Category: health

Thursday’s Tiny Tidbits

Is it redundant to say tiny tidbits? Are not tidbits tiny by definition?

There’s a bit of whinging in this week’s short stuff, because I, an American white male, am a champion first-world complainer, often suffering first world blues much like “The Princess and the Pea”. I play the princess (call me Princess M, please) and the pea is anything from entertainment offerings, food prices, and net speeds to ‘things I can’t do well with my broken arm’.

I think I’ll start there.

  1. Typing. Buttons. Holding things with my left hand. Showering. Washing my hair. Putting on deodorant. Opening cat food tins. Opening ziplock type bags. Tearing toilet paper. These have all been challenges with my left arm in a splint and sling. Went back and read the ER report from that night. I’d overlooked the damages noted to my elbow, wrist, and fingers. I thought it was just the broken radius and broken and displaced ulna, but there was more. That more explains the struggles. All getting better, though. Give it time, right? It’ll be a month tomorrow.
  2. One-handed typing slows my novel writing. I depend on muscle memory and typing proficiency to expedite learning the tale and telling the story. Using one hand requires more thought, which disrupts the writing flow. Progress is tedious. I shoot for a thousand words a day (yeah word count as a metric, carrot, and stick) but I’m usually lucky to achieve five hundred.
  3. Other things: one, food prices. They’re rising fast now. Experts are making dire predictions about shortages, food insecurity, and distribution chain issues next year. Like, brace yourself.
  4. Example of food prices rising. Went on a groc shop today. Twelve items. One bag, mostly fresh produce: $42. Passed on a pint of mission figs for $12.99, and a half pint of blackberries for $4.99.
  5. The stock market isn’t moored in reality. It certainly isn’t ‘the economy’. One, most stocks are international businesses, reflecting global activity. Two, the wealthiest individuals own most of the stock. As an example, I own stocks, and also have some in IRAs and a 401k. Because of that, I’m worth a chunk more on paper.
  6. Running short of entertainment offerings. Basically have been rationing season two of “The Umbrella Academy” while working through “The Last Dance” and other documentaries and filling up on Brit faves “Would I Lie to You” and “QI” (with that rand Scandi Sandi and Alan Davis), and “The Kominsky Method“. Have just discovered the “Russo Bros. Pizza Film School“, which I’ll start watching tonight. Last week brought an unexpected “Red Dwarf” treat in a new episode.
  7. “Red Dwarf” remains unabashedly silly and illogical after all these years. Love it.
  8. Excitement on the streaming front. “Hitmen” with Sue and Mel on Peacock is coming. (If you asked, “Sue and Mel?”, it’s probably not your cuppa.) New Frost and Pegg series on Amazon Prime, “Truth Seekers”, is coming…someday. The second year of “The Boys” is finally arriving Sept. 4, so I’ll start watching season one again.
  9. Saying the long good-bye to a friend. Brain tumor. He’s trying to hang on to vote for Biden and have one final Thanksgiving with his family. Eighty-eight and an accomplished physicist, he’ll be the one to tell you he’s had a good life, but he had a lot more to do. He’s the third friend lost to brain cancer/tumor in the last few years.

Tell me about your world – books, streaming, writing in progress. What’re you watching? Eat anything interesting lately? “Red Dwarf”: for or against?

Got my coffee. Time to do me best to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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The Arm Repair Dream

I broke my arm on July 7 this year. I’m healing fine but am thwarted by the inconvenience. My dream subconscious response amused me.

I was with other people. My arm was broken and in a white cast. Sitting and chatting with others on a round plaza outside, I was dressed in black pants and shirt, and enjoying myself. I noticed a tall, bald black man working his way through the crowd. Like me, he was dressed in black pants and shirt.

As he closed, our eyes met. I said, “Hi, how’s it going?”

“Pretty good, you?”

“Good, thanks.”

“Good.” He was standing beside me now. “How’s your arm?”

I held it up. “Broken.”

“I know. I’m here to fix it.”

“It’s fixed. It’s healing.”

“How ’bout if I give you a new arm?”

I laughed. 

He grinned. “How ’bout if I give you one of mine?”

“That’s generous of you, but don’t you need it?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll grow another.”

“Well, no offense, but your arm is black. I’d have one black arm and one white one.”

“So? It’ll change.” He pulled his arm off and stuck it on my shoulder.

(I’ve thought a lot about this, and I don’t recall him removing my arm first.)

