I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t have survived success. Fame and fortune seems to have a terrible effect on some people, and I surely would have been one of them.

This may surprise some, but I was not a temperate person when I was younger. I had the restraint and judgment of a rabid cat. If there was any single thing that I did not do, it was because it was not offered. This was not a good attribute for a young musician in the sixties, a time when moderation was defined as maintaining consciousness.

I have known some very famous people, most of whom I met in the sixties when we were all young musicians. Some of them didn’t survive it. I wouldn’t say I have had any brushes with fame. Aside from a brief note in Downbeat magazine, a jazz periodical, I have managed to remain nearly invisible. I now find that it is my preferred state.

Why so many people are destroyed by fame is a difficult thing to puzzle out. Fame is probably what they had been striving for all along. I suppose that once having achieved it, the pressure to maintain it must be immense. I am not good with pressure. I freeze when asked if I want paper or plastic. Being required to produce an album every year would drive me right off the cliff.

It always feels like a judgment has been made when some poor person fails at success. I will read that they destroyed themselves or maybe that their demons ate them alive. I think that at each step, they took the only path open until there are finally no paths left. I don’t think we should be so hard on them when it was we who loved them to death. If you are ever momentarily stymied by the question, “paper of plastic?”, think what it would be like to try and hit a C6 every night. It is no wonder it killed her.

 

The town crier in my head can’t make up his mind. Waking me up at 2:00 AM to tell me all is well reminds me of being in the hospital, which is the worst place in the world to sleep. Yelling in a panic that the world is about to end on a quiet afternoon seems a bit of an overreaction. One would expect more of a commotion if that were true. So, I have become skeptical of the crier’s pronouncements and wonder how he got the job in the first place.

I may have promoted him from Little Voice in My Head. It was supposed to give hints about things such as Common Sense and self preservation. That one went missing some time ago. Self restraint is also absent, but I wouldn’t have promoted that one. I’ve been trying to shut it up for years. What a buzz kill.

The interpreter has never worked right. I never know what people are talking about. By the time I run through all the iterations of possible meanings, the next sentence has come and is worse because I haven’t puzzled out the context. Take the sentence, “Did you water the plants?” When? I watered the plants last month. All the plants? Cactus too? It isn’t something one can answer out of hand despite what concerned parties think. The answer, by the way, is always “no”.

The inner voice that knows what I want is stuck. I always want a beer, unless chocolate is available, and then I want both. It makes the question of “Where do you want to eat?” easier because I always want to eat some place with beer (and chocolate). I have memorized the list of things one shouldn’t say to doctors or officers, so I guess discretion is still working. Logic is over-active but unreliable. If one is over thinking things but is not thinking correctly, it just makes things worse. For example, over thinking “How are you?” leads to when are you, why are you, who are you, what are you, and where are you. Picking the wrong one to answer is bad.

The crier has been quieted by this last medication change. I am glad it has been, it was starting to get on my nerves. “Four PM and you are four feet tall” is not useful information. Unless the beer is on the top shelf of the fridge. It might be helpful if it were demoted to Common Sense because I really need someone there. Even somebody as loony as the crier would be better than nothing. “Nine AM and Benedict’s solution will stain the kitchen counter” would definitely be helpful information.

 

It took some doing, but mental order has been restored. It is a good thing because a disorderly mob had gathered at the gates and had begun to chant rather negative things. But, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine, all is well (mostly). I am going to go visit the psychiatrist tomorrow to get a read on just how well things are. I can be wrong about that sometimes.

It is rather a relief now that the world has been put back in proper perspective. It has been an interesting couple of months but I have returned to that blessed insentient state I thought I didn’t like. I was mistaken. The test to see if I could handle a bigger slice of reality bombed and I am back where I started, and darn glad of it. That was a frightful little trip.

(Flash forward 2 days)

As I have observed before, I am lucky. I am lucky to have an acknowledged expert in Bipolar Disorder as my doctor, and I am lucky to be able to see him almost immediately when I call. He must have my file flagged or something. Anyway, I saw him yesterday and the result was a new medication plan. It seems that my having the cognitive powers of a potted plant is not acceptable. It didn’t matter that I was OK with it because, as it turns out, potted plants always are. I was not disposed to argue the point at $300 per hour, so the motion stands.

