Day-to-Day Stuff

Ups and Downs

The up side of painkillers and muscle relaxants is that one is never at home to Mr. Ouchie.  Pain becomes someone else’s problem and the world is a beautiful place, full of sparkly lights and funny things.

The down side is that Pizza Hut delvers.

I’m now coming off the meds for my back (which is doing much, much better, thanks) and discovered, during my follow-up appointment, that I’d gained eleven pounds since the first.

Well, fuck.

Back to my healthy diet and walking regiment.  Still, gonna miss them sparkly lights.

Bugger – Part 2 or “Take how many, how often?!?”

Okay, as many of you know, I spent a large portion of my life in the Coast Guard, where a large aspect of my duties included making sure that drugs did not enter our fair land.  Never mind that the drugs were only coming in because the very people we were trying to protect from them were creating the demand for them, we were tasked with stopping smug smugglers from smuggling and we did our best.

Given this, one might have come to the conclusion that I, your gallant Sailor of note, am steadfastly against drugs.

This is, of course, manifestly untrue.

I have, in my misbegotten youth, dabbled with recreational drugs of many types and manners, enough to tell that I preferred a good cognac to anything prepared in a chemist shop.

I also take whatever the medical profession, in their whimsical and borderline sadistic way, prescribe for my various ailments and injuries.  As a matter of fact, I’m grateful for their input to my input, so to speak.  As a matter of fact, even as I type these words, I am filled to the brim with muscle relaxants and pain killers of quite a potent level.

Given that my back currently would not care if a sumo was break dancing on it, I would deem them as being astonishingly effective.

However, in that it has taken me the better part of an hour to type this simple missive, I would also deem them as being fucking mind blasting ovals of pure loopiness.

I know, alas, that the tail goes with the hide and that Sarah Palin is the result of an unfettered democracy, so I am mature enough to accept that the pretty lights and sparklies are kit and kin of the pain free existence.  I can accept this and even utilize it to make a local impact on our economy.  It’s a small version of the trickle down so beloved of Reagan economists.

I am pretty much high as a kite.  There are pizza places that deliver.  The rest, as has been often written, follows apace.

To the good side, I receive sustenance at a level high enough to sustain life and the refrigeration of the leftovers ensures that I have something to eat in my more lucid moments.  In addition, Dian benefits since I insist of buying her food as well.

To the bad side, whereas pizza (pepperoni, Italian sausage, mushrooms, and tomatoes with extra cheese) will sustain life, it’s hardly what one might call healthy living and will, in the long run, result in medical problems.  Thankfully, I’ll only be on these meds for a short period of time, so I’ll probably survive with only a short term weight gain of some notice as the only lasting determent.

Ah!  The doorbell beckons, which means a young fellow with a bag of goodies stands on the porch.

This might not be the wonderful life I was writing about a few days ago, but it’ll do in a pinch!

Bugger

Honestly, life couldn’t get any better if you dipped it in honey and taught it how to pole dance!

I forgot that, although it may have been totally true that life couldn’t possibly get better, there was a second option.

A week ago, Dian and I spent around five hours driving all over farm roads looking for a farm where they dyed their own cloth.  Dian had heard of the place and really wanted to see it and, since we were heading to the city, it was no big thing to head east before going west and find the place.

Five hours later, we were at each others throats and finally on the way to the city.  All in all, I spend close to twelve hours in that ruddy car, followed closely by ten hours on a horrible motel mattress.  As a result, my back was in tender condition upon our return home.

So I’ve spent the week being charitable to my back.  Dian injured herself a day or two after we came home and sprained her knee (a slight tear of her ACL), so I had to be as charitable as possible while doing my best to help Dian around.  Still, between stretching and walking, my back was heading back to it’s usual happy condition.

Then yesterday, around noon, I mentioned to Dian that it felt like I was coming down with something.  By bedtime, that feeling had turned into a full-blown sinus infection, one that was quickly spreading to my ears and throat, and making it incredibly painful to swallow.

