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 🙂

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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

FRIDAY AGAIN ALREADY

Sheesh, I haven’t posted for a week.  Two reasons for that, actually…  One, I been busy.  Two, I’m irritated that only three people watched the vid I posted last week.  I feel kinda bad, b/c one person reported in real life that it ruined the song for him forevermore.  Didn’t mean to do that…

Great news on the homefront; the JuJu Clan is coming for a weekend visit.  I can’t wait.  Now I gotta run and get this workday out of the way.