I would not venture a guess and the number of medication changes I have had in the last 20 years. The most common outcome is that they don’t work quite as expected. One pill may make you bigger, and one may make you small, but they aren’t labeled correctly. The only thing to do is watch for trouble signs such as the dryer becoming chatty (it never has anything good to say), or the truck trying to drive itself (it is terrible at it). Then it is time to call the office. The conversation will go like this:

“Hello, this is Dave Gordon. Can I get in to see the doctor?”

“Is this an emergency?”

“Define emergency.”

“Can you come in tomorrow?”

I now regret having said anything about how I was feeling in the first place. If this latest change produces anything short of psychosis, I will report that things are just swell. The new pills are big so I guess they will make me bigger. Not too big, I hope. It is hard to dial the phone like that.


 

I don’t like to make unsupported assertions or cite something as fact when it is not. I like to be able to defend my statements with documented proof or by referencing acknowledged experts. It is in that spirit that I reference myself as an expert in Knowing the Difference when I say that it is a darned strange world you all have here.

I can say this definitively because during my brief visits, things are completely crazy. When some mishap causes me to lapse into reality, things are chaotic, disordered, and frenzied. My reaction to it is not all it could be and I have to sound a retreat. All I can do is thank God that the doctors recognize what a mess things are here and are quick to take action.

It has been a tough week. A combination of factors prompted me to call all of the doctors whose job it is to ensure my unfettered access to the outside world. Many people have trouble seeing their doctors. I’m lucky. All I have to do is tell them who I am and I have an appointment that same day. They have seen to my orderly retreat from reality and I am now viewing it from a comfortable distance.

As a provider of free advice (the best kind), I offer these items in hopes they aid my fellow refugees from reality:

Even though time and spatial dimensions are variable and somewhat unpredictable, gravity is not. If time and space have conspired to distort the stairs mid-step in your dissent, accept that you are going to fall. That part can’t be changed. What can be changed is how others react. Blame it on the cat or stepping on a tack. DO NOT blame it on the variable nature of time and space.

If you are enjoying a particularly energetic chaotic, disordered, and frenzied event and everything seems to recede into the distance, do not run to catch up. Especially if you are the cause of the energetic chaotic, disordered, and frenzied event. Don’t try blaming the cat or stepping on a tack. Stop, drop, and roll is probably as good as anything else so try that. Grabbing your big toe and yelling in pain might help.

Once you have been relieved of reality, apologize to everyone including the cat. Don’t be too specific. Promise that you will call the doctor the moment things become chaotic, disordered, and frenzied. Don’t call every day. Finally, if things recede into the distance, just let them go. Reality is best viewed from a distance anyway.

 

I am not an incompetent person generally speaking. There are things I don’t do very well, such as speak or think, but I am OK with shopping, paying bills, or handyman chores. This last statement requires a generous interpretation on “OK”, but with the exception of a couple of operations I have done OK with them. The one notable exception to my claim of competency is preparing tax returns.

I have never done one correctly that I can confirm. I have come close a few times. The state of Oregon reviewed a return in the 90’s and found an error. They sent me a check for $2.00. I know that return was pretty close. The rest, who knows? The obvious question is to ask why I don’t have them prepared by a professional. I am cheap, that’s why.

I never knowingly fudge (otherwise known as “lie”) on taxes. I don’t mind paying them even though it is painful at times. I think I get some nifty stuff for it such as pretty nice roads and an army. I disagree with how a lot of it is used, but I firmly and adamantly believe that I could not do better. I have trouble operating an ATM, I think the defense budget is out of my reach.

I finally received all the documents I needed to do our tax returns a few days ago. My guess of what we will either get back or have to pay is never right, or even close. I try to prepare emotionally for having to pay an additional $1,000 before I start in order to alleviate the extreme despondency which upsets my wife so much. I do the taxes as early as possible so that I can have more time to imagine a world in which we can produce $1,000 in order to pay them.

Preparing the taxes electronically has been a good thing for me. Having an electronic head master to rap my knuckles with a ruler when I enter a ridicules figure is great. And, it has made me hope I get audited.

It was only two days ago the head master informed me that if I owned property, as I had said I did, then I probably paid property taxes, which I said I had not. This will seem incredibly stupid to people who do not know me or entirely understandable to people who do, but in my mind I did not pay the property taxes, the mortgage company did.

As a result, we will be not paying $1,000. It also explains why some years we do and some years we don’t. I now firmly believe that I have overpaid taxes for a number of years. It has reduced my fear of being audited greatly. The mitigating factor is that I do not know what other ludicrous errors I may have made, so I am not going to request one.

