"Kingston Trio meet Zimbabwe Ben. The more things change, the more they stay the same."
Uploaded to YouTube by WC Varones on January 29, 2011.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
"Not time sensitive": They're rioting in Africa...
"Kingston Trio meet Zimbabwe Ben. The more things change, the more they stay the same."
Uploaded to YouTube by WC Varones on January 29, 2011.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Spew Day
An enlightening day, on all fronts.
Fred is sick of hearing about bad news, sad news, medical news. Fred is sick of being interrupted. Yes, Fred let it spewwww today! So I'm sitting here, feeling that safety lies in being mute.
The last eye surgery was yesterday. Today's pressure check on that left eye revealed a miraculously wunnerful-wunnerful result of ELEVEN. I haven't had an intraocular pressure that low in 20 years. Is the cure for glaucoma lens replacement? (Yes, I jest -- because the level of inflammation in that eye is apparently pretty severe, and it is hurting to the point of being bothersome. One minor bitch; One minor moan.)
It was a rough experience this time, but nothing having to do with the wondrous orbs themselves. I cleaned obsessively over the weekend, something I do compulsively before any surgery, no matter how small, just in case Fred has to host an Irish wake should I decide not to wake up or pull some other shenanigan or tom-foolery resulting in death. Do I want my Aunt Nancy to sit in Marlinspike Hall's Mourning Salon, enjoy a complimentary marguerita, only to rise covered in cat hair? Could I find a restful position in the fiery sulfurous lake knowing that one of the militant lesbian feminist existentialist members of Fred's flourishing ukulele band was distracted from comforting my dear sweet Fred because of a smudge on one of our finest shot glasses.
Anyway, I may have overdone it. I was twitching like a twitching fool before and, again, after the slice-and-dice. The staff was, again, wonderful, attentive, professional, compassionate... but the only solution was to get home as soon as possible so that I could eliminate the excess external stimuli (even being careful not to touch me... a surgical team kinda, sorta, has-ta touch ya!). Even noise and lights can bring on the Grand Spaz these days, so the anesthesiologist was very cool about allowing me to leap from gurney to wheelchair and out the door. Plus... the antispasmodics I needed, at the doses required, were at home. I should have brought them, but it just didn't occur to me.
Once home, there was considerably more actual eye pain than the first go 'round, and that became more irritating as the itching arrived, then the small welts around the bandage. By mid-evening, I was snarling. First, I replaced the nasty tape holding the eye guard in place with the much kinder version made of paper. That helped... for about five minutes. I fairly ripped the whole apparatus off, Fred watching TV next to me with such ADHD intensity that I don't thing he realized what I was doing. It turned out that the problem was the shield itself. The right eye received a sweet little unobtrusive plain plastic affair, very light and made of nothing that would dare offend. Ah, but the left eye... was covered with a metal plate and its sharp edges were protected with a protective edging of RUBBER. Adopting the deductive brilliance of the inhabitants of 221B Baker Street, I said (pretty much to myself): "Aha! The game is a not a foot, but an eye!" I went digging through my handy-dandy purple and butt-ugly "eye kit," and praised the Good Lord and my favorite angel, Lo! "Look, Lo! I managed to hang on to what seemed like a piece of useless sentimentality! The original plain-jane version of the eye guard!"
When I speak, I do not use quite as many exclamation marks.
So after a few hours of itching and welts, the problem was mostly relieved by proper tape and and the tossing of the malicious rubber coating on the guard.
The remaining problems? Well, the Spaz Attacks didn't stop and I spiked a big ass fever, felt like krapola, and toyed with phoning the go-to-guy. Instead, I had some frozen strawberries and lots of baclofen. It seemed a reasonable accommodation.
Come pre-dawn, the only remaining difficulties were... the bleeping spazzes and the freaking fever with the helpful addition of severe pain in the shoulders and hips. By the time they'd rechecked my eye pressures (not believing the initial reading of... read it again: ELEVEN!), someone announced, "You feel like you have a fever," to which someone else added the helpful echo, "And your cheeks are bright pink and your eyes are kind of glazed...." There just being three of us in the room, there ended the commentary, as I had nothing to add to the conversation.
No, it all mostly boiled down to "give your internist a call," which is medical CYA terminology.
I don't think I will bother him yet. The steroid dose is being tapered down, that can create its own havoc; The surgery may have set off a CRPS inflammatory hoe-down; The cleaning-of-the-manor escapade may have aggravated the infection in my bones.
