I've Fallen and I Can (and Will) Get Up

Hello Fellow Travelers!

My faith in the laws of physics was partially restored today.  I fell down which is not restorative or particularly unusual for me.  Why this fall was remarkable is how I landed - with virtually no impact.  A neurologist said it best for me, "You have lost your place in space."  Every day I've been trying to retrain my brain to work around the damaged area (neuroplasticity).  I don't know how to calculate the progress of neuroplasticity.  I can, however, assess the inevitable result of daily 2 hour trips to the gym combined with an increasing difficulty in consuming calories.

What has evolved is the way I'm falling.  As long as my place in space is gone (in my brain anyway) I will continue to fall over periodically.  For those of you not familiar with frequent falls (and there is no earthly reason why anyone normal would be) they are unexpected, painful and really fast.  It can happen anywhere I was sitting on a stable surface with my patient spouse right next to me and I fell off - fast.

Before my spouse could react and inquire whether or not I was alright, I was up and seated again.  I landed not on my head or even my tailbone but on my hands!  There was no impact because I could control my musculature as I fell.  I am expending many more calories than I'm taking in.  So I'm slowly losing weight.  More permanently, I believe.  I've been working out rehabbing daily and for the first time I have tangible, measurable results.  Not falling would be optimal.  If I'm going to fall, however, I want to bounce up and back with no effect.  One small log off the Bonfire O' Stress!

It is the law of physics (I think) that has allowed me to start reaching my goals and shrink the old Bonfire down a bit.  I have a long list of things to fix   It is a little gratifying to see some laws are well, law.Since it seems I will live on I'm going to be really tickled (in a very grim kind of way) any time I see any causal relationship's result no matter how predictable or small.  So yes, you will have to hear about it.

More Crap My Mother Sends Me

Hello Fellow Travelers!

I was having a really difficult  time thinking of something to.write about and then, like a little manna from Heaven itself, a package arrived from Arizona.  And not just any old package, no sirree Bob, but a box from my mother. Always something included guaranteed to amaze and amuse and this box was no exception.  To be fair to my mom, she has sent me many lovely things and many practical items and when I'm really specific she has sent whatever I specified. My mother also keeps us awash in periodicals which saved me when all the words were still floating around and I could only look at pictures in magazines. I "told" my mother very specifically what I needed and she and my father procured exactly that.

Lately, I e-mail her and she writes to me.  We have hilariously frustrating phone conversations because I can't speak and she can't hear.  So I open this box from my mother and there are many interesting items including several edibles.  The two types of cookies she sent me weren't just store-bought - they were really low-grade store-bought.  OK, so she doesn't like to bake, I get it.  But that wasn't the funniest thing. My patient spouse and patient-for-a-12 year-old son opened the box, sorted it out, looking for anything chocolate (there wasn't any, I don't like chocolate, but that's a separate story) and in the "sorting" process they pulled out and threw away a sandwich bag that looked empty.  I saw handwriting on the Ziploc bag and  saved it for closer inspection.  The ziploc bag had a reddish hue with a Sharpie notation detailing that the contents of the bag had something to do with Jed Clampett, her newest cat. Yes, my mom sent me - wait for it - Cat Fur! Clipped! Off an actual cat! Just what I needed, more cat fur.

Does my mother think that shaving an orange cat is a better use of her time than baking?  Did she think that a photograph just didn't do him justice?  So she sends her daughter who can't walk or talk a partially filled bag of cat fur!  That's as funny as the "wanted" flyer she inexplicably sent me. Funnier. What was she thinking?  Is there now a cat in AZ that has a huge bald spot?  What am I supposed to do with the fur anyhow?  Send it back?  Glue it to my spouse's head?  What?  It just poses so many questions on so many levels.  What did Jed do when he "donated" the fur?  Should I save it for DNA analysis in the future?  Am I supposed to save it for laughs?  My mom spent over $10.00 to mail about $5.00 of stuff, although, to be fair, kitty fur weighs almost nothing.

My mother sent me the gift that keeps on giving - again.  What discussion preceded the inclusion of the bag o'hair?  "Take out some homemade cookies and make sure there's room for this bag o' fur!"  Or "Don't tape up that box until I put a baggie of Jed's fur in it."  Jed, of course, refers to "Jed Clampett"  of the "Beverly Hillbillies."  My parents have always had a special talent for pet naming.  Before "Jed" there were "Fester", "Quincy", "Ralph", "Frank", "Molly" and "Turbo" to name a few. And that was just some of the cats.   I remember a "Susie Junior", was there a "Susie Senior"?  No.  That would be weird.

PS - Have you ever noticed you never see Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Javier Bardem in the same place at the same time?  Coincidence?  Or conspiracy?  I'm just sayin'...

Fun? Adventures Never Claimed to be "Fun"! I'll have "fun" in My Next Life!

Hello Fellow Travelers!