Be that as it may, I have accomplished another tax season with no hospitalizations or disturbances in marital relations so I am declaring victory. I hope I get the same head master next year, I like him.

 

It is hard to kill something on the internet. I thought I killed a blog over on Blogger.com but was mistaken. There are still hits on it so I guess I will leave it there. It isn’t any different than this one, really. I can’t remember why I switched. I remember there was a reason, but that is all. That is pretty good by my standards.

I had some visitors from the Balkins recently. That is interesting to me because that is the only region in which my writing achieved any popularity. I wonder if they went looking for me because of having read one of my Ebooks?

I bring this up because I was in the news lately (along with a few thousand others). I am an author with published copyrighted works that have been pirated and distributed illegally on the internet. To this I say: What? You didn’t know that would happen when you published on the internet?

One of the pieces is available for purchase on the Franklin Publishing site, which is primarily an educational materials distributor. Of all the superlatives I would use to describe the piece, which range from “OK” to “Sort of OK”, educational only applies in the “Don’t Do This” sense. I hope they make more money with it than I did because it wasn’t much.

Some time ago a person somewhere in the world bought 242 science fiction Ebooks from Fictionwise. Then they bundled them up with a glowing recommendation for all and cast it out to the BitTorrent community. Two of my pieces are in the file. Search for 242 Science Fiction Ebooks for an idea of the distribution.

Well, that is my tale of success. I am thinking about buying the Mobi/Kindle version from an Irish Ebay seller. I might do a post on the Blogger site thanking people for caring enough to bother looking. Maybe I will list the file on Ebay myself. Then I could be both the pirator and the piratee. On Talk Like a Pirate Day (9/19), I will mark my accomplishments as a pirate with a rant in Piratese. I probably won’t remember why I am ranting like a pirate, but I will probably remember that there was a reason. That’s good enough.

 

It is funny how much a little encouragement can help. I’m not talking about things such as “This will make you feel better”, or “This will help calm you down”. I’m talking about nice words from a stranger (who isn’t holding a suture and a syringe of Lidocaine). It was a very nice note.

It helped because I need it. There is an event approaching such as many have come to call a perfect storm. I feel an analogy of the movie The Dark Crystal is more appropriate. In the movie, three suns converge to initiate a world changing event.

The three suns in my world are a medication change that appears to have been ineffective, my inability to recall my Social Security number, and a change in our domestic situation which is going to increase the number of short people by 200% (from zero to two). (Based on the notion that a 100% reduction of the number one is zero. Questionable, but that describes me in toto.)

My doctor has often cautioned me about not taking the medications he prescribes. He says that once stopped, they might not work the same, or at all, once started once again. I have the feeling that might be the case with this latest change. I live in fear of medication weirdness because the fact that I am not currently housed in a very calming place that doesn’t serve beer indicates that the meds are working well enough.

My inability to recall my SSN is quite disturbing. For all of my other cognitive issues, I have had a very good memory for numbers and things I have read. Most of it is useless information, such as the atomic weight of hydrogen and chapter nine of the Fortran 77 manual, but the ability is sometimes useful. Having it called into question is unsettling. The Strategies for Avoiding Hospitalization section of Don’t Do This specifically requires one to know their address, phone number, and birthday. I had better write them down and put them in my wallet.

Lastly, my daughter and her seven and nine-year old daughters are in transition and are going to be living with us for a time. We have enough room and it is a very good thing she is coming. However, I am concerned about what I can only describe as my worsening disorientation and tenuous stability. I need to review Self Medication Do’s and Don’ts and Recognizing Hallucinations (hint - they always agree with you). I am committed to making this work because if it doesn’t, I will be committed. First up, a pre-emptive doctor appointment. It would be better if he heard it from me than the ER.

 

It has been a lousy week. Things have gone from “don’t do this” to “can’t do that”. I am in the middle of what seems like a very long and drawn out recovery from what I regarded as a minor affair. The surgeon regarded it as a much less minor affair and told my wife, who had insisted she come, that it was a “very large” hernia. I could have easily done without him saying that. My wife has interpreted his instructions in an unreasonably conservative way. This is why you don’t take your spouse to doctor appointments.

To make matters worse, I have flunked Reality 301. Almost exactly two months ago, I was told I could lower the dosage of a particular medication after complaining of an inability to think. It is a known side effect of this medication and I was tired of it. It became apparent why I had been rendered thoughtless in the first place so now I am back where I was before. I enjoyed my brief taste of lucidity but I am just not cut out for it. I was scaring people.

