TSP

Every now and then, we all stumble on something wonderful and wish everyone knew about it, because there's not much one soul can do...  Then we smile, indulgently, because there's lots one soul can do.

That's the whole point.

The real danger is that -- by everyone knowing about it -- it will be tainted somehow, its small beauty ruined, the way an isolated pristine spot gets trampled once photographed, once told, once revealed, once plotted on the map.

But maybe this little blog is the perfect size -- kind of... well, not very big, getting its greatest share of hits from people looking for "triple-x sex."  And it's odd.

But blessed, in many ways.

So... check this out:  TSP.

Okie-Dokie, Then!

I don't know how to describe yesterday, except to say that, during the night, evidence suggests that I ate a bag of microwave popcorn, one and a half apples, and a "carbsense" peach yogurt.  The evidence comes in the form of popcorn kernels all over the floor, one well-gnawed apple core, one apple sliced neatly in half -- brown but with that still (barely) good nutty apple smell -- smartly speared with a small utility knife, and an upside down carbsense peach yogurt balanced on the pillow I was hugging with wanton abandon.  A spoon smeared with yogurt sat neatly upon my carefully folded glasses.

In further riotous detail -- I woke hypoglycemic.

Back to yesterday, which shall absorb the blame and the shame for all of these disgusting nighttime activities.

I know that I apologized to my President, Mr. Obama, several times, even, on Twitter, for singlehandedly destroying the PCIP budget.

[ASIDE:  Please, MSNBC, among the many programmatic and philosophical changes you need to make, do not force Luke Russert upon us.]

As I was saying, I may have annihilated the Affordable Care Act all by my lonesome, just by the shenanigans of January and February, in our upteenth attempt to rid my body of an osteomyelitis that just won't quit.  Transfer to a Long Term Acute Care Facility was involved, as were superfluous surgeries, and massive failure to understand the machinations of CRPS / RSD.  One of the results of all the money thrown at my problems was the declaration that I had maxed out my PCIP coverage to the tune of.... "catastrophic" levels.  My main comment on that is that the maximum I was told I'd have to spend on my health care (not including, of course, premium costs and deductibles) was roughly $7,000.  Excuse me while I imitate someone doubled over in laughter.

So one of the joyous benefits of having been hit so hard financially in the space of the first two months of the coverage year is that I am exempt from paying any more co-pays for doctor visits, etc.  I am at that glorious 100% coverage realm, up where the air is so thin, one can hardly breathe.

And yet, every doctor's office that I visit demands that $25 or, at one place, that $55, before I can be seen.  Never mind that I've been with each of them for years and never, ever carry a balance.  (JOKE:  I'd rather die first!)  Now, this is the true me:  For a couple of weeks, I was just so tired, I said, "Okie-dokie, then, here you go!" 

Then I had the fire lit under my aching, red, and breaking-down butt.  It turned out that my orthopedic surgeon's office had NOT applied to my PCIP deductible the $2000 I put on my credit card when they called on January 17, 2012, claiming I needed to pay them the in-network deductible or they'd be unable to proceed with the grand screw-up of a surgery scheduled for January 23.  Did you follow that?  I could make it clearer, but I'm so stuffed with food I can barely think.

As I was investigating a weird charge from the LTAC, submitted by a pulmonologist I'd never heard of, nor needed, who also appeared to have no license in this area West of the Lone Alp... I became mired in the pages and pages of online data documenting the obscene, pornographic exchanges of money, it hit me that I could not find that $2000 payment from January.  

I can be quite the dip when it comes to money, so I thought a courtesy call to the orthopod's office was in order before I set my aching, red, broken-down butt afire.  Anyway... no, they had only "needed" about $200 of all that, and had just tucked the rest in between the brown corduroy orthopedic sofa cushions in their snack lounge.  Miss Melissa, after sternly reminding me that she had only known of the error since March, eventually returned the $1700+ to my credit card.

I had to jump up and down over and over on the radio that kept playing in my head:  "And what about the interest charges you incurred, nimwit?  What about the money you might have grown from that $1700+ had you been able to invest it in the equity that went up over 23% in that same period of time?"  Smashed that damned radio to pieces, I did.

So yesterday, Fred and I sat in the waiting room at ShoulderMan's office, discussing some hilarious scientific literature. [Not kidding!  He was showing me the studies proving that light, among all observable things, changes its behavior if... observed.  Hilarious and mind-boggling stuff that makes me believe in God even more than that rare child cured of persnickety and metastatic brain cancer.  Fred can be a brilliant man, knowing when to pull out the big guns.]  

Now, I already may have pissed one of the receptionists off, I am not sure.  I was trying to be helpful, but how often does "trying to be helpful" really mean "pointing out crap that no one wants to deal with, and thankyouverymuch."  All of these orthopods have installed "kiosks" for check-in purposes.  It scans your IDs, your insurance cards, updates your address and phone, and asks whether you're likely to vote for President Obama or Dickwad Romney.  Oh, and please press HERE if you are not white.

I always complain about these kiosks.  Several reasons:  I am in a wheelchair, and the slant of the screen makes it nearly impossible to read due to glare from the sun -- that sun that may emit particles or waves, but probably isn't a coherent light source, anyway, who knows?  I ask them for a lower kiosk, as well.  Think about it.  I am in a wheelchair.  The kiosk is raised for someone of normal height, standing.  And why am I there?  Because of my freaking shoulders.  There's something so not fun about having one barely working arm that you have to keep raising above your head to enter data that hasn't changed since the week before.

Ah, but none of those bitchifications were involved in my complaint yesterday.  When I rolled up to the kiosk, it had been left by its previous victim in mid-operation.  I silently acknowledged my agreement with the evidence of their frustration, briefly bowing my head, and saying my personal and shortened version of the Serenity Prayer.  There was no way to abort the half-finished session, so I just flew through each screen by pushing some version of "Don't Know" and "Don't Care." The last screen I saw, still dedicated to this long gone patient, offered me EVERY SINGLE BIT OF THEIR PERSONAL INFORMATION.  From social security number to address, phone, personal doctor's name, insurance data -- all of it.  I could have copied it all down, photographed it, or I could have gone slightly bonkers and rolled over to the receptionist to report what I thought a major flaw with their blessed little kiosks.  She said, "Oh, no, that's terrible." 

I shortened the Shortened Serenity Prayer and went back to the kiosk to enter my own data.

Fred and I resumed giggling over the double slit experiment.  ("In 2002, Jónsson's double-slit experiment was voted 'the most beautiful experiment' by readers of Physics World.")  I was waiting for my main man, Leo, ShoulderMan's left hand man, to call me back to the exam rooms, when instead I heard the receptionist's dulcet tones, asking me to report to her area.  Zoom, zoom, zoom, and there I was -- hidden, of course, behind the counter that was so tall someone in a wheelchair would never be noticed without use of an emergency flare.  

