Sloppin' Through The Week

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Remember when it was impossible to misplace the TV remote? Because you were the TV remote? Remember when music sounded like this?
Remember when social media was truly social?

**Doug Pike** (0:17)
Hey John, how's it going today? Good, man.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:19)
Well, this show is all about you.
This is 50 Plus with Doug Pike. Helpful information on your finances, good health, and what to do for fun.
50 Plus, brought to you by the UT Health Houston Institute on Aging. Informed decisions for a healthier, happier life. And by New Promise Neuropathy. Lose the pain and numbness. Get your life back. newpromiseneuropathy.com. And now, Fifty Plus with Doug Pike.

**Doug Pike** (0:52)
All right, welcome to Fifty Plus in this Thursday edition of the program. Thank you all for joining me. I hope you've had a wonderful wet, sloppy, sopping week at your house. Your grass is growing tall.
I know my guy, the guy who cuts my lawn, bless his heart, he's had some kind of knee problems lately, so he's not getting around like he used to. And on top of that, he's got this knee-high grass in a lot of yards. I'm not sure exactly what makes that grass grow so high and so tall so fast, but our yard hadn't been cut. I think it's only been like 10 or 11 days since it was cut, and my guy hadn't been able to get back in there because there's just been so much rain. It's got to be a combination of the right fertilizer, the right temperatures, the right everything. Well, it is, after all, it's peak growing season for St. Augustine, so I guess any height that it can achieve in a week or two shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but it sure does make it a lot harder on the people who take care of our lawns. And that goes for whether it's you taking care of your own lawn. I got a couple of neighbors who still do that, or maybe a teenage son. I wish I could have gotten my son interested in mowing the lawn, but there was a little, let's just call it a little difference of opinion on whether or not he should be out there mowing the lawn when we already had somebody doing it. I would be willing to bet two buffalo nickels and a silver dime that most of the people in this audience grew up doing some sort of yard work, at least. If it wasn't the mowing, it was the weeding. If it wasn't the weeding, it was watering.
God, remember back when you had to move the sprinklers all around the yard just so everything got wet?
Nobody just went out and pushed a button and had all these little sprinkler heads pop up and water the whole yard in less than an hour. No, we had to go out there, set the hose on the one spot, and then go to the spigot and turn it to just the right stream of water to make it hit all the grass, but not waste money on the driveway or the sidewalk. And then a little while later, you had to go out there and move the thing. And if it was a really hot day, you didn't even turn it off before you moved it. You just walked through the sprinkler and got a little cooling off. Today, I guess to sum it up, if you are middle class or a little higher, pretty much everything that's going on in your life, either something or someone is doing that for you now. So anyway, moving forward, I want to talk about Vibrio vulnificus. I've been talking about sunscreens. I did that a day or two ago.
Today, though, I want to discuss something called Vibrio vulnificus. It's a bacteria that can absolutely, positively kill you in a matter of days if it's left entirely untreated. And there are, I think there are about eight cases over in Florida so far. I'm not so sure how many in Texas. Overall, nationally, we get roughly, well, it's fewer than 200 a year on average. So before you get scared, before you get worried, know that your odds of contracting this condition are extremely rare. Extremely, the odds against you getting it are extremely high. But if you do get it, and if you just brush it off and dismiss it summarily, it won't be long before people will be making arrangements and remembering you fondly. I talk about this at least two or three times a year on my outdoor show over on KBME on the weekends, but I do need to mention it here for those of you who are maybe taking kids or grandkids to the beach, or maybe you're splashing around in the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of America, excuse me, and maybe you've got a little cut on your skin somehow. And maybe the next morning when you've come back, you've taken a shower and you wake up the next morning and where that little cut was, now there's a dark spot and you feel kind of achy.