So my money is on feeling a bit better day by day, with worse days interspersed just for normal insanity's sake.
On the way home today, in between Fred delivering various sententious sentences, we stopped so that I could buy some cheapo-cheapo production's (remember them?) reading glasses at a large grocery. And, of course, the ever comforting and increasingly necessary plain lowfat yogurt, the equally comforting and always important hair gel for the curly headed living in high humidity, and the surgical reward treat, which turned out to be NOT CHOCOLATE. I don't know how it happened, but Fred's surgical reward was a well-chosen tin of chocolate-covered espresso beans and I opted for the veggie chips -- beets, green beans, zucchini, that sort of thing. Basically fried stuff covered with salt.
And -- I cannot remember the last time I set foot in a grocery store -- I got to deliver that famous line once we were home and I was stashing away the purchases: "We forgot the milk!"
So that you are not deprived of any interesting morsel of information, since putting up the groceries, I organized the next week's eye drop schedule (turns out the right eye still needs 'em, but in different amounts) and worked on getting the fever down. I also managed to develop, and it may have shown up here and there in this post, some resentment over Fred's righteous outbursts. It's the delivery that gets to me... The I-have-held-in-my-suffering-longer-than-your-average-person-would-be-able-to righteousness... The I-am-such-a-chipper-and-cheery-communicator-why-can't-you-be-like-me condescension... and then there's my guilt-because-I-know-the-essence-of-what-he-wants-because-he-has-asked-for-it-before. What I don't get, and just cannot abide, is how he turns things that are positives (to me, their verbalizer) into negatives. This can only be by the action of HIS brain and standards. Most of the things I discuss simply ARE, and are offered as such. Information.
That this outburst came shortly after I informed him, happily, that sweet Hannah (my hero -- the young girl who had the rotationplasty and has now had a SUCCESSFUL BMT!) is going to be on the Today Show next week. A cause to rejoice, I thought.
Clearly, I want to be right. Clearly, I don't want him to be right because I don't want to be wrong. That feels the most awful of all -- never, ever should I want for dear Fred not to be right.
He's a stud muffin. He's a sweet heart. He's a good guy. And he is becoming foreign to me. I spend much time trying to arrange a life for him should I die -- because I truly don't think he has the foggiest notion of how much it costs to live, how one goes about living. He's the guy who never repairs anything and then is shocked when things fall apart. I obsessively clean the lint trap on the drier and note on the kitchen calendar when the A/C filter was changed. I budget for repairs each year because I know who is gonna pay (until, of course, Captain Haddock surfaces one late autumn day in his miniature submarine, tossing about reimbursement checks as if we knew we could count on getting them to begin with... and then the grog flows, and remembrance goes, and before you know it, it's "dive, dive dive..." and the Great Cuss-Artist of the Moat descends like a drunken ghost...)
And now I am having moments of resentment -- which logically can only be expended on myself, as I am the creator of the need.
I am the ruination of Fred's life.
I just did not need the reminder.
So that was my day. It may be that the Spaz Attacks and the Fever, plus the irritation (ever so slight) of the eyes... it may be that I am feeling as if I've no skin at all.
Oh... and then there's the whole Syria fiasco set to go off, some say, on Thursday between lunch and 4 o'clock tea. Why we cannot turn the whole affair into an elegant but non-fussy extra-judicial execution of a Head of State, I dunno. No one ever asks me. I think it's a cheerful, uplifting solution.
Love you (Well, some of you. You know who you are. And hell, if you are someone I've never even met, but need a little love, take some: It's yours!) --
profderien
Amie de la Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, Guardien de Frédéric, et Une Personne Extrêmement Déprimante et Dépressive qui Devrait Probablement Etre Evitée à Tout Prix --
Grosses Bises!
© 2013 L. Ryan
Fred is sick of hearing about bad news, sad news, medical news. Fred is sick of being interrupted. Yes, Fred let it spewwww today! So I'm sitting here, feeling that safety lies in being mute.
The last eye surgery was yesterday. Today's pressure check on that left eye revealed a miraculously wunnerful-wunnerful result of ELEVEN. I haven't had an intraocular pressure that low in 20 years. Is the cure for glaucoma lens replacement? (Yes, I jest -- because the level of inflammation in that eye is apparently pretty severe, and it is hurting to the point of being bothersome. One minor bitch; One minor moan.)
