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Shabbat Shalom! And Other Greetings too
I didn’t get around to writing this morning. I slept in late and even now in the late in the afternoon I am still walking around in a cotton world. The fatigue days are draining me, and I am in full blown ennui. But I remain optimistic that we are on the right track of recovery now. I am reduced to writing small sentences. Compound sentences are just beyond my reach in this state of mind.
Our satellite box went out during the lightening storm, so while we are waiting for FedEx to deliver a new one, the house has been noticeably quiet. That is good, because the incessant rehashing of the Uvalde shooting and ‘Beto, the plastic Mexican and political opportunist, started dancing on the children’s graves before their bodies had time to cool. I don’t have to watch the video clips of it, so that calms my mood considerably
And I still don’t know what is going on in the Depp – Heard courtroom, as hard as the media tries to inform me. I simply don’t want to know, and I tune it out on the TV and skip over it in the NewsFeeds.
And a new Top Gun movie is in the works, with many of the original cast members. They had to make their pants larger to hide the Depends® they are likely wearing at this time of life. Oh, how I care about this one. yawn!
About the only thing I watched in the news was the Sussman – Durham trial. I am following it out of idle curiosity to see whether I can believe in the justice system or not. I am not overly optimistic about that, however.
I do feel a bit better now that I am writing something. Anything will do. Just to sit here and watch the words come off my fingertips like magic is a balm that has been sorely missed. I am so aware of how badly the dyslexia has crept up on me, and being out of the discipline for around three years has taken the edge off of my prose. I am embarrassed by my poor syntax, style, and grammar. Mrs. Gilder, my 6th grade teacher, would be frowning at this as she toyed with her editing pencil that had a red end and a blue end. Yeah, I am that old.
Still, I write. My thoughts run wild during that waking period between the sleeps. An old manuscript that I started æons ago optimistically called Akashic is haunting me, and I suddenly saw a way to bring back a runaway novel back into order. But it is a major rewrite and will take a year or better to whip it into shape. At least with the energy level I have now, anyway. The year has sailed by me, only punctuated by stays in the hospital and weeks of fatigue at home. Sometimes I feel like I am just waiting for Thanatos knock at the door. But as I sit down to write this unedited bundle of me-isms, he has stopped knocking and has moved back to his lurking position over my left shoulder.
So, this coffee post has turned into an after-dinner post but may not be the tragedy I expected. A strawberry-rhubarb pie is baking in the oven, and we will have pie and coffee in an hour as an evening snack. And this seems as good of a place to wrap this up as any.
Shabbat Shalom!!
Midrashim, Gallows Humor, and Me
The day started out nicely. I woke with the sun, padded out to the kitchen to start the coffee. After I switched my night bag to my day bag, put my hearing aids on, turned off the blanket and the HEPA filter, that is. Gone are the days that I hit the floor running. But it is what it is, to cite an old saw.
I sat down and dutifully took my blood sugar, blood pressure, pulse, oxygen, temperature, and weight to please the myriad of medical people that see me and call me often for that information. Then the insulin injection for my instant breakfast of blueberry turnovers and Metamucil™. At one time in my life, I just grabbed the coffee and went out on the porch to watch my rural neighborhood awaken, then went inside to share my observations with my readers. I resent the time I must spend in morning preparations. But I just can’t lay down and die. Not that I fear death, but I am less than enthused about the dyeing part of it. I hate dealing with so much morbidity, so I use gallows humor in confronting it. I wish it offended less people than it does, but we all share in Adams failure. Non the less, it is a tragedy, but I don’t want to dig into that midrash [1]at this moment.
For this precise instant, however, I leave those thoughts to peer out my real window at the softly lit neighborhood, and through my virtual window at the limerence of friends and family. It is for you I write.
I forget that from time to time. I have heard writers say, “I write for myself”. No. I can only say that if I write in a private diary. My posts are sort of like sitting at the kitchen table and talking to you. I doubt that I will see most of you again, at least in this realm. And some of you I have never sat with. I only know you by your words. Oddly, though, I think of my virtual friends as often as those I have met.