She has two things to accomplish.  One, could I please confirm the information I just scanned and entered into the goddamned kiosk.  Two, I owe a $25 copay.  I am already missing Fred and his promise of some mention of Schrodinger's cat.  I carefully repeat the necessary demographics, but balk at paying.  My chapped ass has had enough, already.

"Well," she said, between huge sighs, "I guess I can call and reverify your insurance coverage." 

"Okie-dokie, then!" I crow.

"You can stay right there, so you don't have to go running back and forth."

"Okie-dokie!" (Appreciative of her saving my thumb and forefinger all that effort...)

Twenty minutes later, I am the source of major human traffic flow complictions.  My wheelchair is blocking old men with walkers, little girls struggling with crutches, and various blue-hairs who just shoot me a dirty look before lining up behind me, despite my frequent announcements that I am not in line.

Every now and then, the receptionist says something in a loud voice and I've no idea if she is speaking to me, so I answer, even if at the "okie-dokie" level.  Occasionally, she says, "I'm so sorry!" and it is then obviously incumbent upon me to say, "You've got nothing to be sorry about."  Oh, how weird things get when you cannot see the person with whom you might be having a conversation.

Finally, I hear this:  "Oh, you're gonna hate to hear this, Ms. Profderien!  You are absolutely right. You don't owe us a thing.  You can take a seat now."

You'd have been proud of me.  "[cough::cough]  I don't suppose you could refund the $25 I had to pay last week...?"  And then I rolled my aching, red, broken-down butt to Fred, who was asleep under a book, snoring just the smallest bit.  He woke, thought I had already seen the doctor, and make ready to leave, cheerful at the well-oiled machine that was apparently in force.  I hated to break it to him -- we had yet to really begin.

The chase?  You want me to cut to the chase?  Okay... Leo called me back, told the same joke he always tells, the Nurse Who Really Runs Everything came in and I signed all the consents, and we looked at my blood work.  She kept saying, "Your CRP is *really* high..." After running back and forth to consult with the surgeon, she decided I needed to be the last case of the day next Monday, because odds are that there is more crapalaficious infection to be dealt with, and "the infecteds" are always operated on last in the surgical day.  She sends in the PA who says, "You know the drill," and then seems to fall into a fugue state.  "Bob," I said, "You seem really tired.  Why don't we just move all this along?" Bob seems grateful and says I need to "run" across the street to the hospital to pre-register.

Before I leave, I pick up all the paperwork (including the blood work results) that have fallen on the floor, and stealthily crept under the exam table.  I leave them in a place that's obvious, so that either the next patient can steal my personal data, or the Nurse Who Really Runs Everything can retrieve them, so as to fatten up my anorexic chart (we're on overstuffed Volume 3).

We did not know that hospital pre-registration was going to have to be done yesterday but Fred and I decide to see it as a good thing, meaning that we don't have to come back later this week, and can stay home waiting for the roofing dude to come save the collapsing roof over one of the rear porches overlooking the fruit orchard we share with our Cistercian neighbors.  Believe it or not, the whole thing sort of collapsed 5 days before the 5-year warrranty expired on the last time they came and did not repair it very well.  If there are any charges to come out of this repair, you can bet that we're inviting Abbot Truffatore over for dinner, al fresco, with his seat right under the most prodigious leak.

I pay the $5 for parking so that we can go park at the hospital, which will cost -- you guessed it! -- an additional $5.  Fred threatens to muzzle me as I launch into my "Dear President Obama..." routine.  Why try to save me with an Affordable Care Act and then bankrupt me with health care parking fees?

Anyway, we know this hospital like some people might know the back of their hands.  But right away, something is different.  I am in a cubicle with a polite young man who is reentering all that personal data stuff, when he pauses, actually stops working, and says, "Do you mind if I ask you a question?" 

Oh, what goes through one's mind.  "Yes, I know I still owe you many thousands of dollars.  I'm sorry.  If Google would just have a blow out of an earnings report, you'll be paid that much quicker.  In the mean time, would you accept $20 a month, or maybe a kidney?" 

But what he asks is this:  "Was your experience here back in January and February a good one?"

I think I swallowed my tongue.  "No," I said, "it wasn't." 

"Well, I am sorry about that, and I hope that from this moment on, your stay here this time will be much better."

I am tempted to yell out "WTF?" but don't.

Okay, so I got a Press Ganey thingy to fill out on the hospital, back in March, and filled it out with bloody honesty, but how the heck would he know anything about that?  And he is, no offense, just a data entry clerk.  And wasn't it anonymous?

I'll spare you.  The tenor of his overtly solicitous behavior continued throughout the pre-op check-in process.  The nurse was extremely polite and well-informed.  She knew what CRPS was.  She had an accurate list of my meds.  She listened as I begged for them not to change the marvel of the pharmaceutical arrangement that is helping me so much with the CRPS dystonia.  She did not make me repeat tests that had been done within the last six months.

She passed me along to the nurse anesthetist whom I absolutely HATE.  I am sorry to say that.  Ashamed to say that.  But this woman, every darned time, interrupts me when I bring up the need for stress-dose steroids pre-, intra-, and post- op... and then to please revert me to my normal dose.  She lectures me on the hospital's pristine record with steroids, given that it is one of the region's foremost transplant centers and blah blah blah.  This time, I talked over her, telling her that I was very nearly dead thanks to their own hospitalist not givng me ANY steroid for five days, while I became more and more altered, with systems failing, getting weaker and weaker, and no one sharp enough to check my medic alert tag, or even look at the hospital records from an admission a mere two weeks before.  "Oh, my," she says.  "That should not have happened.  I'm so glad we discovered it in time." 

Scrape me off the ceiling.

I tell her that I discovered it.  It probably would have been my last cogent comment. Vision fading, weakness rising, I asked the nurse who was giving me meds which one of all those white pills was my steroid.  She told me I didn't take steroids.  I believe I began blubbering "Oh, my God, oh my God." To this good nurse's credit, she RAN to get help -- and a syringe full of Solu-Cortef.

Anyway... we got through yesterday, I hyperfocused on the weirdness, and then we got a pizza, for comfort.  It was after 7 pm before Ruby the Honda CRV rolled gently through the labyrinth, among the ramparts and over the moats, drawbridges and cleverly converted battering rams, into the safety of the well-loved place called home.

I have not forgotten young Hannah, to whom I promised to look for inspiration in all this -- but I cannot think much about how mutilated I will be when I come out of anesthesia on Monday.  Later today, I will check on her progress, and again marvel at her strength, and pray to be able to imitate her just a bit, if nothing else.  She is doing well, I know, midst a sucky situation.  She's been fitted for a prosthetic leg and will soon begin learning how to use it -- which I expect will take her a full five minutes.  Keep on keeping on, Miss Hannah.

