THE SAGA NEVER ENDS

So I had been feeling “not good” for a couple of weeks.  Didn’t want to make a big deal out of it mostly because it might start to appear to others that I’m turning into a drama queen hypochondriac.  Just having gotten over the broken foot and two UTIs (TMI) over the past couple of months and never-ending dental work, I’d just about OD’d on anything ever remotely associated with hospitals, doctors, dentists, drugs, ANYTHING health-related.  I’m not going to go into my symptoms b/c so many of them are “female” things and who in the hell wants to hear about that crap?  Not even me.

So Friday aftenoon when I felt an excrutiating band of pain around my midsection, I started thinking that maybe I was going to die I should take how I was feeling a bit more seriously.  Up until that point I was able to attribute all my uncomfortableness to the sorts of things “women my age” experience with the big M. (Menopause)

About an hour later the pain was gone but I was still on alert, lest it return.

Saturday afternoon PD and I spent hours and hours searching umpteen stores for the perfect window coverings for the windows in our new closed-in front porch.  I wasn’t feeling great and couldn’t wait to get home and relax.

By 7pm I could hear the Emergency Room calling my name and explained to PD that a trip was in order.

By the time the triage nurse called  me to get my information I couldn’t even sit down.  I found myself pacing in little circles trying to find a comfort zone.  There was none.  I was fighting tears by that point and getting scared, wondering what was wrong with me.

A CT scan and a urinalysis resulted in the report that I was in the process of passing a 5mm kidney stone, which then resulted in an IV full of anti-nausea drugs, Toradol and Dilaudid.  I actually turned down the Dilaudid at first and PD talked me into having it before we left.

A little after 10pm I was released and PD went to retrieve the car.  It was then that I found myself sitting on the curb outside the ER enjoying the hell out of the fireworks across the way.  You ain’t never seen fireworks until you watch them in a Dilaudid-induced stupor.  I wish you could have seen PD insisting that I “Stay put!” as he walked toward the parking garage.  I wonder where he thought I was going to wander off to.  The sidewalk wouldn’t even stay in one place.

Thrilled to be pain-free, I thoroughly enjoyed about half of the ride home.  It was a beautiful night, the car windows open, good music, pretty lights.   I could probly tell you the exact second the anti-nausea wore off and how grateful I was for the pretty cornflower blue barf bag they’d given me.  I only had to use it twice.

So today I felt pretty good for most of the day.  The past couple of hours, not so good.   Time will tell.  PD is BBQ-ing pork that’s been marinating in JD BBQ sauce and baking potatoes for what promises to be a yummy dinner.  I’m crossing my fingers and hoping I’ll be able to enjoy it.

RAZORLIGHT

Was performing my semi-monthly YouTube surfing marathon and came across this band.  Razorlight.  They are entirely awesome.  I favorited a whole slew of their videos and will be adding some songs to my iTunes as soon as I get my $50 iTunes gift card that I paid $25 for on eBay.  I know!

Here’s my favorite song of theirs so far… It’s called Somewhere Else.

Sorry YouTube doesn’t feel like sending video to me tonight. You’ll have to copy and paste this link into your browser:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mEHAzzydF0

Somewhere Else by Razorlight

Or you can try clicking on that.  (I’ll be darned, that works!)

If you like that, check this out too:

Wire To Wire by Razorlight

My gut feeling is that now I’ll see and hear this band all over the place.  That always happens to me.   I hope I’m right about this.  Considering all the big names they’ve been associated with and so many great things they’ve done, I can’t believe I’ve never come across them before.

Are any of you familiar with the band and if so, what songs do you like?

JUST FOR THE HECKAVIT

Was cleaning out my mail when I came across a stray comment from a reader which led me to this post.  I read it and kind of liked it and decided to repost it.

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Saturday, January 07, 2006 (Repost)

SOMETHING IS ME

I may or may not have alluded to the fact that I am turning 50 in a few months. Chances are I have mentioned it, it’s not something anyone - especially

if it is Me- can just disregard. It’s kind of like having the Hindenberg hanging over your head. You can’t just pretend it’s not there. I don’t think any of my Readers are anywhere near even conceiving of the idea what it might feel like to be looking down the barrel of a big Five-Oh.  It actually is the number that is bothering me more than the physical state of being alive for fifty years.  And the first one of you who says “That’s half of a century” is going straight to hell, no questions, so shut your unlined little mouth.