It was a rough experience this time, but nothing having to do with the wondrous orbs themselves. I cleaned obsessively over the weekend, something I do compulsively before any surgery, no matter how small, just in case Fred has to host an Irish wake should I decide not to wake up or pull some other shenanigan or tom-foolery resulting in death. Do I want my Aunt Nancy to sit in Marlinspike Hall's Mourning Salon, enjoy a complimentary marguerita, only to rise covered in cat hair? Could I find a restful position in the fiery sulfurous lake knowing that one of the militant lesbian feminist existentialist members of Fred's flourishing ukulele band was distracted from comforting my dear sweet Fred because of a smudge on one of our finest shot glasses.
Anyway, I may have overdone it. I was twitching like a twitching fool before and, again, after the slice-and-dice. The staff was, again, wonderful, attentive, professional, compassionate... but the only solution was to get home as soon as possible so that I could eliminate the excess external stimuli (even being careful not to touch me... a surgical team kinda, sorta, has-ta touch ya!). Even noise and lights can bring on the Grand Spaz these days, so the anesthesiologist was very cool about allowing me to leap from gurney to wheelchair and out the door. Plus... the antispasmodics I needed, at the doses required, were at home. I should have brought them, but it just didn't occur to me.
Once home, there was considerably more actual eye pain than the first go 'round, and that became more irritating as the itching arrived, then the small welts around the bandage. By mid-evening, I was snarling. First, I replaced the nasty tape holding the eye guard in place with the much kinder version made of paper. That helped... for about five minutes. I fairly ripped the whole apparatus off, Fred watching TV next to me with such ADHD intensity that I don't thing he realized what I was doing. It turned out that the problem was the shield itself. The right eye received a sweet little unobtrusive plain plastic affair, very light and made of nothing that would dare offend. Ah, but the left eye... was covered with a metal plate and its sharp edges were protected with a protective edging of RUBBER. Adopting the deductive brilliance of the inhabitants of 221B Baker Street, I said (pretty much to myself): "Aha! The game is a not a foot, but an eye!" I went digging through my handy-dandy purple and butt-ugly "eye kit," and praised the Good Lord and my favorite angel, Lo! "Look, Lo! I managed to hang on to what seemed like a piece of useless sentimentality! The original plain-jane version of the eye guard!"
When I speak, I do not use quite as many exclamation marks.
So after a few hours of itching and welts, the problem was mostly relieved by proper tape and and the tossing of the malicious rubber coating on the guard.
The remaining problems? Well, the Spaz Attacks didn't stop and I spiked a big ass fever, felt like krapola, and toyed with phoning the go-to-guy. Instead, I had some frozen strawberries and lots of baclofen. It seemed a reasonable accommodation.
Come pre-dawn, the only remaining difficulties were... the bleeping spazzes and the freaking fever with the helpful addition of severe pain in the shoulders and hips. By the time they'd rechecked my eye pressures (not believing the initial reading of... read it again: ELEVEN!), someone announced, "You feel like you have a fever," to which someone else added the helpful echo, "And your cheeks are bright pink and your eyes are kind of glazed...." There just being three of us in the room, there ended the commentary, as I had nothing to add to the conversation.
No, it all mostly boiled down to "give your internist a call," which is medical CYA terminology.
I don't think I will bother him yet. The steroid dose is being tapered down, that can create its own havoc; The surgery may have set off a CRPS inflammatory hoe-down; The cleaning-of-the-manor escapade may have aggravated the infection in my bones.
So my money is on feeling a bit better day by day, with worse days interspersed just for normal insanity's sake.
On the way home today, in between Fred delivering various sententious sentences, we stopped so that I could buy some cheapo-cheapo production's (remember them?) reading glasses at a large grocery. And, of course, the ever comforting and increasingly necessary plain lowfat yogurt, the equally comforting and always important hair gel for the curly headed living in high humidity, and the surgical reward treat, which turned out to be NOT CHOCOLATE. I don't know how it happened, but Fred's surgical reward was a well-chosen tin of chocolate-covered espresso beans and I opted for the veggie chips -- beets, green beans, zucchini, that sort of thing. Basically fried stuff covered with salt.
And -- I cannot remember the last time I set foot in a grocery store -- I got to deliver that famous line once we were home and I was stashing away the purchases: "We forgot the milk!"