Fly Boys

Poor, dear Buddy remains captionless in his recent dead-eye photo.  He looks absolutely devastated, but then, he always looks absolutely devastated.

When I was in high school, I was extremely bored, extremely obsessed with tennis, and determined to develop a reputation as a bad ass.  The tennis obsession was hard to hide, impossible to discourage, and resulted in being undefeated during my entire three-years on the team.  Of course, I played #6 singles and #3 doubles, so how hard could it have been, right?  We fervently "stacked the deck," but not in my case.  Our number 3 in singles was actually our number one, and our number 5 was actually our number 2 or 3, depending on how hard her week was.

She was, for a while, my best friend.  Her name was Teresa.  I thought she was beautiful, with long straight hair that looked professionally streaked, but wasn't.  She walked with a lilt, sort of took a little bounce when she pushed off the ground with her big toe.  Her face was very plain, but so was mine, so I thought she looked pretty.  Her father took a long time to die of lung cancer.  He was career military, air force, a flight mechanic, and somehow I thought that all meant that they were being taken care of.  Her mom worked a lot.  Her dad lived in a brown plaid recliner -- which would not recline -- with an oxygen tank hung over the back left of that Archie Bunker chair.  It struck me as odd, even knowing how sick he was, that I never saw him in uniform, be that a zip-up flight suit, overalls, blues.  No name tags, no decorations.  Their oven never seemed to be in working order, they did not leave each other notes, and tended to rarely look one another in the eye when conversing, and most conversations ended "okay, okay, okay."

They didn't have a lovely calligraphic version of Royal Canadian Air Force's John Magee's sonnet, "High Flight," beautifully framed and subtly spotlighted.  Some kids learn Bible verses by heart as their earliest accomplishment in Rote.  Not I, though I tended to stop, sometimes suddenly, sometimes joyfully, half way through the fifth line.  When my father built his "dream" house, with his "dream" study, the poem was hung behind his ominous desk, and carefully offset by fine photos, finely framed in matching dark woods, of all the "birds" he'd ever flown.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, --and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of --Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew --
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

I've wondered sometimes, as I have become a decrepit piece o' crap, myself, if it wasn't so much that the butt ugly chair would not recline as it was that Teresa's Dad's arms and legs had become either too weak or too mavericky to make the darned thing obey.  I have what used to be a lovely leather recliner, bought at the suggestion of MDVIP Go-To-Guy, back when my right leg started to go really, really bad.  The cats loved it, and I was stupid enough to think I could train them quickly and well enough not to want to arch their tight little backs and stretch those claws luxuriously into that leather.  I used the cats as my Frustration Referent because I was too embarrassed to admit that my legs couldn't push the chair into position.  Structurally, there's not a thing wrong with the chair, and I even bought a cheap (but cute!) matching ottoman to make up for my physical inability to make it metamorphose... but I am embarrassed by how it looks.

He was something of a dedocated dick, as some men are, but he was her father, and so Teresa lived a life of hard work, kept her head down, helped her Mom, cared for her younger siblings, and somehow managed to keep everyone's hands and minds off of her tennis.

I would pick her up, a quick beep on the ominous horn of my 1965 baby blue pristine Cadillac, and she'd come bouncing down the front concrete steps, neat as a pin in one of her three tennis outfits.  She had two white, classic tennis dresses that she reserved for competition and a pair of white shorts to practice in -- like most everyone, really, except that she alternated the same two tee shirts, one orange, one blue, both plain, advertising nothing.  She wore Tretorn tennis shoes with incredibly white anklets.  She was the first person I knew who was completely sold on Yonex rackets.  Her racket made my shots sit up, begging to be clobbered.  In her hands?  She was the Queen of Spin, deadly at the net.  And yet she had one of the flattest serves ever, with a toss so high that I was sometimes tempted to jog around the court a few times while we all waited for the ball to descend enough so that she could flatly whack it.

That was the only element of our doubles play that got under *my* skin.  The return of her serve tended to be aimed at my mouth or perfectly down the alley as I cowered near the ground, protecting my plain face.

Now... as for what might have irritated Teresa about my doubles game?  Well, choking comes to mind.  Not an occasional choke for those occasional tight moments.  No, choking like not holding service -- not even once -- during an entire match.

It came in the form of a frozen back and a spastic arm.  My lower back refused anything remotely like an arch;  My toss began at hip level, entirely powered by a jerking wrist.  It was the ugliest thing ever.

And she'd never turn around.  She never came to talk it over.  She never had any suggestions (not by then, not at match time... in practice, sure, but always something like: "So why can't you do that when we play X and X?").

My coach would disappear to the other end of the courts.  She never talked to me about it either.

The one time I got my Dad to come watch me compete, I started my period during the match, lost one of my contacts (even then I was "legally blind"), and, yes, choked.  He left before I won.

My greatest familial experience with tennis came with Brother Grader Boob, home from college, where he was quite the racquetball phenom, bearing, in fact, the titles of both singles and doubles champ for his area. He competed both indoors and out, but preferred three-wall outdoor sport.  There seemed to be infinite variations to the game, something that tennis is sorely lacking.  Even messing around with "wall ball" avec Brother Boob was a riot.

So he would play half-court, using his short racquet, and a standard fuzzy tennis ball.  I'd play the way I usually played.  Of course.  We messed a bit with the rules, something about number of bounces, something about service lines, but not much.  It was so much fun, particularly when the courts over at the country club were full and Suzy Q and Buffy were forced to join the rest of us slugs at the beautiful downtown courts in the park.

Anyway, I choked through our entire state doubles match.  I drop-served, so as to at least get the ball into play.  We lost.  You can probably guess by exactly how much, if I tell you that we played beautifully when receiving.  But between her flat, here-I-come serve and my oh-hell drop-serves, well...

Teresa ended up with a tennis scholarship -- one of those female things, a drop in a bucket, added to an offer to work slave hours at the library, all glommed onto the heft of a loan.  It was a good school, and I hope she did well there, had maybe some fun, too.  It was a shore-side state university, a lovely place to be, a very different place from where she'd been.

Ha!  You'd never guess where this post was meant to go.  I referred to little Buddy's "dead-eye" photo, which made me think, of course, of "Dead-Eye" Jones, my English teacher.  She had an artificial eye, she was big, pretended to be mean, and I loved to imitate her.  Until the day, that day that happens to every bad high school jokester, the day the person you are aping appears behind you without you having the least clue.

As in my favorite crucifixion song goes:  "[She] never said a mumblin' word."