By midnight, I was running a high fever, my throat felt like someone had somehow installed a barbwire wrapped piece of plywood in it, and I was shaking like an epileptic in a high wind.

However, throughout the night of hell, I was careful about my back.  The only thing I could imagine worse than some mysterious aliment laying me out, was a mysterious ailment laying me out combined with my back going bad.

By this morning, the sinus infection had mostly passed (oddly enough), the fever had broken, and everything was heading back to normal.

I walked into the bathroom and gargled (for the umpteenth time) with hot salt water.  I then got into a coughing jag, which I braced myself for carefully, which quickly became having to vomit.

About halfway through puking, my back decided enough with all this shit, and collapsed me onto the floor.

Now I’m on painkillers, muscle relaxants, antibiotics, and bed rest.

So, as proven, although life couldn’t possibly get any better, it was rather a simple matter for it to get a hell of a lot worse, damn fast!

What a great year!

This week makes one year here in Flatland and I gotta say that, although it’s had its ups and downs, it’s been one hell of a great year!

Debts paid, money in the bank, weather worth talking about, getting healthier by the day (occasional injury notwithstanding), and – glory be – a wife with a grand outlook on life!  (And all you married guys know as well as I do the truth behind the old saying, ‘Happy wife; happy life.’)

All in one year.

Oh, there’s a part of me that misses the South, but I’m thinking of having it surgically removed before it starts to fester.

By this time next year, we’ll have our new car, be completely debt free (except for some student loans, which – as I understand – are forever things to a great many people), and well on our way to buying our own place here in town.  Honestly, life couldn’t get any better if you dipped it in honey and taught it how to pole dance!

I play the lottery … and I’m not ashamed of it.

The odds of hitting any lottery is, approximately, 1 in a gazillion.

I know this.

It’s why I always buy two tickets for each lottery.

Seriously, the only odds worse for winning something are 0 in a gazillion, which is what it would be if I didn’t buy the ticket.  I might never win (and the odds are that I never will), but lightning does strike and miracles do happen … so why not?  For the price of a buck or two, I have a chance – granted, a infinitesimal small chance, but still a chance – of making millions.

So why the hell not?  I can afford a buck or two a week and, until the numbers are drawn, the tickets represent undiluted hope and belief.  Best investments I’ve ever made.

Player down

Dian’s on a cane for a couple of weeks.  She took a nasty tumble on the stairs and suffered a small tear of her ACL.  A fairly major ouchie, but nothing bad enough to require surgery to heal up.

So we unshipped her handy-dandy wheelchair, broke out the adjustable cane (we seem to trade it between us), and wrapped that rascally knee up tight.  We’ll have to take a month long break from our morning walks, but everything should be okay come mid-September.

Life in the big city … um, well, minus the big city part, of course.

Well … this is certainly irritating!

Dian and I have this married couple that we are close friends with (we do everything together except swapping) and Dian wanted to make the wife a nice present for her birthday … a crocheted purse in her college colors.

Y’see, the two of them met at college at Kansas University and are fanatical about their alma matter.  Damn near everything they own are either in their team colors or have some sort of decal on it.  So, when the wife … for the sake of this, let’s call her Betty … when Betty admired a crocheted purse that Dian had made for a charity event, Dian decided to make one for Betty’s birthday.

Getting yarn in the correct colors wasn’t hard, neither was getting webbing for the shoulder straps.  The lining material was a little more difficult, but I found a fabric store on-line that had exactly what Dian wanted.  Now everything is done and it looked really nice.

Except Dian wants to put a KU embroidered patch on either side of it, just for a crowning touch.

Now one would think that finding an embroidered patch for a major college would be an easy thing … but one would be wrong!

Try it.  Go on-line and search for an embroidered KU patch.  I’ll wait.

If you found one, I’ll bet you it’s impossible to order it!  I found a couple at various sites, but every last one of them lacked the “Buy Now” or “Add to Shopping Cart” button needed to actual buy the damn things.