So now I am readjusting to being dull and casting about for things I can do while restricted to doing nothing. I am just not very upbeat about it and that might explain the lack of funny occurrences. I am going to wait for something funny to happen, or anything else that is not depressing for that matter, before writing again.

Until then I will be cataloguing the Don’t Do This mistakes I committed during my brief visit to reality, which were many and flagrant, in hopes I can do better the next time. Being given another try would require extreme memory loss in people who don’t usually forget anything, but I want to be prepared just in case. First up: Things to not do while spouse and grand children are in the car. Just the heading should give you an idea of what I am up against. Reality is a lot trickier than it appears from the outside.

 

I’m a mountaineer. I didn’t realize it, which seems a little odd because I think most mountaineers do, but it is still a fine thing to be. I feel I am in the company of Sir Edmund Hillary and George Mallory. I think I can smoke a pipe at parties now and not get yelled at. I can say Deep Things like, “the mountain is a cold mistress”, and “death is forever one bad step away”. Best of all, when people ask what I do, I can tell them I am a mountaineer.

It all came up rather suddenly. I was putting on my hiking boots when I noticed a problem. These are not cheap boots. These are, in fact, the MOST expensive boots in the COOLEST outdoor shop in a town of VERY cool people. I have bought more than one car for less than I spent on these boots.

I bought these boots a couple of years ago and they are simply great. But, I looked at them as I pulled them on and there was a deep crack in the sole running from side to side under the ball of my foot. The other boot was the same. I was horrified!

I went back to the store today to ask about it. They took pictures and emailed them to the factory to see if it is a warranty issue. They asked me what kind of hiking I did. I told them that I sometimes hiked very steep ground and traveled cross-country a lot. They asked if I walked in slash or rocks. I confessed that I did. They wanted to know if I walked straight up steep hills or if I walked side slope. I didn’t ask them what kind of feeble sissy walks sideways across a moiuntain when they want to go up, but all I said was that I went up.

This is how I came to be a mountaineer. Come to find out, hiking boots are made for hiking, which is what I thought I did, but was mistaken. Hiking is where you take a step and your whole foot contacts the trail. When you are going straight up a steep slope using only the toe of your boot, that is mountaineering. They said what I needed are mountaineering boots.

I have a difficult time convincing my wife that I am walking in a responsible manner. I don’t help my own case much by returning in the shape that I often do. It is important for her peace of mind to know that even if I am going stupid places and doing stupid things, at least I am doing it within the bounds of hiking. She is not going to like the mountaineering thing. It will add credence to what she already suspects. I am going to need some time to figure out how to put it so that I can actually go out and mountaineer. And I need to buy a pipe.

 

I have a problem with January. The months leading up to it are too busy to be morose. The months following have at least some hint of spring. Even February is better because the buzzards return, the robins show up, and the days start becoming noticeably longer. Everything beyond January is just dandy. January is not.

This Monday, Blue Monday as it is called, is acknowledged as being the most depressing day of the year. The reasons cited are what you would expect, bills, lousy weather, Christmas candy withdrawal, the lack of any prospect for a monstrously high calorie meal until Easter, it is easy to justify the assertion.

Sometimes various cures are offered. They too are what you would expect. Avoid liquid and chemical diversions, drink a lot of water, eat well, extricate yourself from the mountain of potato chip bags and beer containers that has piled up since New Years and go out to be with people (bathe first). To this should added “spend more time with your unicorn and think happy, happy thoughts” because they are just as likely to happen as any of the above.

As I have previously mentioned, I do not handle boredom well. Neither do I handle depression particularly well. Casting about for anything to do while bits and snatches of Edgar Allen Poe drift through one’s head is not a good mix. When added to all the other cures for January which are not good mixes, it becomes substantially worse than “blue”.

After the search for your unicorn has been called off and you can’t get that damned Lenore out of your head, here are some things you might want to remember:

It is dark inside. It is light outside, but it is cold. A nice, cheery fire is the obvious fix. Do not burn anything that cannot be repaired or hidden such as car paint, major structures, skin, or clothing. Use accelerants with caution (gasoline balloons are safer then pouring straight from the can).

Basic safety – Throw the breaker, turn off the water, put down a cover cloth, wear long sleeves, don’t tease your unicorn, and leave plenty of time for evidence mitigation.

