USA! USA! USA! Peaceful Protests and Bad Beer - What A Great Country!

Hello Fellow Travelers and Happy Thanksgiving!

I have to take pause here and marvel at this great nation some of us call home.  Being "mobility challenged" (wheelchair bound), I watch a lot of CNN.  I'm often with Wolf in "The Situation Room", or I'm paying rapt attention to whatever "The Silver Fox" (Anderson Cooper) is exposing on "AC 360".  So I was very aware, nay, overly informed of the circumstances that led up to the decision by a grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri not to indict the police officer who admittedly killed an unarmed teenager.

Yes, there was mayhem in Ferguson, but from coast to coast in most major cities there were peaceful protests going on!  Young people, takin' it to the streets and not setting fires!  Some talking head on CNN suggested that the "younger" political voters were done with racism and violence.  I applaud that notion!  What  great idea!  Democracy in action, it's a beautiful thing!

The idea that the younger (post 1980's) voters are more global, have little tolerance and even less patience for racism in any guise, is an idea whose time has come.  I love this "legal rebellion", "peaceful protesting" is what our nation was founded on!  That it worked so well nationwide is nothing less than wonderful!  Looting and burning are not only destructive, they are also illegal, looting and burning are crimes.  And outside of Ferguson, MO itself, it largely didn't happen.  The younger kids grew up in a blended society, like the American Mafia racism sounds outdated, antiquated.  Maybe by using the "system" the way it was designed, the protesters can march and they will get the changes they demand to even the playing field politically.

Peaceful marching going on worldwide in response to a perceived injustice in one country isn't a crime - it might be a mandate for change.  A new and better way of reacting to unpopular news.  A reaction that could change how decisions are made.

One less thing to fight about.  One struggle done.  History.  Like the Civil War.

PS - I would be remiss if I didn't comment on Budweiser's decision to exchange the Clydesdales for something more "youth-oriented".  I liked those holiday horsies!  All the exchanging on the planet won't cover up the basic fact, the bottom line:  Bud sucks!  It's a Geico commercial:  "Everybody knows that!".  Budweiser is terrible.  Bud light?  Bad Light!  Bud Chrome?  Or Ultra or whatever?  96 More Reasons to Loathe Anheiser/Busch!  So I think removing the equines exposes the lager to scrutiny and who doesn't like a pony during the holidays, anyway?

Guess What Really Inspired Me To Perform This Week? Surprise! Our Cat!

Hello Fellow Travelers!

As usual, I was all set to offer my keen insight on something important (this week:  Nazis in "Captain America":  Really evil or just really good special effects?) and then this happened:  Our cat, Isobel became really sick, really fast.  The last time we took her to the vet, there was nothing wrong and we spent nearly $500 to be told there was nothing wrong with her so when she began sneezing early in the week we didn't panic at first.  As the week wore on her sneezes became much more frequent until both her nose and eyes were streaming and my PS took a predictably Darwinian approach to her illness: she'd either recover or she wouldn't.

I am completely incapable of doing anything to impact the situation so I didn't say anything, I rescued Isobel from certain death (the pound) but she belongs primarily to PS who loves her, although he won't admit it.  She's been a good kitty, and a great pet to the men so to see her sneezing, then refusing to eat altogether was bizarre.  As you know, I have my hands full, juggling chainsaws.  Sick cats are way beyond my scope these days, like operating heavy machinery or riding a bike, I can't do those things either, yet.

So, I watched and waited as our small, grey, cat mirrored my own journey trajectory.  She sat very still for long periods of time, she seemed to brace herself for some unseen assailant who repeatedly assaulted her.  And then she'd break into uncontrollable sneezing spasms that racked her small frame.

By the third day, she was buried in my shoes (most of which I'll never wear again), and I was mentally preparing what I was going to say to my son when we put her down.

On the fourth day, (today) Isobel ate a bunch of food, drank a bunch of water and meowed, plaintively.  She got better!  No one-way ticket to the old "Pet Sematery"!  Way to go, cat!  Is it a miracle?  Is it science?   9 Lives? I only have one question, the only one that matters.  Say it with me, "Is it cancer?  No?  Then who cares? " Or:  "Is there a Kardashian involved?  No? Then who really cares?"

I'll take inspiration anywhere I can find it and our little, gray cat is truly inspiring.  She never complained, she just put her furry head down and got through whatever "it" was.  No question about it, she "shook it off", weathered the storm, fought her way through.

And nobody squished her into her cat carrier either.