I also want to get back in the habit of writing every day so that I can distance myself from the big ME that my infrequent posts are now dwelling on. I notice my writing skills have waned with my absence, and I really do miss them. I am full of words and want to put them down. I want to live in someone else’s head for a while. I am tired of mine.
So I begin by living in my head … curious, no? I have to start somewhere, though.
Later: The sun has risen, the coffee drunk, the coffee cake shared with Snookums, and I must wrap this up, publish it, and move on with my life.
Good morning!
[1] Midrash – midrashim. Jewish teachings from the Torah. Loosely, homilies and teachings. I interpret the term loosely here.
Apologies and Excuses
I know I had promised that I was done with the health updates, but some of my long time readers have been concerned that I haven’t been posting much. I think I am doing OK, but I never know. My labs came in online for my visit with the Cardiac PA this afternoon, and it took about half an hour of googling to come up with three incurable maladies.
I think I’ll just leave the test interpretations with the physicians. I really suck at it. But they do explain the sleepiness and fatigue. We’ll see if they can’t work their sorcery on the maladies. I can always hope.
I am quite chipper for the condition I am in. It feels good to drive and shop. I never thought I would see the day when I was happy to be in a grocery store. Moving around in there was another of those minor victories.
I was told that I am not a good candidate for cardiac rehab, so it is on with the home health PT. I will check later to see if I am up to pulmonary rehab. It is much the same as cardio rehab, but less intense.
The diabetes is under control, but I am still fighting wild swings. I discovered that I didn’t have a diabetes specialist on my list. The doctor who treated me in the hospital doesn’t have a practice, so I need to get that taken care of. I think I need an adjustment to the meds I am taking.
The fog really hasn’t cleared much out of my mind, though. Writing is still a Herculean task, even an update like this. So, I am reduced to repackaging memes I read and posting them on facebook. Those will have to suffice for coffee posts for the time. Still, the writers itch is annoying the hell out of me, so who knows. I plan to start small, mostly coffee posts. Essays are a favorite of mine because they seldom require research. And opine I shall.
I am waiting on the arrival of Kimberly, my trim, petite, and perky physical therapist. I keep telling her how miserable I am feeling, and she pouts, says she is sorry to hear that, then tries to kill me. Fortunately, she is only strengthening me enough to ward off her evil intentions.
Perhaps my next post will be a coffee post, but I am not promising anything.
Out of the Cocoon
Up with the sun this Tuesday morning. Enough with morbidity. Yeah, some days life is tough, then you die. But for this sleepy morning, coffee and cake with Snookums sums up the reality. For this day, life is good.
I apologize for my last post. Things were grim that day. But I am unable to keep that level of the blues for long. Life happens, and you deal with it as it arrives. My predictor doesn’t work that well anyway, and I have discovered that the mere act of living day to day is all that is needed from me.
New hearing aids this afternoon. I hope they work out well. I miss so much in conversations that I have moved myself onto the internet and printed word. Everyone wants to talk to me, but no one wants to write. That sucks because I can’t hear them. The new aids work directly with the phone, so maybe I can discuss stuff with people and know what they said.
Still trying to work out all the mysteries of diet and insulin, and I have made some stupid mistakes. But I think I am finally getting the hang of it. I think the next move will be to begin “carb counting”, where you total your carbs and adjust your insulin for that. I think that will end that afternoon crash where my blood sugar gets dangerously low.
I am enjoying running errands again. I had lost so much interest through the long recovery spell.
I so much want to return to writing again. Fiction takes a bit of mental acuity, and it just hasn’t been there for me the last few years. But everything in small steps. Small glimpses into a new genre for me are pushing me toward the studio, but they still float out beyond mere words.
I am excited. Maybe this is the last update post and I can finally break free of this cocoon I have put myself into.
Resolution
… then one morning I woke and knew that the skirmishes were over. I was joined in a battle to death. The lawn became unimportant. The dust bunnies in the kitchen weren’t going away. The carpet wasn’t going to get cleaned. The shed is not going to be emptied. The tools aren’t going to get sorted.