I was standing by then, holding my new arm out. It was white, just like the other one.

Giving me a side look, he said. “You’re always worrying about the wrong things.”

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Saturday’s Snippings

  1. John Muir and Margaret Sanger. These two are the latest to be addressed for their racism. In Sanger’s case, it’s more nuanced, regards eugenics, and is too much for my sprawled one-handed pecking for much detail here. I do recommend research. Muir, though, was an outright racist. We learn that people can be visionary and flawed. His damage to our society is deep. It’s sad and disheartening to learn these things. But they must be learned, and we need to be cognizant of the damage inflicted, and, yeah, make changes.
  2. Making changes like acknowledging past racism and its impact and then trying to fix it is just like the stages of grief, isn’t it? It’ll take a while to work through it. I can hear replies, how much longer must it take?
  3. Lovely to feel my arm healing. Strength is returning, range of movement is expanding, and the circle of pain is shrinking. Go back next week. The plan (if all is well) is to replace the splint with a short cast.
  4. Realizing that next week is August. July passed through with a sonic boom.
  5. I love the John Cheever quote I found this morning (posted elsewhere on the blog). It speaks strongly to my own writing drive. I always think, there’s more to our lives and reality than what we know. I’m agnostic about gods, and indeed enjoy tucking them into my tales, but I pursue the impression that we’ve only skimmed the surface of being. Writing helps me explore that essence.
  6. Drank a fantastic cup of coffee this morning. Right temp, flavor, and richness. A wow cup. Which made me immediately want to experience it again. Comparing it to drinking wine and beer, and eating food, and achieving things, I appreciated again the blend needed to brew something memorable that’s greater than its parts. Once, I’ve had it, I want more of the same. Not an epiphany, but a lesson learned one more time.
  7. Speaking of one more time, got a refresher cuppa coffee (yeah, it’s not the same, but it’ll do). Time to write like crazy…at least one. More. Time.
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The Computer Painting Dream

It began like I was in one of my previous professions. At work, I received a phone call. A customer was having problems with his computer security. Well, those products ere being discontinued and his license keys had expired. Nonetheless, I cut new keys for him, directed him to a site to download them, and walked him through reinstallation. This is a process that would’ve taken some time but in dreamland, it was just a few minutes. Also, my dream office was much nicer and impressive than my real digs. It all seemed so sharp, it could’ve been real time.

The CEO came by. We chatted, and then drifted in opposite directions to new meetings. In my meeting, we were preparing to paint. Friends entered with the tablets. We stretched them out into large electronic canvases Then we painted on the screens. The tablets absorbed it, becoming a malleable medium. My painting was a large portrait of a blond woman in a yellow dress juggling tangerines.

Chinese food was brought in. We stopped to eat and talk about our work. A nearby young woman had been complaining about her finger. I told her to show me. She stuck out a blackened pinky.

“Your blood isn’t flowing,” I said. “Get me a needle and bowl.”

Holding onto her finger, I pricked her and squeezed her finger. Thick, black drops that behaved like mercury fell into the bowl. After doing that for about twenty seconds, her finger was normal.

End dream.

 

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Simple Sunday Stuff

  1. Went off script today. Bounced with spouse to store in early A.M. Decided thereafter, screw it, movie. Who doesn’t love Sunday Afternoon at the Movies? Streaming options came through: Palm Springs on Hulu offered an afternoon respite from the daily drone.
  2. Next four months with COVID-19, political campaigns, protests, riots, Feds abducting protesters, and POTUS insanity and lies (along with his administration’s lies, and well, most of the right wing’s offerings) will be a trial. Add to that a heat wave, and now, wildfires (the Badger Fire). My soul is getting stretched pretty thin.
  3. On the COVID lines, cases in my state and county (Oregon, Jackson) are on the rise. No worries; to save our small businesses. the local Chamber of Commerce convinced the town to close some streets and parking so al fresco dining can be expanded. I’ve not checked it out — and won’t — but observers are saying, no masks and no distancing there. Yes, businesses and officials are lip syncing the requirements but enforcement seems to amount to some brief tsk, tsk. Not reassuring.
  4. Had a follow up with my doc. Arm (xrays) looks good but remains in a sling. His wife is friends with my wife and related a brief tale. “I was with Glen when the ER doctor called. They said they had a broken arm. Glen told them they could set it. They replied, no, I’m not touching this. We’re sending you film. Glen took a look and said, I’m on my way. Glen called it quite deformed.”
  5. Six more weeks and my arm will be free again.
  6. I have my writing, though, but limited to one-handed typing. Writing with pen didn’t work as the splinted arm/hand combo failed to keep the notebook from sliding around. I also have time and coffee. Guess I’ll try to write like crazy, at least once more.
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Monday Minutiae