PS- In my neverending search (and discovery) for all things ridiculous, I inevitably came across the final incarnation, the denouement, if you will, of naked television.  For your viewing pleasure, on the Discovery Channel:  "Dude, Your Screwed!"  It's full of naked, dirty people and is, what I hope, is the end of the road for this particular genre.  And no, I have not watched it.  I'm all about the words and the title is enough for me.  One has to wonder though, what exactly gets "discovered" on the "Discovery Channel", anyway?  Gold?  Bigfoot?  Stinky, naked, people?  What?  Ohhh, I get it, snow!  Lots and lots of snow!

"A Beautiful Macaroon" Get It? It's a Cookie!

Hello Fellow Travelers!

Today I'm going to wax "on" (and on) about two things I adore:  Alfred Hitchcock movies of the 50's and macaroons that are perfection.  So if this is too feminine for you, too fey (and I don't mean Tina) step off!  Cause, here I go!

One of the strangest effects that has changed me irrevocably since 2011 is my ferocious sweet tooth.  It's really unusual since I spent my entire pre-brain surgery life avoiding sugars and desserts altogether.  In 2012 my Patient Spouse made me cookies and occasionally brought me hard candy.  After a painful visit or two to the dentist (a lifetime of perfect dental reports ruined in one year!), PS quit bringing me candy.

I subsequently lost most of my interest (and all my ability) in consuming anything salty or snacky.  My longing for perfect desserts goes on unabated.  I stopped any alcohol consumption years ago.  I think a lot about Kahlua and Amaretto now in terms of how they would taste in a cookie!

Cookies just make everything more fun!  I shared this thought with my best friend who had been inventing cookies in her kitchen to suit my very particular flavor profiles and then I had an idea that originated with a computer game her son had invented and we played!  The name of the game is Hop Away: Never Smore, so my friend humored me by looking for a smore recipe in a cookie.  The closest she came was finding a smore flavored macaroon.

One day recently the UPS guy delivered a box that was packed with a red, zippered cooler, ice, tissue, and a pink box containing the most beautiful, perfect macaroons on the planet.  This was truly something Grace Kelly would have had delivered to Jimmy Stewart in "Rear Window".  My friend's point (and mine too) is that we could spend all year trying to replicate these delicate masterpieces and never come close.  There is, however, a baker in Beverly Hills who can make an entire rainbow of these amazing confections and they deliver!

PS - No, I have nothing to say about "the butt that broke the internet".  And no, I don't live under a rock.  (Well, maybe I do and maybe I don't but I still have nothing to say!

"Plan B"? I Don't Have One! Plan A MUST Work!

Hello fellow travelers!

I get asked occasionally (OK, I'll admit after almost four years and a lot of work and a lot of deprivation, I'm starting to wonder, but then I feel really good and forget all about it.) when this neuroplasticity is supposed to kick in.  Pretty soon, I hope.  I have all kinds of newly developed muscles being trained to make new connections in the brain.  What I don't have is a "Plan B", in case "Plan A" doesn't work.  You know, "There's always Plan B"?  Well, I don't have one!  I am feeling my way through the morass the best I can, retreat is not an option!

I start out these adventures humming, "Onward Christian Soldiers" but inevitably end up with Kiss's "Dr. Love" or something equally musicless stuck in my noggin on a loop.  "Plan A"?  "Plan B"?  Who has time?  The Nazis!  That's who!  The Nazis had all kinds of plans!  All bad!  And they were German.  Germans like to make extensive plans.

In my particular case this is the life/death struggle.  I am in the fight.  My neurosurgeon won the first round (Thank you! Dr. Aliabadi!) but the rest of it is up to me!  So "Plan A" has to work!  "Plan B" means death so forget that!  I only have a "Plan A" (and believe me when I say it's not much of a "plan", it's more like a hastily assembled bunch of "extreme" coping skills)

I tease a physician friend of mine that I'm a "patient of the future".  And I'm only partly kidding because I am not reacting to this "condition" the way a lot of patients might,  I'll never stop looking for answers I'll never stop fighting an unecessarily early demise, I was made for this.  I'm not satisfied with anything offered to current patients.  Scooters and catheters?  Yuk!  Motorized conveyances that cart your carcass ever-so-slowly up the staircase?  Double Yuk!

The only answer for me is to continue to stretch and search for some kind of solution.  One of the qualities that separates me from the average patient (if there is such a thing) is that I have no expectation that I will be the same as before the surgery.  I have every expectation if I work hard enough, long enough I will keep changing into what I'm supposed to be.  So "Plan A All the Way!"  "A" is "American".  "B" is for "Bruges" or "Belgium", either way "A" is better.  So let's go with that!