She did not need to.  She owned me for the rest of high school.  And she never turned me in for playing tennis during fifth period when I was supposed to be in French.  She laughed big long belly laughs when we barracaded a classroom against an unloved substitute who kept stomping her little foot in anger, yelling "Open that door, open that door, right now!" She never called my folks about the pimply airman I french-kissed while waiting for the fifth period bell to ring.  She gave me good advice on the last day of school.  "Everything you think shows on your face.  Be careful with that."

Then, I wanted to write about tennis, it being French Open time and all.

I didn't mean to write about Teresa, and looking back at what I did write... I wish I really had.

We did not have a fight or officially even end our friendship.  It died a natural death, in my opinion.  In my stepmother's opinion, it was an impossibility to begin with, due to different social strata.

My stepmother.  Now that'd be a post.  She'd have been a perfect Brahmin.  Teresa was not untouchable, except, well, really, yes, she was.  Her clothes may have been clean, neat, and mended, but nothing matched in that breathless, thrown-together matchy way.  She didn't accept invitations to our home.  She was ugly. (As for me and my beauty?  The first time I plucked my unibrow, she said, swirling a scotch and soda, "Oh, profderien, that was your one good feature.")

Teresa and I were both barely hanging on, and we hung on through tennis.  We knew we could always find each other on a court somewhere, and that town had three options -- on base, at the country club, or in the lovely, lovely park.  She hung on through some very tough things, as did I.  Thanks to life and tennis, we learned to let them go, and in so doing, we lost each other.

Teresa and her bleeping slo-mo flat-as-a-pancake serve and a slowly suffocating father.  Me and my social anxiety, my various shames.

We'll call this the Father's Day-French Open combo post.

But I still want some suggestions for Buddy's Caption.  If it tugs at your heartstrings at all, Fred is determined that Buddy is feeling ill, or at least, "blue."  He is basing this conclusion on the fact that Buddy has decided to sleep on the living room rug rather than in the ether of his cat tree condo.  Some dude who passes himself off as the Cat Whisperer on Animal Planet claims that this is a bad sign.  Cats should want to be as high as possible and when they go low... well, uh-oh.

My point of view?  Buddy runs around like a crazed rabbit, plays fetch with abandon, chows down with gusto, drinks, pees and poops as if these were the most natural things in the world.  He comes to me for head pats and gentle finger chews.

Give the lad a caption, would 'ya?

Oh, and Happy Father's Day, and congratulations, Rafa!

In terms of what's actually happening -- surgery is Monday, June 18.  Today is another surgical pre-op, with one more later this week.  I'm stressed.  My hips were x-rayed and the one that is killing me looks okay, but the one that I put up with is in dire need of replacement.  Ha. Ha. Ha.  A former fracture of my sternum (from CPR) has decided to torture me again.  Why, no one knows.  I look the wrong way and bones break.  Breathing is interesting.  My kidney labs might look screwed up to the uninitiated, but really they are fine, I am just dreadfully dehydrated from daily fevers.

Caption Contest

Buddy is still a kitten, officially, and yet, he is also a Maine Coon, which makes him unusually large for his age and sometimes gives us the creeps.

He is a loving fellow but not much of that inner goodwill ever shows up on his face.  We've just learned to assume his basic jolliness and ignore the severe nature of his visage.

As Fred was going through our carefully maintained files, looking for our birth certificates (see Endive On A Stick), he realized that The Somber Gaze was upon him and snapped this photo.  Fred asked me to caption it. I am asking you...

Anthropo-what?

Buddy the Freakishly Large Kitten

Endive On A Stick

Fred has been searching desperately for our Birth Certificates.  Yes, some local natural-born morons have challenged our right to squat -- even as we serve as caretakers for the entire Haddock Family and Corporation property, including its physical (born, unborn, and dreamt of) and spiritual habitants, all of whom can trace their blood lines to Canadian farmers of French origin.

The accusations stem from paranoia that we are using Haddock monies and inexhaustible talents to whip the Montréal Canadiens into even more of a frenzy than the latest Hab's free agent dabble. I mean, really, aren't we all just glad that we could reunite the Kostitsyn brothers? Sure, we have enough Stanley Cups to decorate every ballroom, guest suite, barn, and hay-strewn ice oval but does that give you any right to turn into an inbred cross-eyed drooling birther?

When stressed, Fred goes shopping, and his most recent acquisition is a new camera.  When he left the Manor mid-afternoon yesterday, scratching off in Ruby the Honda CR-V. tail end wiggling with excitement (Ruby's, not Fred's), we all thought he had gone off to grab Marlinspike Hall's fair measure of First Endive.  Belgian white endive is classic, so we loving lay its pale production down in the lowest of the dark cellars, but psst?!  Are you up on Californian Richard Collins?

Forging his European experience with his American know-how, Collins’ farm grew into the nation’s top endive producer. But it took time, just like endive.


Endive is a twice-grown crop. The first step is the planting of chicory, which grows literally like a weed throughout the Golden State. Collins started with five acres and now has 275 acres throughout Central and Northern California. The root is harvested with the bud on top. The roots are then placed in cold storage — forcing hibernation — for up to 10 months.


After hibernating, the roots are placed side-by-side in trays. The trays, stacked several rows high, are then put into the dark climate-controlled “forcing room.” The roots are fed a special liquid diet and the roots then feed the bud, which in four weeks is a little head of endive.


Collins, the president of California Vegetable Specialties in Rio Vista, said his company produced 16,000 pounds of endive in its first year. Today CVS — formerly Rebel Farms — produces approximately 4.5 million pounds of the specialty crop a year. They are expecting to reach 5 million next year.


“Now, (16,000 pounds) is a so-so day of packed product,” he said.


CVS doesn’t look like your typical farm. The 30,000-square-foot growing facility is on the outskirts of Rio Vista in an agricultural zone. However, the two large buildings look more appropriate for storing produce than growing it.


The newly finished cold-storage unit houses the hibernating roots. There are four rooms that can hold 4,000 tons of chicory roots. The unit is specially designed with an insulation R value of 100. A typical home has an R value of 20. Industry minimums are 28.


“It’s very, very well-insulated,” said Collins, who added that his hope is to be able to shut off the system during peak hours to save money and take pressure off the power grid. “It’s probably the most efficient cold-storage building in America. It’s going to be a big saver for us.


“We projected a cost model, and were running 12 to 15 percent under, so that’s good,” he added. “We’re optimistic it will continue.”


In the second building is where the magic happens: roots are “awakened” out of hibernation, placed in trays, rolled into dark rooms for several weeks and then emerge with either yellowish or red heads. The yellow in the leaves is an indication of chlorophyll, which is what makes leaves change color in fall. If endive was not grown in the dark, it would be green. Collins noted that if endive sits in stores too long it can begin to turn green because of the lights.