Instead of going for happy, happy thoughts, shoot for no thoughts at all.

Avoid shooting.

There is ample evidence that January can be survived, even if not happily. The goal is to survive it well with a minimal amount of damage. On Blue Monday, don’t concentrate on there only being eight days until February. The words “only” and “eight days” do not go together in January. Consider instead that there are at least 300 days without Christmas music ahead. Think of the upbeat Emmylou Harris song where she proclaims, “it’s alright because it’s midnight and I have two more bottles of wine”. Caution - stock up first or it won’t work.

 

A fun thing happened. Besides having a record flood, which was fun as well, but this was more comfortable. A friend asked me to write a piece for their widely distributed newsletter. It illustrates how desperate for contributors she must be because she is familiar with my writing and surely must know what will follow. Her instructions were clear as to subject, but she left the rest up to me.

I haven’t tried to write anything lucid for years. I am not convinced that I was ever capable of it at all. I would not choose to try in any event, so it doesn’t really matter. The point is, this is as good as it is likely to get.

My strong suit is doing something stupid and then writing about it. The subject of the piece I am working on is “Leave no trace”, which is key to preserving National Parks. I am a big adherent of the philosophy and feel strongly about it. But, the case remains that I often perform this advocacy while in physical danger. The two are not irreconcilable, but perhaps you can see the difficulty.



This is a Lime-Green Waxy Cap (Hygrocybe virescens). It is quite uncommon. My discovery of this individual led the eventual discovery of several more by people acting upon my observation. I saw it while looking down. I am well-practiced at looking down because you can’t walk 20 steps in any direction in this country without tripping. I have decided to write about that.

I took the image above in the rain while lying prone on a sponge-like bed of redwood forest ground cover. This is a common occurrence. I am perpetually soaking wet in forty degree weather. One must remain cognizant in this situation because it is hazardous, and I do not. This leads to more writing material.



This is a common Scarlet Waxy Cap. I took that image in the rain while lying prone on a sponge-like bed of redwood forest ground cover clinging to a fern covered cliff. This is a common occurrence as well.

I was very careful to avoid damaging the hillside or the vegetation in both cases, and I guess that is what I will write about: How to avoid being killed and leave no trace doing it. I’m not going to think about it too hard because that would also a futile effort. I guess this is a “fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly” situation. I can’t be anything other than what I am (I take medication for that). I guess I will write a piece in my usual manner, edit out most of the idiocy, and see whether or not there is anything left. My guess is not.

 

Today marks the return to normalcy (if you can call it that). I went to the surgeon yesterday and he gave me a green light. As I expected, my wife listed the exceptions and the doctor agreed to them, so I won’t be doing anything that is too much fun.

He felt obliged to go into more detail than I would have liked. He said that it was “a very large hernia”. That later elicited the comment that if I had any sense, I would go to the doctor before a problem became a world-class problem. I wanted to tell her that if I had flying monkeys, I would be the wicked witch of the west, which is just as likely. At least I had enough sense to avoid doing that.

She has left for work and I am considering the greatly expanded list of things I can do. A walk is certainly on the list for today. In the spirit of being a conscientious patient, I am gathering information on what is recommended for my situation.

Herniaonline.com says to “hike sensibly”. No problem. Dr. Simon Dodds says, “Common sense tells you that a good diet, plenty of rest and a sensible amount of exercise will allow the natural healing process do its job properly.” Check. Stomadata.com cautions that, “exercise with a hernia repair is potentially a venture into uncharted territory, and as already explained, must be undertaken with unremitting caution.” Got it.

Hiking sensibly employing common sense with unremitting caution. If they had added “keep broomstick free of splinters”, it would be me all over. I feel liberated, free to enjoy the forest, and only somewhat dismayed at the sloppy snow on the ground and temperatures in the low thirties. I don’t feel the weather falls outside the bounds as I will use unremitting caution while hiking sensibly in it. I will have to wait until later to find out if I had used common sense, that is always a hard one.

 

Being required to do nothing is no fun. The difficulty is that “nothing” is very restrictive. I can work with terms such as “moderate exercise”, or “light lifting”, but my wife is well acquainted with my work and listens for phrases such as those. When a doctor is giving instructions such as “moderate exercise”, she stops him and has him rephrase the statement. Then I end up with something like “non-aerobic, low-impact, weights under two pounds, duration less than twenty minutes, walking less than 1 mile”. I can’t work with that.