I've previously mentioned why I start out every blog with the same salutation.  Everyone above ground is on a personal journey of some sort.  I can't speak to all those who have gone on because I have never heard from any soul that has departed.  Maybe this is just the start of the adventure, there's a scary thought.  I'm already exhausted!  Or maybe our bodies just keep decaying until one day we simply stop operating and are dead.  That's it.  No white light to go into no pit to fall into - just dead.  An even scarier thought for me, anyway.  Anyhooo, until I take "the big dirt nap" (I love that expression, it says it all for me) I'm on a "big" adventure.  It is not fun, it is really interesting and dangerous.  I was taught from an early age that the nature of "adventures" is that they are dangerous and life-changing, not fun.  I cut my teeth on Greek Mythology and I can recite entire passages from The Iliad and The Odyssey - those were adventures! They weren't fun!  Both The Iliad and The Odyssey took ten years each so it took Odysseus 20 years to fight the Trojan War and come home.  I remember all kinds of bizarre challenges and daily, excruciating, pain but not a lot of fun.

Well maybe Zeus had fun, he never seemed to get into trouble.  Zeus was always tricking human women into having sex with him and his jealous wife took out her goddess-vengeance on the mortal girls.  They never came out and said it, but you got the distinct impression that these extremely attractive human females were not the sharpest pencils in the desk.  So not only do these dim-witted beauties get raped by a giant swan or something equally strange then they are sentenced to some horrible, permanent punishment that only a goddess could invent.

What about Grimms Fairy Tales?  The real ones that always put the Stepmother in a nail-studded barrel at the end.  That's their idea of a happy ending and yours too when you heard the tale!   You thought the evil stepmother should be placed in a  nail-studded barrel, naked, and dragged down the street by two draught horses until she was dead.  Aye Carramba!  No fun there, either.  Not fun for The Prince (whoever), the princess/baker/seamstress/whatever, nobody exclaims in delight or bubbles over with joy along the way.

I don't expect fun on my personal journey.  I'm happy with interesting!  I'm happy to still be on the freakin' journey at this point!  If adventures were fun they would be called something else not adventures, (like Uncle Walt's Happy Fun Place with Bubbles and Glitter).  OK?  I'm on a personal adventure and it sucks!  I'm in an adventure that has been alternately terrifying and hysterical.  I'm going to look back on this last two year adventure and what it's done to me and learn from it.  I've learned a lot I hope I get to use that knowledge in the future.

Baseball has been Berry, Berry Good to Me!

Hello Fellow Travelers!

Today's title refers a very old SNL bit that I would be very surprised anyone born after 1970 would get.  During this long convalescence, I have been very heartened to learn that many things that I saw and didn't purchase are now priced-to-sell online.  All kinds of things are on sale!  I'll get to that later, right now my mind is on baseball and it's universal appeal amongst men.  I know there are women who know as much about the sport but I don't know them so I don't know if they possess that multitude of facts and stats at a glance that for some reason are seared into the memory of a lot of men.

I have a weird proclivity for retaining pop culture factoids which is only surpassed by my near photographic recall of old movies and who played what  in which film.  I have no idea how to apply this knowledge to anything lucrative.  Except for the occasional  trivia question, I don't have any use for any of this information.  Yet it continues to lodge in my brain without fail.  Who broke up with whom and who went on to star in what movie last fall?  You don't admire the person with that knowledge they're just weird!  Jan knows!  She has no earthly reason why she knows but she really does know.

Baseball and the history of baseball, season after season my father, my best friend's father, my spouse's father and his brothers can speak intelligently  about any inning of any playoff game in any year!  And that doesn't even address their vast familiarity with picks, careers, trades, injuries for their team and other teams in the league!  They all see this knowledge as no big deal, just part of the "Man-Mantle" or something.

Baseball is also a universal language.  Any man can talk to another about baseball.  Age, country, circumstance don't matter when the "game" inevitably comes up.  It's a safe topic, it's thoroughly male and  100% American!  The great thing is you don't have to be American to talk to total strangers about baseball.  I was forced initially to watch a few ballgames here and there.  After awhile I relied on the Giants and the mellifluous voices of the radio broadcasters.  I confess my knowledge of baseball is pretty thin.  I'm not a "Gamer Babe", and I'm not really sure what a "Gamer Babe" is except she seems to always be attached to a "Gamer Dude".  The fact that our team's post season went on forever (seemingly) was great for me.  Especially those playoff games where the Giants barely squeaked by.  They seemed to win in spite of themselves, I could relate to that.

I don't speak Baseball yet but I have discovered something that looks deceptively simple but is, in fact, as complicated as anything in life.  One feature of my condition is I cannot speak which is inconvenient but makes learning anything new like Baseball faster and with a deeper understanding.  It's great that our team won the World Series, it gave me lots of post-season time to watch them.   It is a little sad too because no matter how much I learn or how many games I go to, I never will have the banks of history that come with being a lifelong fan.  I have to start somewhere right?

PS - What is a "boiled wool" jacket anyway?  Is it really a jacket or just a sweater on steroids?