 

  1. Yeah, one hand ops suck. Challenges: opening yogurt containers, cat food tins and baggies, along with opening most screw-lid jars, buttons on shirts and shorts, and peeling bananas. Teeth work well for some reqs (like peeling bananas). Smaller food tins and yogurt cups are easier to open. Those child-resistant push-to-open med bottles are easiest to open; just put them upside down on a thick towel, apply pressure, and turn.
  2. The broken bones officialese: transverse fracture of distal radius metaphysis with volar displacement and angulation; oblique mildly-displaced fracture of distal ulna metaphysis. All I know is that no bones were supporting my hand, and it hurt.
  3. Curiously, my orthro surgeon sent me a four-page health questionnaire in the mail. They’re part of the same computerized system that provides the rest of my healthcare. Ran out of space in the part about injuries, illnesses, and hospital visits, and I only covered my adult years.
  4. Changed clothes today, first change since ‘the incident’. Did it by myself, earning a brief spousal admonishment. If I’d put as much thought and control in what I was doing when I had my accident, it probably would’ve been avoided.
  5. Drank coffee today, no meds since last P.M., and wrote one thousand words. Perhaps my coffee and writing connection is stronger than I credited it. One-handed typing is hard on my upper shoulders.
  6. Defended Christians today. I know some, and I’m related to some, and trust, love, and respect these people. Their politics happen to be like mine. Agewise, some are younger, but most are older. Just as I don’t accept that all police are uncaring killers, all scientists are unmitigated geniuses, or all politicians are unprincipled liars, there is no need (nor any good from it) to making empty and baseless declarations regarding ‘all’. Yes, that does present me with some problems with Trump supporters, and why/how (whow) they support him. I seriously believe they do some heavy lying to themselves and rationalizing, and suspect mental illness and emotional problems. I’m not being charitable to them with that broad statement, but given Trump’s behavior, failures, constant lying, and broken promises, I haven’t heard intelligent reasoning for their unwavering support except that they are white, privileged, racists.

That is all. Cheers

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Sundry Sunday

  1. Typing with one hand is a challenge. Fortunately, my right hand is dominant, and it’s okay. Also fortunately, this isn’t permanent. Tedious process, though. Seven hundred words a day is my current limit. Meanwhile, the muses are running amuck with story ideas. I considered (and haven’t discarded) the idea of writing with a pen in a notebook. Anything to keep the tales moving, hey?
  2. Haven’t been drinking coffee. First, wanted to rest and sleep. Second, read to avoid caffeine to promote healing broken bones. So, no coffee, no alcohol, and no chocolate. Had dropped the latter from my diet after I discovered what it does to my prostate. Thinking about drinking coffee tomorrow, as I’m weaning myself off the Percocet. Only had one Perc today, three yesterday. Four are prescribed.
  3. My walking has declined. Been spending most of my time abed. Reached eight thousand steps for the last three days, ten thousand on the last two. I have a long way to go.
  4. Poor spouse. She’s doing such a terrific job, doing everything, and complaining. This is my fifth trauma in our fifty years together (boyfriend and hubby). In order, cut off tip of my toe, mono, broken neck, dislocated wrist, and this. She should’ve vetted me better. In fairness, I had mono when stationed in the Philippines, and she wasn’t with me. One trauma a decade average; is that normal?
  5. The cats on that first night and morning were so sweet. I usually feed them. With daybreak, I asked my wife to do that, but the cats refused to go and eat. She brought the food in to them. Nope; they weren’t eating. Wasn’t till I got up a few hours later that they ate. Number one and two cat continued to stay with me through the day. Their loyalty and concern flatters me.
  6. I feel for the rest of America, enduring a heat wave. Our temps are brushing ninety in Ashland, quite bearable, as night temps fall into the mid-fifties.
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Sunday’s Theme Music

Reading about Florida setting a new record for COVID-19 cases, then a new record for deaths, then the urge to open Disney, and the demand that children return to school. Then there are many other matters churning my stomach and leaving me saying, “I can’t go for that.”

Fortunately, Hall & Oates’ song, “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)” (1981) covers it, making it today’s theme music.

 

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