There’s no way I’m this old. Sure, my body and my face may look it but my mind has never matured past late puberty. It’s really funny though, I often feel like I’ve already started the “full circle” thing you’ve heard old people refer to.  I often catch myself talking and acting like a fourteen-year-old. I drive worse (read:  faster) than I did at sixteen. And I certainly play music as loud as, if not louder than I did then. My music collection rivals surpasses the one I owned then. I wore bell-bottom jeans at 13.  I’m wearing them again except they’re called “flares” now.  Now they’re called low-rise, then they were hip huggers. I have shoes in my closet that aren’t any more sensible than the ones I wore in high school. Some are just as dangerous. I pay about the same amount of attention to the rules as I did then too. Now though, it’s not as much about rebellion as it is experience. The similarity though,  is that I thought the rules were dumb then and I think they’re dumb now. I didn’t give myself credit for being ahead of my time.

My face still breaks out, I still get cramps.  I still hate shaving.  I still run up and down the steps.  I still spend my extra cash on music and books and make-up. Some things never change. Some do.  I no longer drop what I’m doing and run to answer the phone.  I don’t usually blush when I’m talking to guys. If I’m home on a Saturday night, it’s by choice.  I don’t write in my diary and lock it up and bury it under my mattress.  Now I put it on the Internet for the whole freakin’ world to see.  Go figure.

There are good things about being my age. Very good things. It’s only been very recently that I’ve become aware of many of them. I believe around this age you develop a kind of uber-awareness of yourself and how you relate to the immediate world around you. I’m just speaking for me, but I hope it’s a universal woman-thing because it’s really cool. If you’re my age and reading this and aren’t identifying, maybe there is something wrong with you .

I’m positive that my hormones are behind whatever this transformation is. And they bloody-well owe me something after the hell and havoc they have been wreaking on me for the last few years. Like to make you think you’re a lunatic. The sooner you can part with the damn things I think the better off you are. They’re complicated little bastards that just lurk in your insides and play games. Back to what I started to say…

The good things… I am feeling more comfortable with me. As an adult, I never thought that I wasn’t but I am aware of “fitting into me” better. I accept my faults for what they are and they no longer feel like things that need fixed. They’re just there and part of me.  My limitations, I can accept.  I no longer feel the need to overcome, to find ways to compensate. They are now just things I can’t do.  So what.  I never really needed to do a cartwheel. I am not as compelled to please people who have no special significance in my life. I appreciate the people who are special to me more than I ever did.  I have become more stingy with my time and fill it more with things I enjoy. I am more relaxed. I’m learning exactly what I can change about my life and what I can’t. A lot of things just aren’t important and it’s not so hard to differentiate between what is and what isn’t. I used to worry what other people thought about me. I still care but I don’t worry. Some days I care more, some days I say “what the hell”. It’s good to have choices. Very soon I want to start a good exercise program. Of all the things I’m giving up worrying about, the way I look is not going to be one of them. And I’d like to be around when I’m sixty. That should be a lot of fun. By then I won’t give a rat’s ass about any thing at all!

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Back to the Present… Let me wish you all a very Happy Fourth of July

And may it be safe as well.

KNOTTING UP LOOSE ENDS

Several times lately I’ve sat down here to write and realized that things I wanted to say needed to be explained and didn’t have the time or energy to get into the whole whatever so I just didn’t write.  And Lord knows I don’t need one more reason to add to the list as long as my arm that’s keeping me from writing here.  So if you can find it in your heart to bear with me and muddle through a bunch of uninteresting but necessary (to me) details so that I can maneuver around this bump and move on, I’ll love you forever.

So I saw the foot doctor on Thursday.  He’s more or less satisfied with how my foot has healed (nearly 100%) but concerned about the pain I’ve had elsewhere in my foot since the boot came off.  So he wrote me a script for an anti-inflammatory and ambushed me with a hypo gave me a big-ass shot of cortisone in that little hollow spot in front of my outside ankle bone.  Crikey, that “pinched.”  Kind of like the same way a guillotine pinches your neck.  Incidentally, I lost the bandaid somewhere in my bed between that night and this morning when I woke up and found it pasted to my right ass cheek.  WTF. He told me to keep doing what I’m doing, stop when it hurts and come back on July 30.