The day is fast approaching when I will not be able to protect my wife, and I will leave her to the care of others just at the time she needed me most. It is a bitter pill to swallow.
Yet I have each day, and each day adds to each day. I must concentrate on those things that are good and necessary before the darkness arrives.
But all that is left is the struggle.
Shabbat morning schmooze …
Shabbat morning. The morning of the seventh day of Passover. The morning counting the seventh day of Omer. Forty-three days to go …
Rose with the sun this morning instead of the ticktock machine. Coffee. Meditation. Insulin injection. Mango. Egg and sausage muffin. Mandarin orange.
Then coffee cake and coffee with Snookums after she puts dishes away from the dishwasher, feeds the dogs and feral cats.
The days come, the days go. Lots of change in the micro, no change in the macro.
And some day I will enter the final Shabbat …
Good morning!
We can’t get back to the Garden
We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion-year-old carbon
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden
~ Joni Mitchell-Woodstock
A friend of mine confessed to a crisis of faith today, and that sent me back to the time that man rejected God and died. We can only guess what the nature of that death was, since we would have to be walking in the Garden of Eden with God to even understand what that life was about. We do know from Genesis that Adam died that day, yet Adam continued to live another 930 years. The paradox is only solved if Adam had a different life than the one had before his disobedience.
God uses the term “Father” to help us understand his nature, but when we read the account of the Garden in Genesis, Adam walks with God in the Garden. Man does not walk in the Garden with God today even if some of us do call him Father. The gates to the Garden are shut by two mighty Cherubim, implying that the Garden is a place that man will not enter again, despite Joni’s lyrics. At the end of the ages, God destroys the heavens and the earth, and creates a new one. All we know about that place is that there is no death, no violence, and probably no marriages. Until that time, wars, violence, and death are still with us, but with some limits during the Millennial Age.
God didn’t create the war in the Ukraine. Man did. It is not God’s world. We still live in man’s creation, albeit with the Breath of God restored in some of us. I don’t have the knowledge to explain that mystery. Those who have the Breath of God know it at a subconscious level, and those who don’t have the Breath of God cannot possibly know what it is, and should be treated respectfully for that ignorance, because man cannot give it.
We are indeed sojourners, strangers in a strange land. And it is an ugly land, bereft of the presence of God. We must walk by a different light than others.
… and I still can’t walk on water!
It’s a quarter ‘til midnight, and I can’t sleep. Yet nothing is particularly troubling me tonight. Cars rumble by on their way home from town, and the soft thud of military ordinance drifts in from Fort Hood as the troops prepare for war. The thermostat is set back at night, so I have a small space heater for my feet and a large heating pad on my new $59 executive chair. The old $49 executive chair came apart like the shay in Oliver Wendell Holmes poem One-Hoss Shay, though it didn’t last a hundred years like the shay did.
I made up some bologna and cheese sandwiches earlier this week, and I am enjoying a half one along with a small glass of lemonade. I had to give up milk. It seems the high-powered antibiotics not only killed off the good gut bacteria, but also made me lactose intolerant. I have unsuccessfully searched for non-sweetened drinks, but other than some exotic teas, there just isn’t much out there.
I seldom write at night. I don’t like the tangents I go off on when I do. But tonight, the TV doesn’t interest me, and I don’t want to read. So here I sit in the gloom trying to find tidbits to talk about, and ways to make the tidbits interesting. I think I am going to fail that one.
Usually when this sort of urge to write falls on me, it is because I am wrestling with something or arguing with God. I am vexed with my weakness and unfinished chores keep piling up. I need to get propane for my weed burner and burn off a lot of deadwood collected in two burn piles. I need to clean up Bucephalus, my aging Dodge mommy van that has sat for two and a half years until my eyes got fixed. Maybe that is it … it is my winter of discontent. All I can seem to talk about is me. I don’t even have interest in the political and social trainwreck that is going on around me. GenZ’s are clamoring for more government. Churches are a mess of competing theologies. And I still can’t walk on water … so I can’t help them out of the morass.