So that you are not deprived of any interesting morsel of information, since putting up the groceries, I organized the next week's eye drop schedule (turns out the right eye still needs 'em, but in different amounts) and worked on getting the fever down. I also managed to develop, and it may have shown up here and there in this post, some resentment over Fred's righteous outbursts. It's the delivery that gets to me... The I-have-held-in-my-suffering-longer-than-your-average-person-would-be-able-to righteousness... The I-am-such-a-chipper-and-cheery-communicator-why-can't-you-be-like-me condescension... and then there's my guilt-because-I-know-the-essence-of-what-he-wants-because-he-has-asked-for-it-before. What I don't get, and just cannot abide, is how he turns things that are positives (to me, their verbalizer) into negatives. This can only be by the action of HIS brain and standards. Most of the things I discuss simply ARE, and are offered as such. Information.
That this outburst came shortly after I informed him, happily, that sweet Hannah (my hero -- the young girl who had the rotationplasty and has now had a SUCCESSFUL BMT!) is going to be on the Today Show next week. A cause to rejoice, I thought.
Clearly, I want to be right. Clearly, I don't want him to be right because I don't want to be wrong. That feels the most awful of all -- never, ever should I want for dear Fred not to be right.
He's a stud muffin. He's a sweet heart. He's a good guy. And he is becoming foreign to me. I spend much time trying to arrange a life for him should I die -- because I truly don't think he has the foggiest notion of how much it costs to live, how one goes about living. He's the guy who never repairs anything and then is shocked when things fall apart. I obsessively clean the lint trap on the drier and note on the kitchen calendar when the A/C filter was changed. I budget for repairs each year because I know who is gonna pay (until, of course, Captain Haddock surfaces one late autumn day in his miniature submarine, tossing about reimbursement checks as if we knew we could count on getting them to begin with... and then the grog flows, and remembrance goes, and before you know it, it's "dive, dive dive..." and the Great Cuss-Artist of the Moat descends like a drunken ghost...)
And now I am having moments of resentment -- which logically can only be expended on myself, as I am the creator of the need.
I am the ruination of Fred's life.
I just did not need the reminder.
So that was my day. It may be that the Spaz Attacks and the Fever, plus the irritation (ever so slight) of the eyes... it may be that I am feeling as if I've no skin at all.
Oh... and then there's the whole Syria fiasco set to go off, some say, on Thursday between lunch and 4 o'clock tea. Why we cannot turn the whole affair into an elegant but non-fussy extra-judicial execution of a Head of State, I dunno. No one ever asks me. I think it's a cheerful, uplifting solution.
Love you (Well, some of you. You know who you are. And hell, if you are someone I've never even met, but need a little love, take some: It's yours!) --
profderien
Amie de la Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, Guardien de Frédéric, et Une Personne Extrêmement Déprimante et Dépressive qui Devrait Probablement Etre Evitée à Tout Prix --
Grosses Bises!
© 2013 L. Ryan
Sunday, August 25, 2013
That's the plan
A good Sunday afternoon to you.
I feel somber and insignificant, that wonderfully creative space so fertile for writers.
Yesterday was a day for physical work, such as I can pull off, anyway. Today is meant to fritter away my nerves and still produce something that may extend beyond myself. Thus far, I've done nothing that I'd dare lay out for a reader.
I'm about to go mess up the kitchen, having promised the production of something wonderful, while leaving that completely undefined. A savory tart comes to mind. A massive salad first came to mind but I was subtly told that wouldn't do. In contention with all of these culinary diversions? The need for sleep.
Tomorrow is my second eye surgery. We're hoping to get in earlier this time, therefore out earlier, home earlier, resting earlier, rejoicing sooner.
That's the plan.
Love you.
© 2013 L. Ryan
I feel somber and insignificant, that wonderfully creative space so fertile for writers.
Yesterday was a day for physical work, such as I can pull off, anyway. Today is meant to fritter away my nerves and still produce something that may extend beyond myself. Thus far, I've done nothing that I'd dare lay out for a reader.
I'm about to go mess up the kitchen, having promised the production of something wonderful, while leaving that completely undefined. A savory tart comes to mind. A massive salad first came to mind but I was subtly told that wouldn't do. In contention with all of these culinary diversions? The need for sleep.
Tomorrow is my second eye surgery. We're hoping to get in earlier this time, therefore out earlier, home earlier, resting earlier, rejoicing sooner.
That's the plan.
Love you.
© 2013 L. Ryan
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