I found sites that carried KU thongs, pacifiers, and even adult diapers.  I browsed through page after page of KU themed items and material.  If I wanted a condom with an NCAA officially approved KU Jayhawk image on it, I’d be laughing, but are there any friggin’ embroidered patches out there, official or not?

Amazing.  Simply amazing.  The only way to get her what she wants is to buy an official KU golfing towel and cut the damn embroidered patch off of it!

A potentially lucrative market complete ignored, and why?  Were the folks who make the thongs and tees worried that, if somebody could simply buy a patch of their favorite team, that they’d just sew it to whatever and not spend the extra twenty bucks for their official product?  Insanity.

Monkeys will peanut butter!

Dian and I were doing our daily walk around the zoo .. which we do in the later morning on weekends, as we tend to sleep in … when an odd noise coming from the smaller monkey house caught our attention.

One of the keepers had given the monkeys an all but empty jar of peanut butter! They were both sitting on a perch, taking turns dipping a paw into the jar and wiping the sides clean of what little peanut butter remained, and making the damnest noises of contentment I’ve every heard. Sorta between a purr, a moan, and a grunt.

Peanut butter all over their faces and paws, and happily puroarunting way.

And how was your day?

Llamas have pretty eyes

That’s all.

Well … llamas also have pretty messed up teeth, but I’m not one to talk. (I’m being fitted for a partial next week and getting a bridge the week after that. Military was not good for my teeth … I kept leaving them in interesting places.)

Anyhow, I have a picture of Dian chatting with a llama that I’m going to post. Four of the prettiest eyes in the world.

Lion about

Dian and I have been, every since the weather turned warm enough, walking for a half hour each morning. We get up a little early, I make us a nice breakfast smoothie (a “four by six” recipe: four ounces soy milk, four ounces pomegranate juice, four ounces each of frozen banana, frozen strawberry, frozen peach, and frozen blueberries) and then we’d go for a nice walk.

We changed the pattern a bit the other week and started driving across town to the zoo. Y’see, one of the benefits of becoming “a friend of the zoo” here is that we can walk in early through the employee entrance. So, once we discovered this, we started doing our morning walks around the pretty much empty zoo, instead of around the neighborhood.

As a result, we’ve gotten to see some incredible things. For instance, this morning, the lions came racing out of their barn and went after the small flock of birds that were pecking in their habitat. Watching bloody huge critters bound and leap like kittens after butterflies was astonishing. None of the birds were caught, but one flew smack into the fence near us in a panic and the male was on him in a flash, with his daughter trying to wrest the corpse from papa.

Crunch, smack, burp … no more bird.

Then the male climbed the highest pile of logs and roared for a couple of minutes. The eldest female, either his or his mate’s mother, laid on the ground beneath him and echoed most of the roars with comments of her own … either something like “shut up, stupid; I’m resting” or “yeah, yeah, yeah … king of the beast … right.”

The other excitement today was a stray dog round up.

Sometimes strays manage to get into the zoo at night, either looking for somewhere safe to sleep or to grab a quick meal of baby duckling, and the zoo keepers mount round ups to catch them. (What they do with the strays is a matter of some conjecture between Dian and I, but we haven’t had the courage to ask so far.)

Anyway, the poor pup goes racing past us, followed by every keeper in the place, either riding those golf carts they use to get around or running. We were near the monkey house when it happened, enjoying watching the monks morning rips and commenting on how lively they are in the cool of morning.

Suddenly, a dog goes pelting by, followed by a dozen humans at speed … and the monkeys went a little nuts, hooting and swinging wildly around, and jumping up and down, and … and it dawned on me that they were probably doing the same thing that Dian and I had been: “Look! Human rips!” “Wow! They’re so lively in the morning, aren’t they?” “Yeah, they move so slowly during the heat of day … look at ‘em go!”

Seriously, if you have a zoo nearby and it has a “friends of the zoo” thing going on (preferably one that gives you special access like ours does), I cannot recommend this method of getting a little morning exercise strongly enough. A treat for the body, mind, and spirit.