Getting Obstreperous

Enough Already! (a rant)

Isn't it enough that I have to hold on to the railing walking down stairs or need to let GuntherDog lead the way so I don't fall over him and break my neck?

Isn't it enough already that that scruff-of-a-dog refuses to come down himself until I pat and pet the royal dog's head on the top landing of the stairs?

Isn't enough that no one feels a damn thing for an orphan who gets medicare and/or collects Social Security?

Isn't it enough that I have more than a half dozen Doctors all younger than me?

Isn't it enough that symptoms seem to grow in number year after year?

Apparently not for, apparently, we Players in the Last Quarter have to listen to  all kinds of rot ... day after day!

... Anthony Weiner explaining why Oscar Mayer runs his campaign for mayor?

.... why it's just dandy that the Mayor of San Diego, der Linder Torte, has been accused of asking his female staffers to come to work without undies?

... why it is fine for the Governor of Virginia to take what appear to be bribes?

... why infant mortality in USA is maybe 30th in the world of civilized nations?

... why our education system lags behind requiring us to import both field laborers and IT professionals and Physicians to do our skilled and unskilled labor?

... why the 2nd Ammendment guarantees the right to own an armed B52?

... why it takes two claw-foot tubs and four hours for a couple to have sex, nowadays? (with nobody able or willing to explain to me how in the Harry Houdini that's done! ... Maybe I should ask Eliot Spitzer?)

... and why the hell it's gotten so damn hot, these days? (According to the Dems, it's technology out of control; according to the Publicans, it's either just part of cosmic cycles or else God's revenge on Sinners, Infidels and Homosexuals)

Any case ... this Senior Citizen has had enough, already, and supports an ammendment to the US Constitution requiring that members of Congress and the Senate sign an oath requiring them to have sex in just one tub at a time and to lose anything that lasts more than 4 hours!

Geez! Just, Go see Alice!

(Sorry for the rant! Was a tough day, yesterday. I dreamed last night of Flux and soldering; sounds like a sexual dream to me! Whoopee! Whoever dreamed up Flux was among the brilliant innovators of history. For the uninitiated? Flux is the Petro-Gel one smears on both surfaces of a joint just before soldering. The idea is that the Flux rapidly reduces in volume as the pipe is heated, rendering a vacuum which will suck the melted solder evenly into the joint ... yielding a 50+ year seal. Now, why can't my doctors be elegant in their thinking and brilliant like that inventor.  Dang! The Docs would stick a tube into the tiny space to watch and be seen with jaw dropped/mouth agape/without a clue, telling the pipes to come back in ten years.)  

One of those odd days, yesterday, that seem to take us on treks that, while they don't go very far, are monthly parts of marriage in the Last Quarter. Really didn't matter whether it was M or me, this time. A set of symptoms arrives ... this time on a hot beach. We take a breather. The symptomatic one lays down back at house ... the complex of symptoms had not been typical of a Myocardial Infarction. Did not want to panic the grandkids. Maybe dehydration? heat related complex? it had been really quite hot on beach and we were on the 'could there be miracles' organic juicing diet. An hour later, the symptoms are no better. The health center on the Island is run by a whole team of Clem Kiddidlehoppers .... call the pharmacy ... 'y'could go to one of thos emergent health issue places up near Pocomoke City ... hospitals? oh, they're 50 miles away or thereabouts.' At this point, it takes two to walk the patient to the car. 25 mins later, we're facing a very worried receptionist who takes us right back. 45 minutes, two ekg's, a line for fluids, and blood spots all over the aqua-blue moo-moo (one size fits everyone from Jack-Spratt to Manatees) and floor later and patient is on Emergency Medical Ambulance going north to the big city ... Salisbury. Spouse following in car ... nervous? you bet! EMS folk: 'now don't you go runnin' no red lights or tryin' to keep up with us. Police gonna lock you up, if'n you do.' Actually, the EMS folk were very nice and the 'abundance of caution' Physician's Assistant who made the only decision he could and his staff were all doing exactly what they should have been doing. OK .... most of you know the next four hours ... More ekg's, more lines, more attempts at drawing blood, more x-rays, great Indian Lady Doc ... really clear in her thinking (this, you know, is not always but often the case that ER Docs are good and quick thinkers) ... checking with old ekg reports from back home .... Couple pressing for discharge before they have to drive home in dark ... hard to see at night ... 'could easily be sharing ambulance heading back North if you don't let us go, soon' ... Nevermind GuntherDog panicking and really needing to pee ... kinda like an old person after getting fluids in an ER. You get it .... Made it back just as the Sun's effects were all but gone from its new home beyond our horizon ... patient feeling crumby still in this 9 hour romp ... couple ready to go to sleep to call it another day Playing in the Last Quarter. Report: Turkey sandwich in ER looked different than the Green Miracle Juices of past week and, standing here on the beach awaiting His Majesty's arrival just before 6, the heat wave has broken. Hey! All's Well that Ends Well!

