Ripped

Ripped has more than one meaning, as everyone knows. Ripped off can mean swindled--or angry. Ripped has also lately come to mean that you have well-defined musculature. (I was going to include here a photo of my own abs to show you what ripped means, but my phone camera ... not working so well ... showed something a bit less well defined, I fear.) Oh, and the word can also mean drunk.

But I'm using it today in the Rip Van Winkle sense. As you recall from that story, Rip awoke from a twenty-year daze to discover that the American Revolution had happened, among other things. (He was somewhat relieved to discover his wife was gone--not exactly a PC-sort of story these days!)

Anyway, it took Rip a bit of a while to ... adjust. So much had changed ... He felt out of time. Out of sync. All of that. His gun was rusty; his dog was gone. He had a rather impressive beard ...

And I've been as confused as Rip the past few days.

Here's what happened to discombobulate me--discombobulate, a word that goes back to about 1916. My dad was 3; my mom was not yet even a gleam in her father's eye ...

For the past more-than-a-few years I have purchased each year what's called the Book Lover's Page-a-Day Calendar. Occasionally, something on a page will encourage me to scan and post it on Facebook for my friends to ignore. (See the top of the page for an example.)

So ... Christmas. Joyce had wrapped the calendar for me; I unwrapped it; on January 1, I began tearing away a page each day.

And Confusion Reigned ...

Something was wrong. Some of the titles-of-the-day seemed a little too familiar. The day of the week was ... off.

So last night (January 9) I looked closely at it, and that huge DUH! sound you heard in the night was from me, realizing that I'd inadvertently bought last year's calendar. Look up above at the image: The 2017 is pretty damn obvious, isn't it? And ... it was JANUARY 9! I didn't exactly catch on quickly, did I?

I cursed Amazon, from whom I'd bought it.

Checked my Amazon order. Learned that I had, indeed, ordered the 2017 calendar. Oops.

So I can't even return it, can't feel indignant, can't feel the comforting surge of umbrage against a vast corporation, can't ...

... blame anyone except myself.

So ... I (humbly) ordered the 2018 one. Should be here in a day or so.

And then I will be able to join Rip Van Winkle in achieving, eventually, some ... comfort.