Early to rise … and then what?

The bells went off at 5:30 a.m.

No, I don’t live next to a very active church, and I don’t live in a neighborhood with a strolling handbell choir.

It was the alarm Suzi chose on her phone over various annoying sounds, both of our ringtones and the opening bars of George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone.”

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The week gone by — June 27

I wasn’t in a great mood.

Part of it was for reasons, but part of it was my brain clearly decided it was going to get up on the metaphorical wrong side of the bed.

It’s a good thing my cat Sasha can’t mirror my moods like my friend Lisa’s cat apparently can, because she’d be one moody, confused cat.

The week gone by — June 20

They said the perfect Father’s Day card didn’t exist …

… but they were wrong.

Actually, I have no idea who “they” are, or whether these mysterious arbiters have weighed in on the relative quality or appropriateness of Father’s Day cards, but I have found the perfect one.

When long ago isn’t so long ago

There had to be a wrench that worked — after all, I had put the thing together — but I couldn’t find it.

Finally, the last one in the box — literally the last one, not the “last one I grabbed because I found it and therefore didn’t need to look anymore” — worked. It wasn’t an ideal fit, but it would do the job.

So I sat on the floor of one of our upstairs bedrooms and started taking apart the futon.

It’s not that hard

My hair had reached the stage where it had gotten so long, it was sloppy and gross.

Plus, while I don’t have a ton of gray hair, mostly at the very front of my temples, it gets more prominent when my hair is longer.

So I went for a haircut.

Open mouth, insert both feet

My buddy Renata from Buffalo Sauce Everywhere and I are up to our old tricks, this time sharing memories from high school, since she graduated so very long ago … you know, 10 years. To read her tales, including how she gamed the rules for a history competition, click here.

Along with customers and staff who are on a first-name basis and being able to walk up to the counter to refill your coffee without law enforcement getting involved, one of the distinguishing features of real, proper diners — as opposed to restaurants that may look like and even call themselves diners, but aren’t — is regular customers hanging out and shooting the breeze.

It also helps if they’re in small towns, like the one where I grew up and where my family has been regulars at various establishments for decades. (Most of the waitresses knew I was going to order a hot turkey sandwich and a large chocolate milk Friday nights before I even said anything.)

I’m ‘here’ … not like anyone will care

I have gotten organized.

I have gathered strength.

I am ready to go.

And … apparently people will barely notice.

The joy of just being … happy

I don’t go to movies a lot.

It’s not that I dislike them, but unless it’s a James Bond movie — apparently “No Time To Die” comes out Oct. 8 — there aren’t a lot of movies that jump out at me as ones I want to see, so I just don’t go very much.

If there’s a movie Suzi wants to see, I’ll go, and I usually enjoy myself, but the last movie she saw before going to the movies stopped being a thing people did was “Emma” on a Tuesday night when I was in a photography class.

The week gone by — June 13

After golf in the morning, I played pickleball in the afternoon.

I was feeling it afterward, especially since an ill-placed clump of sand caused me to tumble into a tennis net.

Fortunately, I managed to not do the splits as I fell, and the twinge from twisting my back was temporary, so the difficulty walking up and down the stairs was just general soreness, not an injury.

Where delusions go to die

When you’re as bad at golf as I am, you define “success” differently.

Eagles are out of the question unless you see one flying overhead. Birdies and even pars are usually too much to ask.

Instead, you accept the modest victories. For example, I have yet to kill anyone with an errant shot.