Bits and pieces of an old short story I wrote some years back have returned to my mind, and I want to rewrite it. Don’t know why. SciFi and Fantasy shorts are dead venues. There are no Robert Heinleins, Harlan Ellisons, Arthur C. Clarkes, Frank Herberts, Isaac Asimovs or Ray Bradburys today. All that is left of their legacy is rewrites by screen writers. But like the old crank that I am, I crank on.
I am starting to take a little pride in my appearance again, though I never had a lot to begin with. And I am straightening up the studio. Each day I get a little bit stronger, and all that elevates me. It would be cool to be able to attend shul/church/assembly again, but I am not so sure Snookums is up to that now. We’ll see.
So with that, I think I’ll return to bed. But I can legitimately say Good Morning!
God Loves Veterinarians, Glitterati and Doctors …
The winter rains have finally come to the middle of Texas. Of course, this was the day I was planning to do something about the yard. Darn, darn, darn. Or something. But drizzly days are good for hot chocolate and musing, so muse I shall.
Jenna, my white 70 lb something-or-the other, is sleeping in the studio closet by my computer. I leave the door open because that is a favorite place for her when she is feeling insecure because of the weather, fireworks, or pre-aura seizures. Today it is the seizures, so I need to be extra vigilant with her. She is what is known as a “runner” when she has seizures and appreciates someone grabbing her by the collar so that she can just thrash around rather than running into things and trying to climb corners. But, unlike the other white dog I had, she gets over them quickly, waking up to greet the family and checking out the back yard. The other white dog, Roscoe, was a dalmatian-mongrel who went into ictus right away and took a long-time reawaking.
Canine epilepsy is more of a curse for white dogs than it is for colored dogs. With Roscoe, it was a time when vets knew next to nothing about canine epilepsy, and the seizures were gawd awful to watch. You want to comfort the dog, but nothing seems to work. I can’t count the times I slept with Roscoe on the cold kitchen floor while he slowly recovered. I didn’t know it at the time, but dogs are marginally aware of their surroundings, and take comfort in knowing their owner is close by. Both Jenna and Rosco would come running to me when they were on the verge of seizing, somehow holding off until I could grab them by the collar and talk to them the whole time.
I was frantic with Roscoe, and it was an era of several competing web search engines. Yahoo! was leading the pack then, and I began a search on treating dogs for epilepsy. My vet was of little help on this, though it wasn’t because he was negligent. There just wasn’t much information out there. But I discovered a small group of people who also had dogs with epilepsy, and they put me in touch with Joanne Carson, one of Johnny Carson’s exes. She was an MD and had an epileptic dog and thought to treat it like she would for one of her own patients. She sent me reams of data to share with my vet, and my vet dutifully read everything.
The treatment for human epilepsy wasn’t much better for humans then than it was for dogs, but she developed a procedure that I am convinced led to Roscoe living a long and productive life. It involved staying with the dog and comforting it as best you can, and Valium® administered rectally with a syringe and a cat catheter. Messy business and more Valium® went on the floor than inside the dog, but it helped with Roscoe. I don’t think Jenna’s seizures have been as severe as Roscoe’s though a dog-rescue colleague who is also a CBD distributer (thank you Sanchia!) convinced me that CBD oil does in fact help with her seizures and can be administered before and after.
Joanne gave me her personal Hollywood phone number and told me to call her at any time of the day when Roscoe seized. She was as good as her word, and I called late in the evening. She walked me through the ordeal, and kept me together, and stayed with me until Roscoe finally relaxed and started breathing normally as he slept. She was my angel that evening.
In these tumultuous days of mine as I stare down Thanatos’s and his scary scythe, these moments when strangers rode to my rescue appear out of the fog of memory, greet me, and disappear back into the fog. I will be a miserable fool if I don’t remember that humans can and do rise above the mean circumstances and help their fellow man. I am grateful for this gift of like and hope to be as kind and thoughtful as these two women were for me.
And with this soggy post, a soggy good morning!
Rusty's Armory 