Some people desperately need inactivity. God bless mothers of young children. Myself, I don’t know how the majority of children achieve adulthood without being strangled by their mothers. It is a testament to the superior nature of women that the race survives at all. They deserve periods when they can do absolutely nothing.

I know a number of men who can sit through an entire game of football, or worse yet, baseball. I honestly don’t know how (or why) they do it. When it comes to sporting events, I prefer something slightly humorous such as curling or synchronized swimming. One where the skill and abilities of the athletes may be admired and still produces a chuckle or two.

I am not very good at vacationing. I have seen people lying on a beach while a tropical ocean is just feet away. Why anyone would lie around on a hot, sandy beach when they could be out exploring a reef or enjoying a slight risk of serious injury is beyond me.

I was snorkeling in the Ahihi Kinau Natural Area Reserve on Maui. I was frustrated because there wasn’t any safe place to get in the water (that wasn’t covered with people). I picked the best place I could find and tried with some success to avoid getting pummeled. After just a few minutes I decided I had crossed the line separating dangerous from crazy. As I was trying to thread my way back through the coral, a needle fish swam by right in front of me. The needlefish appears on the Dangerous and Venomous Ocean Organisms list. When I got out, I was bleeding from being bounced across the coral, I had urchin spines in my fingertips, and I was shaking from what could have been a fatal encounter. Now THAT is fun, lying on a beach is not.

My wife is escorting me to the doctor’s office for a follow-up appointment on Monday. I will report that I can’t remember ever having felt better. My wife will interpret that for the doctor stressing the importance of the word “remember”. The doctor will finish with a new set of instructions. If I am lucky, my wife will be daydreaming and I will get something I can work with.

 

Today is Friday the 13th, and it is my lucky day. I tell people I adopted it as my lucky day because there was almost no demand for it. I do it just to see if I can get a reaction; the truth is I don’t believe that it is different than any other day. It is Ji-Yin(Tiger) (12th month), 20, 4709 on the Chinese calendar and there is nothing cited about it being unlucky.

I would make the claim that I am not very superstitious, but that is probably not true. I say that because there are most likely a few things tucked away that were planted there a long time ago and forgotten.

My mother, whose mother was Apache, used to freak out when she heard an owl in the day time. Consequently, I get nervous when I hear one also. I discount it, but that is reason speaking to a superstition that already exists. That is different than not having the superstition at all.

Some people would say that believing in ghosts is superstitious, but they haven’t lived with one. We did for several years. I didn’t either before that. The experience made me wonder about all the other things I didn’t believe. Bigfoot, alien encounters, conspiracy theories, the question remains – what the hell do I know?

There is one very notable thing that I count as superstitious, but I don’t talk about it to people I don’t know well. To those many people who share this superstition, I would say you are well entitled to believe anything you like. I would ask, however, that you leave me out of it and not cite the documentation as a justification for doing some pretty abhorrent things.

This being my lucky day, it is a good time to try out some risky things that I might not do on a day of low to moderate luck. I might try turning chop sticks on my lathe, something which would require extreme luck as turning long skinny things is very difficult. Tuning my piano requires a good deal of luck because I don’t posses the skill and I rely on luck to get it right.

I may go out and look for Bigfoot and aliens because it would certainly require quite a bit of luck to find them. I suppose one could take the view that not finding them would better. Alright then, I am going to go out and NOT find Bigfoot or aliens because this is my lucky day.


 

I am making headway on my recovery. I solved the coughing problem mentioned in the previous post with a baking project. Quality testing resulted in a 3-hour nap. I think a more conservative set of metrics is required. I will try again later.

The east wind is supposed to blow today. That direction is away from the power lines so a home made kite is in order. I’m glad I saved all those old fishing poles, they will work great for kite frames. I have 2,000 feet of draw string used for pulling computer cables through conduit. It has a tensile strength of 250 pounds(!) That should handle it.

A web search of rubber band powered paper airplanes turned up a number of possibilities. A rubber band powered helicopter is “doable”. I also have surgical tubing, which shouldn’t come as a surprise considering my history. Surgical tubing is a rubber band on steroids. I could construct a “high lift” version of the airplane but it would require some shop work so caution will be required. That puts it on the “B” list.

I have a bunch of electrical components. There are an assortment of LEDs, resisters, capacitors, printed circuit board blanks, and miscellanea. Working with electricity will completely eradicate any trace of boredom and replace it with apprehension. I might try building my own LED light bulb. It would be great if I could put it into a glass vessel so it looked a bit more like a light bulb. My wife is not going to approve of any do-it-yourself electrical appliances if the past holds true.

