandatory Restraint.

I considered recording it, but given the context that seemed a bit greasy, so I settled for recording with my mind while texting with Lisa about it.

A visitor in the next room actually stuck her head out the door, clearly pained, to see who the uncouth nitwit was. Making eye contact with her, all I could do was grimace, nod, and look down, shaking my head. Later a nurse passed down the intersecting hall and glared at us, seemingly considering the threshold at which she'd tell Neila to control her massive yap.

It was sad and embarrassing, but so goes life goes around Neila. The empty vessel too often makes the loudest sound and when one is used to being around much more civilized, thoughtful souls, Neila is a shock to the system. It's like coming back to the city after a week in peaceful, scenic, remote place.

Her resounding boorishness put $500 in the Private Stock kitty, though, with another deposit to follow within minutes.

2%...All of 'Em...Whatever
Back in Dad's room, I was talking to my cousin Marilyn about rapidly-declining Tasha and her degenerative myelopathy, a progressive, incurable disease of the spinal cord causing hind limb, then fore limb disability. She was barely getting herself up and her tailgate was sagging lower and losing more control weekly. The end was nigh.

As I explained, Neila crudely cut me off mid-sentence to declare that “they all get it,” meaning that DM afflicts all German Shepherd Dogs.

Nobody EVER told her such a thing, but when hearing it's more common in GSD, that's what lodged in Neila's memory banks after her wild mind filtered it. "Increased incidence" becomes "every last one of 'em." So goes The Flozberk Way."

Of course, her claim was preposterous. I mean, seriously - stop and think about it for a moment.

Were that the case, you wouldn't be able to pay someone to take a GSD. They would not be dominant among service dogs, which are acquired and trained at great expense ill-suited for application to neurological time bombs.

No person with a lick of sense would say such a thing without their inner watchdog howling up a storm. Interrupting is rude, but we're only human and a quick, well-executed cut-in is fine, if not outright desirable, if the interjection is worthy. This one fell way short.

Incidence of DM is high in GSDs, but it's far from 100%. More like, um, 2%. To be clear, that's two percent.

$500 for the Private Stock kitty. Meow!

No, Not Fucking Olive Garden 
The next day, on the last full day of the 32,142 days Dad's heart beat and the last day he would be 87 years old, I was telling Marilyn, daughter of Dad's late oldest brother Leo, some stories about our Arkansas Bunch side of the family.

In the late 70s, they had a big family dinner at Caruso's, a magnificent family-run Italian restaurant that had an AYCE antipasto bar, AYCE spaghetti with the best meat sauce ever, AYCD wine, singing waiters, and private booths fostering lewdness. It was divine and right up the road, yet the three of us only ate there once.

Why? Mom didn't approve of Italian food because one day as a child, she smelled too much garlic, see. Her seasonings of choice were salt and pepper, with occasional bizarre departures from her unique, constricting tastes.

About 15 years after that big dinner, I would frustrate and disgust my then-girlfriend there by eating seven plates of spaghetti (along with my entree and the antipasto bar rampage). The sauce was just that damn good.

The big shindig involved Marilyn's brother's ordination into the priesthood, methinks, and after describing Caruso's as "this wonderful, family-run Italian restaurant," Neila again mowed me down mid-word with one of the most obtuse things I'd ever heard:

“Olive Garden?”

It was like she was on a game show, but wholly incompetent. And this after she'd dominated the conversation all afternoon as I sat there quietly watching football and trying not to keel over in a very sad, tense, awkward setting.

I truly wanted to go off on her like Apu, in a great scene, did on an equally-obtuse Seymour Skinner, but in the interest of civility, I opted for, “No. It was called 'Caruso's.'” No way was I going to soil Dad's death by being impolite to any of his people. Not then. No way.

Many problems with Neila's brief outburst. Olive Garden did not exist in 1977. Olive Garden is not wonderful. Olive Garden is not family-run. I'm unwilling to call Olive Garden an Italian restaurant. There wasn't even any such thing as a chain Italian restaurant, other than pizza joints, back then.

Is it THAT hard to just shut your cavernous, idiotic damn pasta hole for a moment and let someone else talk? Jeez Louise!

$500 for the Private Stock kitty. Meow!

Many, many more meows were had and the custom guitar is now fully funded.

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