Yesterday I decided I was totally fed up with sitting around and cleaned my whole house and did laundry and brought the rest of my summer clothes out of the attic.  PD and I decided we felt like entertaining so we invited some friends over to sample his recent acquirance of bison meat and I spent a couple of hours making supplementary food and getting the back yard ready for guests.  In other words, I totally abused my foot.  And it felt good. (The abusing of, not the foot, per se.)

Work is still the same, basically but with a few thousand twists.  No need to elaborate, so I won’t. *Yawn*  HR is being a pain in the ass, starting to pressure me about not working the over time.  They can’t quite seem to understand the complicated medical term “until further notice.”  Duh already.

In case you’re wondering, I still can’t get below 10 cigarettes per day and no, my weight has not changed despite the massive amounts of food I ingest on a daily basis.  Is there such a thing as a tapeworm with a nicotine addiction?  Surely there must be.  I must confess though, that several times on recent weekends, due to the frequency of friends dropping over to enjoy a fire and a few beers, I’ve gone over my daily limit.  I know.  You can’t say anything I haven’t thought or heard already.  But thanks.

So now we’re up to par on the foot/work/cig/weight fronts.  Now I can move on to other things.

Oh wait!  The old guy?  The Friday before Father’s Day, I spotted him (standing this time) on his porch.  Still with that faraway stare out into space, hands folded on the crook of a cane.  A car was parked in front of his house this time and a younger man was leaning into the back seat.  Led me to wonder if he’d had a visitor and who and why and a zillion other things for the rest of my drive home.

And YES I’m loving being able to drive again!  JOY JOY JOY

MUSIC LATELY

This is mostly for me. But if you’re interested, this is what I’ve been listening to lately. I must say it’s a mess of some really kickass music.  Put this up in a rush at like 2am so sorry if the links are messed up.

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Flowers for a Ghost ~ Thriving Ivory

Satellite Skin ~ Modest Mouse

Creeping Out Sara ~ NOFX

Take Me Home ~ After Midnight Project

Stay Over ~ The Rescues

That’s Not My Name ~ The Ting Tings

Fifty On Our Foreheads ~ White Lies

Backwards Walk ~ Frightened Rabbit

Thy Will Be Done ~ Handsome Furs

Cannot Get Started ~ Handsome Furs

Plea for a Cat Named Virtue ~ The Weakerthans

Daniel ~ Bat for Lashes

The Game ~ Echo and the Bunnymen

Out That Door ~ Hoodoo Gurus

Tojo ~ Hoodoo Gurus

You Don’t Know Me ~ Ben Folds/ Regina Spektor

I Don’t Know ~ Lisa Hannigan

Airstream Driver ~ Gomez

Boy ~ Book of Love

Gotta Have You ~ The Weepies

Geraldine ~ Glasvegas

THANKS, ZEFRANK

I laughed, and if TC finds the time to come around he will too.  As for the rest of you,  you might want to pass on this one.

BODY PARTS AND FRIENDS

I’m feeling especially grateful today and wanted to share my feelings.

Having spent last (but not this past)  weekend with my family made me realize how very, very lucky I am to have a loving, attentive daughter who’s an absolutely terrific mother to my three precious grandkids and a wonderful wife to my amazing son-in-law.  I am blessed to have a husband who appreciates our family as much as I do and who doesn’t think twice about stepping up to help out when I can’t be at 100%.

I’m grateful to have a mother who gives up her time to spend with us and enjoys watching her great-grandchildren grow and thrive.  It made me feel good to have her tell me what great parents the JuJu’s are and what a joy and how well-behaved the little ones are.

I’m thankful to have such terrific neighbors who are not only great friends but willing to help when needed, not only if asked but often before they’re even asked.  They are comfortable with us when we spend time together having fun and still respect our need for time alone.  We share our problems and joys alike.

This whole broken foot-thing has been stressful and trying at times but it’s been one of those experiences that illustrate loud and clear who your friends are.  While it’s been very small on the scale of bad things that can happen to a person, it still served as a reminder to me that you shouldn’t take things like body parts and friends for granted.