That should pretty much take care of today. I’ll work on ideas for tomorrow after quality testing is underway.

 

I am very lucky in that I heal quickly. I felt terrible the day of the operation and the next. I was able to stretch out the time between medication on Sunday, and on Monday I got up and made my wife lunch. Today I feel about the same as I would have after an excessive hike. That means I have 5 ½ weeks of feeling fine while being limited to doing almost nothing.

I make a very bad bored person. I have enough trouble with the noise in my head without sitting around waiting for it to take over. I feel compelled to get up and do something. The trouble is that my wife has long since lost her sense of humor regarding my medical condition. If I so much as rip one stitch, I may be told to leave forthwith because while it is inappropriate to beat injured people, you can sure as hell kick them out. That leaves me in the familiar position of considering what things I might do without risking homelessness.

I could burn things. It is a nasty cold and foggy day, which is a good thing or walking might make the list. A nice bonfire would cheer things up. If I burned only those things that fall within the absurdly restrictive weight lifting limitations I am under, that would kill a couple of hours nicely.

I could work in the shop. I went down there yesterday for a test run and made it back out OK. Surely there is some little thing I can fix. I came across and entry for Don’t Do This while I was down there: After having abdominal surgery, don’t do anything that will make you cough even if it seems like a good way to relieve boredom.

My options are limited because my daughter took my truck and hasn’t returned it. I think her mother put her up to it. I didn’t ask the doctor specifically about driving, but I found a web site that says it isn’t wise to drive for a week after the surgery. I take that as an “OK”, with the proviso in that it isn’t wise. I am profoundly experienced with being unwise so I feel safe in doing it. The site cautioned that pedal pressure is the issue and I seldom use the brakes on the dirt road anyway.

Whatever I come up with must appear safe. So far, the acceptable activities have been limited to, “none”. I am committed to not putting my wife in the position of having to make her own lunch and negotiate meal times with the dogs after having thrown me out, so a conservative approach is warranted (if not likely). On the plus side, I have plenty of time to think about it. That is a big part of the problem.

 

I am resting in relative comfort and consciousness after another visit to see my friends in the OR. It was a minor affair, but the festivities took place near a very delicate area. Consequently, I am putting ice packs where I would never have chosen to and having a good deal of trouble sitting down. Other than that and a few other minor objections, I am fine.

I honestly think that surgery is the least amount of fun you can have. In fact, I recommend you avoid it if you can. I don’t seem to be able to, but after 15 years of it, I am resigned to having some kind of surgery every 16 months. Remembering pain doesn’t cause pain, happily, so I will be left with nothing more than some unpleasant memories pretty soon.

There is a problem area that I continually struggle with. If an idle mind is the devil’s playground then mine is an amusement park. Surgical recoveries are a boring affair. Additionally, they are accomplished in a less than sober manner. When one has the restraint and judgment of a rabid cat, this is a recipe for trouble.

My wife goes back to work tomorrow. I have fully explored every entertainment opportunity available on the ground floor of our house. That leaves the upstairs and my shop. I would describe my ambulatory abilities at present as “poor”. Projecting the trajectory of my recovery along with abilities needed to climb the stairs or descend into the basement is going to be challenging as mistakes only come to light after they are committed. I can tell you from experience that being stuck in the basement is bad.

I have had a lot of time to develop the skills required to recover from a surgery. I am getting better at it as time goes along. Maybe I can get through this one without falling.

 

I have a surgery tomorrow morning. Nothing huge, just a hernia repair. I have my own scale for measuring how bad a surgery is. I think the hernia is going to be a 2 on the Richter Scale of Surgeries, which is not bad. If I don’t hurt myself at least that badly during any month, it is a good month.

I have had a lot of experience in the surgery game and I have become a bit complacent about it. The first 6 or 8 are troubling, but it becomes routine after that. When I went to the general surgeon’s office, they remembered me because he had removed my gall bladder two years prior. After consulting the doctor and catching up, the surgical coordinator handed me a wad of papers and sent me on my way.

Then came Christmas. With all the Christmas activities and the medication change I had just made, I forgot to check the wad of papers the woman in the office had given me until last Monday night. The instructions said to get a blood test by 12/23.