After approximately four weeks (some trays may take longer), the trays are removed from the dark rooms. Employees sever the endive heads from the roots, take off a few of the outer leaves so they are left with the tight inner core and package them for sale. The roots, leaves and endive that is below company standards are discarded and sent to farmers for cow feed.


While giving cows a good meal makes Collins happy, he’s more excited about feeding people and bringing awareness to endive.


“It’s great being a farmer,” he said. “It’s good and versatile. You can make a lot of salads, but it’s also good for cooking.”

Of course, Collins cannot spill all the beans, cannot reveal the role of Captain Haddock's Pink Submarine or its five sub satellites that surface now and again in the moat (and only when Certifiably Algae Free), be it to transport all of our Miniature Olympic sporting teams, their gear, and chefs, or be it to assist in the storage of Corporate Important Paper Work.

But you can believe me when I write that our bovines are by far the most cheerful bulls, cows, and calves West of the Lone Alp, and that loving on endive is sometimes a place to start in the group therapy sessions held in Loft A-3 out in the Drug Rehab Carnie Barn. Thank God for endive, beef, and addicts making such great synergy because while the peanut brittle we first had them producing (therapeutically producing, you understand) was a good product to promote -- we used preferred local ingredients, from the artisinal processed white sugar to the hydroponic vanilla bean pods -- the heat of high summer and the sticky nature of brittle, well, they produced perhaps a better fly trap than amuse-bouche.

You wanna know what's scary?  Haddock Home immediately formed a committee on the viability of peanut brittle fly traps as cute little curio thingies, strange and interesting -- and "as seen on TV."

The famous Pierre Poulin designed and built the Schvitz, mother sub to all miniature bathyscaphes, and since The Captain loves Québec and various Québécois taverns, despite the fact that robots have essentially replaced his beloved personal submersibles, he volunteereed, between shots, to channel Richard Collins' endive booty back and forth from Canada to the little moat surrounding Marlinspike Hall.

Yeah, so, anyway.  This post was supposed to be about other things.  You lucked out this time!  I'm too busy fielding messsages from tech-challenged Captain Haddock, translating barks that issue from Fred's snout, soothing Marmy Fluffy Butt and reassuring her squeaking self that no one is laughing at her for having feline herpes virus in her eyes, and providing [moist] warm flannel to apply to Bianca Castafiore's inflamed throat.

Dobby is watching me like a hawk, but not lifting a paw to help.  Buddy is watching my every move as well, believing that I have plastic bags of frozen shaved tuna flakes stuffed in my bra or taped to my lower leg.

Oh, yeah, my leg is leaking again.  I see MDVIP Go-To-Guy this afternoon to find out, possibly, why my right hip has gone to hell.  He can check out the leak and also advise me whether the pain in my chest might kill me, maybe sometime before ManorFest 2012 Prep goes into high gear.

Recipes, people, I need recipes -- what can you do with endive?

The Transit of Venus (Monica Young)

Posted By Monica Young**, May 17, 2012 on Sky and Telescope: The Essential Magazine of Astronomy

**I am an astronomer turned science writer, currently interning at Sky & Telescope. Among other things, I have written for Penn State's media relations office, the Association for Women in Science (AWIS) magazine, and weekly blog posts at http://starsandspice.tumblr.com. I have also volunteered for numerous outreach programs, including regular planetarium shows at Penn State for 2nd-8th graders. (Questions from the 2nd graders were the best!)

Though the transit of Venus is viewable for several hours across much of the globe, the complete transit can only be seen near the Pacific — i.e., Hawaii, Alaska, Australia, and parts of Asia, unless you take to the sea. So if you don't want to miss a wink of this last-in-our-lifetime event, check out some of the live feeds below that will be available from around the world.

• Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter will broadcast video of the transit livestarting at 2pm MST (one hour before the transit starts).
  
  


• Astronomers Without Borders will broadcast a live webcast, hosted by president Mike Simmons.


• The Exploratorium will show a live feed of the transit, with commentary every 30 minutes.
  
  


• NASA TV will host a NASA Edge program covering the transit livefrom Mauna Kea, Hawaii.


• The SLOOH Space Camera will broadcast the transit of Venus livefrom locations around the world, starting at 6p.m. (EDT).


• Researchers from University of Barcelona's Department of Astronomy and Meteorology will broadcast the transit live 
  from the Arctic Svalbard archipelago, the northernmost part of Norway.


• The Kwasan Observatory will air the transit live from Japan.
  
  


• The Appalachian State University will stream a live feed from one of its 11-inch Celestron telescopes.


• The Bareket Observatory will broadcast the latter part of the transit live from Israel.


• The Sky Watchers Association of North Bengal (SWAN) brings you a live feed of the hydrogen-alpha sun.
  
  


• The Planet Hunters (part of the Zooniverse citizen science project) will be broadcasting a live feed from their website.


• Columbus State University's Coca-Cola Space Science Center will be broadcasting the transit in many different wavelengths using hydrogen-alpha, calcium-K-line, and white-light solar filters.

If you or someone you know is hosting a live feed online, let us know and we'll post it here!

More transit coverage: See This Week’s SkyWeek Video Your Viewing Guide to the Transit of Venus June 5-6’s Transit of Venus Will You See the Black Drop? Safe Sun Viewing for the Transit Time-Traveling Transit How to Photograph the Transit

A choice between the known and the unknown? O cheer up!

Hello, All You Beautiful People, You!  I'm about to post a downer -- I know, I know:  Shock of Shocks, Yawn, and Yaddas Supreme.  Pick yourself up off the floor.  Not this bit of writing, this one is safe.  I am taking a break from the upcoming pouting and emotionally manipulative depressive blog post so as to prepare ye, prepare ye... its way.

It behooves those of us who are occasional (or inveterate)  DownWard LifeLiving Bloggers (you should try *that* yoga position first thing in the morning -- after two peach yogurts and a 16 ounce coffee) to warn readers, even when readership numbers are in decline.  Warn them with words, sure, but no one is reading!  So draw them a picture, right? But Google emits a spine-jarring alarm when I upload Rothko-ripped-off watercolors or scan my finelytraced but thick-lined Manga comic strips.

I'm just trying to warn these good folk that gushy, heartfelt stuff will be posted later today.  I had it already written and ready to post, but then saw the video of John Edwards' l'il mea culpa, complete with wavering voice and perfected accent, his damnable reference to children.  Personally, I was way releaved to learn that he was responsible for his sins, and not me, or his parents, or his personal progeny, or the odd John-Edwards-needin' street urchin -- any of "us" dead or alive, acknowledged or unacknowledged. Heck, he even successfully buried the distinctions between the known and the unknown.


Published on May 31, 2012 by AssociatedPress

Well, his parents look pretty darned wiped out, but John Edwards is right:  God is in no way through with him.