May be our last day here on the edge of the Americas .... waking each morning to the Ocean .... It's been many a thinker, but most recently Leon Kass after writing his lengthy volume on the Book of Genesis, The Beginning of Wisdom, who went about hither and yon speaking to audiences about the value of mortality ... carrying on a tradition amongst all the great religions that one should live each day -- whether in the Second, Third or Fourth Quarters -- as if it was your last. Indeed, one should meet each person as if it was the last time you'd meet them ... do each task as if it is your last opportunity to finally carry it out or to carry it out, again, with grace. The word grace must share its origins with the word gratitude ... two sides of a coin. The grandkids ... the half that came, this year ... will be leaving tonight and M and I will leave tomorrow. The prophets are predicting major storms that will arrive to conquer the heat that has had its grasp on the East Coast. Maybe next year all the grandspawn will visit ... maybe if I stop calling them 'spawn,' more will come. Nah! The grandkids know we love them. M and I will be back, this Summer. This is the first time, I've decided to take all Fridays off in July and August beyond some weeks. Some of the visitors to my office are displeased. They call or -- how very modern -- text. I don't tweet, well not yet. It's hard for the to articulate the thought that they might miss me. Such a human experience ... missing another when they're absent ... betimes, when they're present and cannot quite be present. Oh! There are lovers embracing on an unoccupied lifeguard stand. I keep repeating in these notes how strongly I feel about hello's and goodbye's and their feeling relatives .... glee and sadness. There is an ebullience, however, that goes on in presence, as well ... maybe even harder to own. To be open to hello, presence and goodbye ... Is there more?

Not much to report ... sitting here waiting for the Sun to rise .... looking out at a calm Atlantic ... M, the Kids and Grandkids are back at the house sleeping, most likely. The lifeguard stands, where they are, remain empty for another four and a half hours. Mostly couples have come to offer up praise to Eos for her pink sky or to mouth the words I recall from Psalms ... Mah Gadlu Ma'asecha, Yah ... How grand are your creations, God ... M'od Amku Machschvosecha ... How very deep your thoughts. CAUTION: Seaward Cuurents may exist. Signs of a universe only apparently self-aware. Last night, the kids went to say good-night to the Sun, while M and I went to hear a reading of a new play. The local Shrink and her husband's 12 year old (who looked 16) was one of the central characters. An acting out Goth teenager growing up without a father in a little town was repeatedly threatened by her Mother with being sent to live with Grandma in Chincoteague, the town in which we have parked ourselves for 34 Summers and the very same town in which the play had its first public reading. The hall in which this was staged was pretty full and had that nursing home smell of a Senior Center, its previous incarnation. The AC failed, last night. A laughing gull just cawed, as if to say: What y'complainin' about, Bud. 'I wasn't,' Herr Segal, 'just sayin'.' Thar she blos. Deep Pink .. top half visible not out of the Atlantic but above a misty horizon ... She's late, the Sun, she is ... and her audience of 30 or 40 are now visible ... all visibly facing East toward her ... She's bright Pink now and they're, I imagine, each trying to figure out their purpose in standing erect on the surface of one of her smaller satellites ... Mama Earth ... or, at least, I am ... sitting here at the edge or is ot on the edge? She's free of the mist, now ... promising another 95 degree day.

Miracle Cures

When my Dad was dying, one of his middle kids would bring him meds and supplements to take. I fondly remember his plaint: 'Every week she brings me this little white pill ... a different one every week ... but each one is promised to cure what ails me. I mean each one and they're all different.' Yesterday, on holiday and away from my office, one of my kids and the grandkids came, carting a "juicer" ... For those who aren't juiced yet, a juice extractor separates the pulp of vegetables and fruit (Kale, Squash, Cucumbers, Carrots, Apples and pairs ... you name it)from their juice and "micronutrients" (hey! just how SMALL are those nutrients?). The juice has a recognizable flavor ... one that wouldn't sell much in local supermarkets .... and another-Worldly color ... like WWII army green ... You wouldn't paint a car that color. Last week, I got to watch such documentaries on how juicing can change your life. Frankly, I'm ready for some Botanical Magic ... a resuscitation. Have been vacationing on the Eastern Shore of Virginia for 34 years, since the juicer, our youngest, was three. The 6 mile trek to the beach on board one of two bikes gets longer every year ... bridges get steeper ... more young folk passing my 1974 Raleighs (a Supercourse II and my favorite, an International)... pisses me off to have some 25-40 year old run by me with a "good morning". Good morning, my Ass, you young whippersnapper! The bikes are not the problem ... When I take them to mechanics, they offer to give me even-money for one of their carbon-graphite new-fangled models. The mechanics drool. When I bring my older edition body to the Doctors, they never offer to trade. I mean never. I'm waiting for just one -- man or woman -- to opine: Geez ... What I wouldn't give to have a body like you. There are no pictures on this blog! Back to vacation. Bottoms up! Juice? Down the hatch!

still on vacation ... dog beginning to kvetch!

sandcastles in morning ... home at night