I got the blood test (and an EKG they hadn’t mentioned) the next day. I called the office to report my lapse. The nurse said that the surgery might have to be cancelled because it was too late to get the results. I apologized profusely and told her I would call her today to see if it was a go.

She called me today to change the check in time to later in the morning. When I asked her about the EKG, it jogged her memory and she said she would call back when she found out if the surgery was still on. She called back in a couple of minutes and said that they didn’t have the test results, but would proceed with the surgery anyway because they have a lot of historical data on me.

I am conflicted. I am very happy about being able to have the surgery, which I really need, but it is pathetic that I have done this so much that they don’t even need to test me anymore. I probably won’t have to do anything the next time (and history suggests there will be a next time). I will check in the day of the surgery, put on a gown, draw an X where they should cut, and attach a sticky note saying to call my wife when it is over. I wonder if they have a frequent flyer program?

 

I don’t know about this last medication change. The jury is still out, and that is part of the problem. They can’t be found. They have become disoriented and are wandering around unable to form a consensus.

As a group, they are becoming unstable. Some are longing for the good old days, which isn’t rational because there weren’t that many. Several are trying to manage things but they don’t agree on how. Others are considering what methods might be employed to reduce the building anxiety. There are a lot of options, but none are sanctioned by anyone except the less restrained members of the jury. They are an influential group, however, and are ready to step up in a moment’s notice.

There is some fool in the back of the room ranting about God knows what. Twelve Angry Men is a great movie, but not one you want playing out inside your head. It takes a lot of effort to get them to calm down. Maybe if there was a woman on the jury it might help, but the only one nearby is hardly impartial. She has weighed in with opinions anyway and they haven’t been entirely positive.

I am close to declaring a mistrial and returning to the doctor to confess. I am going to wait until after the upcoming hernia operation to see if things level out after that. This hasn’t been a good time to form an opinion. Evaluating something as tricky as a medication change during the holidays while looking forward to yet another operation (11 in 14 years) won’t produce reliable results.

Waiting until after the operation is a tough call because things will get worse, at least temporarily. Speaking from no small amount of experience, I can tell you that recovering from an operation while less than stable is not something you should try at home. Severe pain is not a stabilizing influence. You might want to pencil that in as a margin note in your copy of Don’t Do This.

On the plus side, having the restraint and judgment of a rabid cat is less disruptive when one can’t move well. The most optimistic of the jury believes the enforced down time might have a calming effect. I’m hoping all the jurors can be rounded up later in the month and that they will produce a verdict that is coherent enough for the doctor to understand. Otherwise, the twelve lunatics on the jury will be expelled and replaced by another dozen, and God only knows what they will do.

 

I love those “year in review” pieces that are run at the end of the year. They are always full of surprises for me. My wife gets frustrated at my almost complete memory loss regarding the prior year, but I forget those episodes just shortly after they happen also. I remember bits and snatches of events, but to say I remember them is stretching it.

I have good, honest excuses for my terrible memory. First, I am crazy. Being crazy isn’t known for its beneficial effects regarding memory. Secondly, the remedies for the above would be better suited for creating zombies than improving memory. Thirdly, I have had ten operations. I had one this year, one the year before that, and one coming up in a week. Some were minor, others were notably less so, but all required general anesthesia. Also not known for its restorative effects.

As a person who remembers virtually nothing except what they read, I feel I am well qualified to offer some valuable free advice (the best advice) for living without the benefit of memory.

1) You have nothing to lose by trying to fake it. Your spouse already knows all about your regrettable mental condition so they won’t be surprised if you are wrong.

2) Try saying, “I remember like it was yesterday” without adding that you don’t remember that either.

3) Buy a nice gift suitable for birthdays and anniversaries and keep it hidden until that inevitable day when you forget one or the other. Try to remember that you have it and where you put it.

4) If you find yourself in a room and don’t remember how or why, go to the kitchen and grab a snack. That is probably where you were going anyway.

5) When you hide things, you are hiding them from yourself. Make it easy on yourself and put them in an obvious place. If it actually needs to be hidden, give it to a younger friend and ask them to remind you in a few weeks.

Forgetting some things is normal, having a really bad memory is not uncommon, but there are a few things that transcend forgetfulness. Not remembering how you came to be in the living room is one thing. Not remembering how you came to be in Toronto is another. Forgetting your neighbor’s name is embarrassing. Forgetting your own is worse. If you find you have inadvertently driven to the next town, go to a restaurant. They won’t be serving very good food where you are going next.