Jesus H. Christ.  The television Talking Head just informed me that a 7-year-old and a 12-year-old boy both hanged themselves due to constant bullying.  Not together, silly, not even in the same burgh.  One was made fun of because of his height and because his father was dead.  The Head that is Talking made a smooth segue by mentioning his network's immediate investigation into the rarity of kids that young offing themselves.  He and his network were comforted to learn it was rare, "rare, indeed."  Well, dip my paci, my binky, my suckaroo in some milky bourbon and give me a soft yoga mat to curl up on for nap time.

I'm doing a great job.

Do I have to be a Young Poet for Rainer Maria Rilke to have been speaking to me?  It's not that I need motivation;  It's really, and I'm sure you'll agree, quite the opposite.  If I could not write, would I die?  Of course I would! What a silly, silly question.  That's mostly Rilke's value to Kappus -- you silly, silly baby you, you keep asking the wrong questions, or keep lobbing the same awful ones back to my impenetrably strong backstroke side, inviting that occasional sharp, inevitable down-the-line winner.  (You don't believe that Kappus published ALL Rilke's letters, do you?)

It's snobbery, pure and simple.
Facile snobbery, too, which means it's even more insulting than your average elitism.

Oops.  I forgot.  I'm here, now, as are you, now, in order to feel better in advance of... well, whatever comes next.  So, here, Friend, have some beatitudes, fill in the holes, the lacunae, of sin.  There's no better chin-chucker in the world than a good, top-eight beatitude.  Eight voids, all shoveled in, dirt matched in color and texture to the surrounding grains, four evils, four sorrows.  The seven deadly sins are more familiar, the tune catchier, but who the heck wants to be belting that out on their death bed, or even in the shower?  So pay attention, believe, and for God's sake, cheer up.

Uploaded by lanningck on Sep 17, 2010

29 attempts to pick up 1 peanut

I have not been posting because even mine own ennui has become boring.  Not worth a groan, an utter waste of a moan.  An insult to adjectives, a baseball bat to the knees of my home-grown adverbs, really culled from your community gardens, picked wet with dew, the gourd mature yet not so large as to be tough, too seedy, but packaged under my name -- printed on squares of cellophane, attached with high tech red rubber bands.  Eggplant, cucumber, climbing the vine beans, I want them tender.

Surgery has been put off a bit, again, this time until June 18, something to do with giving more time to yet another humeral fracture to heal.  I don't know where they're coming from, these breaks.  Fred doesn't beat me about the upper arms. Marmy Fluffy Butt has stopped gnawing in an ill-advised attempt to strike tuna in my marrow, and terror in my heart.

I think a lot about dying.  That's right:  the height of ennui.  Fred even said, "I feel like I am just sitting in this chair waiting to die."

These are the dangers of days so hot and humid that we lose hope and our buttocks carve our cushy futures into the cheap styrofoam of way past cool paisley wing chairs and roll-about PETA-sanctioned pleather office furniture.

Between now and June 18, I need to have my right hip evaluated.  Maybe it'd be more accurate to say "located," because I swear it's gone off again, road-trippin'.  It was on my list of things to do, right after "everything else." However, it seems that during my ICU psychosis, I went on and on and on about how effing much my hip hurt.  To ShoulderGuy OrthoWizard, no less.  At a recent meeting, he intoned (and intoned is the only verb that works here), "I was very angry with you for not telling me about your hip."

Far be it from me to avoid repetitive testing that will clarify nothing, eat the stray orts of my checking account (influence of NYT Cross Word Omnibus) from among the other detritus seeding my dirt-strewn floors, or just shout out about insanity, frustration, pain, and crap like biofilm infection....

Good news?  The clonazepam is greatly helping quell the spaz attacks.  I am down to about one visit from the automatic shimmies a day.  The cost is worth it -- I feel very sedated.  Word is, though, that I'll adjust.  Even if I don't, even if I sort of slant-smile and fail to blink my way through religious services and medical appointments, that's fine with me.  God, or someone, finally took me seriously -- I cannot tolerate the dystonia, the jerks, the nadir of me.  Thank you, God, or someone.

There have been some supremely funny moments here at The Manor.  The telecommunications installer who couldn't stay because he was allergic to cats, forgot the protective cones to.... protect himself, and failed to bring the necessary equipment as detailed in the work order... which he'd love to go over with us but he was starting to itch and did I have any Benadryl?  The third instance in as many years of a person asking me if I knew their friend X, who was also in a wheelchair.  My 29 attempts to pick up a peanut off the floor using one of my new grabbers.  I mean, seriously, who keeps going after, say, the fifth time?

Oh, and the doctor whose name I did not recognize from his $1300 bill.  Something made me check his licensure status.  License?  What license?  Absolute giggles set in when I noticed that my insurance company paid his claim, in its entirety, without batting a corporate eye.

just a few of the available assistive devices.
29 attempts, people, to pick up a freaking peanut.

I'll try to write more, and better, soon.

Nigel Graham singing to find the lost

Published in Sunderland Echo on 17 May 2012 [Twitter: @janethejourno ]

A WASHINGTON [UK] songwriter is continuing his quest to help families of missing children around the world.

Nigel Graham devotes his spare time to composing songs to help promote the search for missing people.

Now he has created a smartphone app which brings together all of his music and videos.

The technology – which can be downloaded to Android phones – is called Find Me Music and includes songs Nigel has written for missing British youngsters Madeleine McCann, Ben Needham, who disappeared from the Greek island of Kos and runaway Andrew Gosden from Doncaster, as well as Canadian Jessie Foster, who was 21 when she disappeared from Las Vegas, missing 10-year-old Lindsey Baum, from Washington in the US and Brenda Gomez, a Mexican girl allegedly snatched seven years ago. [Emphasis mine]

The self-taught musician now receives appeals for help from around the world and has appeared on radio and TV stations internationally.

[...]

His next project involves a missing Italian youngster, Denise Pipitone, who vanished in 2004.

Speaking about his work, he said: “I feel good about helping people and families all over the world.”

Busy Nigel, from High Usworth in Washington, has also created a best-selling iPhones ring tone, which can be used by worried parents to alert children that they need to answer their phone urgently. He has also composed four pieces of music for International Missing Children’s Day on Friday, May 25.

Last year, in an interview with the U.K.Examiner's Jerrie Dean, she asked him how he chose whom to write songs for.  This was his reply:

Nigel Graham:  Over the four years, I have had many requests from YouTubers and campaign groups to write songs for their causes; and I have declined, until this year.  I got into a conversation with David Rose from Fox TV’s, “Most Wanted,” and heard the Lindsey Baum story.  I saw her case was going cold.  Lindsey is from Washington, USA, and I am from Washington, UK.  I decided I was going to help, so I recomposed a song I had written and called it, "One Day Lindsey Baum."  Then a couple of YouTubers made Lindsey a video using the song, and the song was played on Fox TV.  Subsequently, I ended up doing an interview with them.