I’m especially grateful to PD who’s managed not only to pick up my tremendous slack around the house these past weeks but was able to drive me to and from work.  There were only a couple of incidents involving his Meniere’s that made it difficult and I thank God for that.  And who but someone who loved me more than I deserve would haul his butt out of bed at an ungodly hour every morning after having watched so many hockey games after I’d gone to bed?

Now that I’ve been able to retire the boot (as of Thursday past) I’m going to try to keep my pace slow and smell the proverbial flowers.  My ankle is weak from un-use and my going is still a bit pokey (it’s actually more painful than the break was on the side of my foot, believe it or not) but I’m exercising it every day and planning to run a marathon hopefully soon I’ll start feeling normal again.  I’m keeping my driving to a minimum.  No, the old guy was not sitting on his porch today.  And no, I haven’t gotten a speeding ticket yet.

SCENERY

Today coming home from work, I noticed a very old man sitting on his front porch.  He was withered and pale and looked a little shell-shocked and as I turned to look at him something moved inside me.  I admired what it may have taken for him to be there.  All the events of his day leading up to that moment in time… Who washed the clothes he was wearing and prepared his lunch?  Was it difficult for him to get out of his bed this morning?  Had he watched the news and what did it stir inside him?  What did he think about the cars whizzing past his house driven by much younger people in a hurry to get to the gym or the grocery store… What kind of life had he led?  Did he have family and friends to love and be loved by?  Maybe an old dog asleep beside him on the porch…  Had someone called him today to make sure he was doing ok…  Had he fought in a war or been injured or lost friends or won medals?  Had he ever been in love?  What was his favorite TV show?  Did he play hooky from school ever?

Was he happy or ravaged with regrets?  I could not tell from his expression.  He was just there.  His gaze revealed nothing to me at all. His posture could have been effortless or painful. I could not tell.  His elbows rested on the arms of his chair and his hands were folded on his lap.  For all I know he could have been sitting there, expecting someone like me to notice him and his sole purpose was to give no indication of his condition.  Maybe that’s how he gets his kicks.  Or maybe he was defying me.  I’ll never know.  Or that crazy part of me could become obsessed to the point of marching up to his door and demanding to know his name and life story.  Not likely.

Now, after having tossing these thoughts around in my head, I can’t help but feel a deep respect for this man.  Simply because he was there.  And what he’s endured.  Some might think, yes, but maybe he was a bad man.  Maybe he was the meanest s.o.b. on the block.  If that were the case, I would curse the events in his life that caused it.  No one is born bad or mean.  We have choices, yes, but who’s to say…

I will look at that house every day now for a couple of weeks to see if he’s sitting there.  If he is, I will give him a name.  I will start to notice if he’s wearing the same clothes, if he’s sitting in the same chair.  I will be concerned if he’s not there.  I will catch myself after a time and realize that I’d forgotten to look for him for several days.  Before much more time passes I will forget about him.  Maybe years from now something will trigger the memory of the image of him as I saw him today.

One day I could become him,  sitting alone on my little porch watching the world go by… a prisoner of my thoughts in a fragile and aged body.  Will anyone notice?

QUICK CATCH UP

PD and I had a lovely weekend with my daughter JuJu and her terrific family.  We celebrated Juju’s birthday, my granddaughter’s birthday, Easter and Mother’s Day.  A lot to cram into less than 48 hours.  Saturday night we had a fire and ate popcorn and had “beverages.”  That didn’t last too long, as the little ones pooped out early and it actually got quite chilly rather quickly.  We also started to watch Bedtime Stories and laughed a lot but we quit for some reason and never got back to it.  Mostly we played and talked and ate.  But it was good, however short.  Seems that with all of our work schedules and my limited absence of driving skills, it gets harder and harder to get together.  And that makes me very sad.  Really makes hitting the lottery and buying a helicopter look appealing.

So my house is quiet now, but still relatively clean.  It was a bit of a wreck before the weekend.  PD isn’t quite finished with the front porch closing-in.  The outside wall in the living room looks like we took a wrecking ball to it but the new window is in and when the dry wall gets put up and the painting gets done, all will be good.  The new window looks out on to the new room window so we still have a wonderful view of the field across the road and the hills and trees beyond that.  I can still watch the sunrise and the colors of the seasons change in the trees.

Well, this is short and I’m tired.  Plus, I hear the music of the Good Humor truck outside.  I need to run.

THIS MAKES ME HAPPY