"greet the dawn with a breath of fire..."

this is pre-op week, and that means weirdness.  

scads of odd little details that are the world to me, yet barely fluff to the world, crowd my mind.

it's hard to know how to prepare for this surgery, so i wait for the lights to be safely out and i cry.  for five or ten minutes, then i stop and stare in the dark for a bit.  there is something wrong with the brain but i care less and less.

the anti-seizure properties or the anti-anxiety components of clonazepam are helping a lot with the spasticity, for which i am profoundly grateful.  if i can manage to get the doctors and nurses at the hospital to understand how it works together with baclofen and yes, even with tizanidine, then maybe there will be no stints in icu or trips to funky nursing homes this time.

pre-op week is always full of fun dialog, too.  this morning, i called one of the myriad assistants to my super surgeon, trying to track down the $2000 she wheedled out of me back in mid-january.  that was to have satisfied my deductible, and yadda.  except that it never was reported to my insurance company.  and, being odd and very touchy about funds, i have yelled, on several occasions, at other "providers" who seemed to be claiming the right to a piece of my delectable deductible pie.  anyway, the conversation boiled down to this:

ME:  i am trying to locate the $2000 i gave you back in january -- you know, find out how it's doing, is it happy, having fun..  i thought for sure it would write but i've not heard a word.
ASST:  we probably used it to pay something.
ME:  probably so!  i'd just like to know what, and when, and all that stuff, as i cannot locate the EOBs that usually go hand-in-hand with all that glee...
ASST:  o! you know what?
ME:  no!  what?
ASST:  we only needed $170 of that money and then they said you was covered at 100%
ME:  super cool!  so where is the $1830 that was left over?
ASST:  well, now, we just found that out in february.
ME:  and it's now mid-may... your point?
ASST:  can i get back to you on that?
ME:  you may, indeed  and i really, really want you to feel free to leave a voice message.


pre-op week is just fun, and foolish, for whatever reason.  it's hard to whip up the frenzy necessary for good reportage, so i'm gonna ask that you reread Dr. Hackenbush! Calling Dr. Hackenbush!  in that post i recorded one of  my favorite conversations from the medical intake process that makes it such a favorite activity for nurses and patients alike:

Here is a sample of our stellar communication, verbatim:

The Nurse: When did you last have an EKG?

Me: In August, the last time I was here. 

The Nurse: And when was that? 

Me: In August. 

The Nurse: And where can we get a record of that? 

Me: Ummm, here? In my medical records? (See? She managed to get to me -- my "intonation ascendante" is a dead give-away. Ar! I used to get hit on the head with a ruler whenever my "intonation ascendante" gave way. What was that dear old teacher's name? I can't remember, but I loved him...) 

[Choo choo! Train of thought! Choo... Back to the scene of the crime... ] 

Me: Ummm, here? In my medical records?

The Nurse: Hmmm. Maybe in your medical records.

so, yes, i am here begging indulgences.  your indulgence.  i find it hard to remember the day of the week, i am unsure whether the 12-hour clock is a good idea, and i am sort of shaking in my non-existent boots.

i will lose my left shoulder and the upper part of my left arm next week,

i still look to the amazing young hannah for inspiration and to stir the cauldron of my shame.  she is doing great with her physical therapy, and just prior to starting a new round of chemotherapy last week, she began the process of getting her fancy-schmancy new prosthetic leg. i love looking at this picture: she makes me smile, she makes me have hope for the future, her own, and everyone in her general proximity.

what super surgeon's plan will be should he open me up and find more infection (as unlikely as *that* would be, SNORT!).  he confessed to not having a clue but opined strongly against tossing in a third prosthesis... although the situation might cry out for yet another antibiotic-laced spacer.  and another surgery.

i am downright stupid.  for some reason, i thought making this brave decision to opt for the flail arm meant that the infection and inflammation would stop.  duh. no, i get to be brave and fight a good fight within the confines and confections of the identical situation.  the up-side is that should we ever get a handle on those wile e. pathogens, there's an improved chance of annihilating the suckers using some box of combustible supplies forwarded by acme corporation.

me and my deals with god.  harrumph.

today?  today i took a pre-dawn shower, and cooked up what can only be called "a mess" of brown rice.  it is destined to be a homey, comforting rice pudding for fred and the militant existentialist lesbian feminists pot luck wednesday night supper.  for some reason, they think it becomes health food if made with brown rice. whatever.  militant existentialist lesbian feminists -- and fred -- become all cute and stuff when their pupils dilate at the sights and sounds of comfort food.

the felines are fine.  okay, well, buddy has been a bit traumatized.  first fred dropped a heavy ceramic bowl full of kibble on his fine head.  and then i did it the next day.  so the poor little guy, who is always hungry, looks skyward with both fear and hope.  we tried to explain and apologize but we don't speak cat.

i need some pain meds and for my legs to be elevated, and to weep a little.  (oy!)  so i will write at you later, dear reader.

They're back...

The lovely literates over at American Idyll are back from their pilgrimage, and with beautiful  evidence.  I will steal two photos from ruuscal and two photos from TW to whet your whistle.  Wet your whistle? Rev up the appetite?

Hold the breath.
Laugh.
Imagine.

CONFUCIUS AND MENCIUS TEMPLES FROM WHITES BUTTE

-local flora

whipple cholla

elvis, doing his thing

The Canyon and the River are not theirs to own, of course, and both might argue that the images begged taking -- still, credit them their eye, their availability, their joy, their fun, Elvis, and Poncho.

Give the boys their due, is all I'm saying.

Smooches galore, you two (three, four?).  Cheerios and fruitloops!

Love from the Marlinspike Hall Gang

To Wet (Whet) your Whistle : Origin and Meaning

What does it mean if you wet your whistle?
The most common interpretation is to have something to drink, usually something alcoholic. More polite to say you are off to wet your whistle than to say you are going drinking.
Most references relate to a custom quite a few hundred years ago when drinking mugs had whistles that one would blow to indicate you needed a refill.
Some say the whistle was attached to the handle and became wet after the drink had been poured, hence to wet your whistle.
Other sources say the whistle was part of the mug, built into either the rim or handle. The result in both cases being a wet whistle. I went digging on the web and could find no example of Ye Olde Whistle Mug. Maybe I did not dig deep enough. The only examples I could find were replicas of whistle mugs on offer as curios.
By the way, the whistle part. It would appear in times past ones mouth and or throat were referred to in common talk as your whistle, which makes sense to me. To wet your whistle was to have something to drink. There is documentation that this was in use during the 1300’s. ( Maybe one wet ones whistle before you whistled, hard to whistle with dry lips. Maybe one wet your whistle before talking, something like a glass of water on a speakers table)
So, the way I look at it, is that to have something to drink preceded the whistle on the mug concept. Maybe the one morphed into the other.
You will also find references to “Whet your whistle”. My immediate reaction was that whet morphed into wet over the passage of time. This is not necessarily true.
Whet per definition means either to sharpen something on a grindstone (whetstone) or to excite or stimulate a desire, interest or appetite. Starters at a meal are there to whet your appetite in stimulating the desire to eat more of something else. This is also a saying in its own right, first documentation however quite a few years after the Wet your whistle.
I did a very unsophisticated test on the Internet and Googled “wet your whistle” and had 426,000 hits, the majority directed towards drinking. “Whet your whistle” resulted in 421,000 hits, the majority of the answers related to stimulating further thought or experience processes.
Now you have a good basis to go scratching around for more information and draw your own conclusion.

Alacrity of Crab and No Fear of Death

Set your sound system to mute.  I was thinking more of what Holly Near once looked like, on the steps of Sproul Plaza, than of the song, which I now realize that I hate.  It's a facile, good-for-nothing song.  And I'm just lazy enough not to want to spend five minutes reformatting this award-winning little vid so as to get rid of it.  

Plus, I have Cajun Blend Trail Mix seasoning stuck all over my fingertips, making them sticky, orange, and tangy.  I don't want to touch too much stuff, leaving cajun traces every which where.

Why don't I just wash my hands, spend the few minutes fixing the sound, and apologize to Holy Holly Near?  Well, who died and left you in charge?

There has been something potentially wonderful going on.  It's called clonazepam, and depending upon whom you ask, it is used to treat dystonia, anxiety, seizures, panic attacks, and insatiable lusting after good garlicky pickle juice.  I began noticing it being mentioned in articles about CRPS spasms/dystonia, mostly articles originating in the U.K.  Being at that "well, why the hell not?" stage of life, I emailed my good and faithful MDVIP physician, asking whether he thought it worth a try.  In lieu of a discussion, he called in a prescription to the Lone Alp Apothecary.

The first change of note was blubbery.  Babalushka bablubbery.  Sleeping as if it were le dernier cri and all the babalushka bablubbery surrounding it were refined messes worthy of literary awards.  I decided this was how I wished to die -- asleep, or contemplating sleep.  I kept all my other meds the same -- maxed out on Baclofen, even adding the odd tizanidine to the usual pain meds of methadone and endocet.  "Did I want to die?" you unsufferables are muttering, shaking your locks to-and-fro.

Why, yes, you unsufferables (and mutterers, too) -- I did hope to traipse off to death land.  I couldn't take it anymore.  The time awake was spent in rocking, tendon-splitting spasm, uncontrollable sobs that bored even the Feline Remnant.  The time asleep ordered itself around oneiric alphabetizing of what I could expect upon waking.  And upon waking?  Well, I was made to know that I was... "overwhelming." 

I put a lot of hope in an appointment chez Dr. PainManagementDood.  I know, I am stupid.  My previous appointment, to my recollection, had ended with the promise that the next one would entail a shift away from methadone, which, frankly, frightens me, and toward a better management of my baseline pain.  But -- AGAIN -- I was met with a Nurse Practitioner's big round eyeballs, and a "Uh, did we say we were going to do that?  Did you tell us your pain was out of control?  Can we take that up next month?"  I went home and vomited

So slipping away into babalushka bablubbery was a smiling, gently smiling thing, though lonely, and scary.

Then my spasms decreased in frequency.  Not in severity, ugliness, painfulness, no -- just stopped happening as much, as often.  I pushed the dosage of the clonazepam to the most recommended by good MDVIP go-to-guy, and cut back some on the baclofen.  

I started to be able to predict the babalushka bablubbery, so that a warm quilt could be at the ready, other important maintenance drugs could be taken on schedule, the room could be darkened, there was a semblance of... intent.  Occasionally, I risked thinking beyond the impending babalushka bablubbery, and plan to cook dinner for Fred, myself, and Bianca, because if I had to listen to that god-forsaken *ding* of the microwave one more time, I was going to revive Mengele's most promising experiments.  The secret lore of the Haddock clan includes the updated names and addresses of Auschwitz twins.  Sometimes, Reader, looking the good captain Archibald in the eye is a soul-sucking trauma.

It's been about a week now, I think.  I am not sure, at all.  I am not sure what day it is, not sure whether I believe the sources that yearn to ease my mind about it.  Is it 2:07 PM 5/18/2012 or is that just what you all want me to believe?  Hmm?  My pain level is very, very, very high -- I'd rank it around a nine, and it's distracting, it's evil.  I know I took my breakthrough pain medication and so cannot have more until roughly 7 PM.

The spasms are lasting only about 3-4 hours per day.  That is PER DAY.  TOTAL.  I am afraid to type it, afraid to publish it, afraid to believe it.

So God bless MDVIP Go-To-Guy, God bless him as he has never blessed a soul before.  You see, he believed me, he believed my desperation, he found merit, apparently, in my suggestion, and above all, Sweet Reader, he tried.  

He even heard me when I said I'd had it with Dr. PainManagementDood, and suggested another doctor, by name.  Unfortunately, that doctor has gone the route of ka-ching::ka-ching procedure land, and so only treats CRPS with sympathetic and regional blocks.  Oh, and SCS -- which would fly in the face of my recent decision to rip from my body all extraneous implants.  

Here is the kicker, though:  when he found that his referral was actually no referral at all, MDVIP Go-To-Guy offered to take over my pain management himself.  I probably should have said "Yes, and yay!" but a smarter self intervened to thank him but decline.  It's beyond unfair, to dump everything on him.  The current climate of looking over prescriber's shoulders and second-guessing their pain management decisions is not what I want to wish on him -- though there is little doubt my treatment would raise more than an odd and poorly tweezed eyebrow.

But here is a "Yay" for the man, anyway, because the combination of tizanidine, baclofen, endocet, methadone, and CLONAZEPAM seem to have quelled the spasticity enough that I must reconsider life.

Um, it also seems to have triggered something that I will call "automatic eating," which results in finding half empty yogurt containers in bed, and bowls of popcorn with kernels all hither, all yon.

There are increasing deficits, too, and these are the reasons for cutting back on dosages in the hope of finding a happy medium.  Legs not working too well, hands not grabbing with the alacrity of crabs. An absolute absence of the fear of death.

Someone asked for a visual update of hands and feet, so I pieced together the video below.  Again, I had fun with favorite things in juxtaposition.  

Which brings me back to Holly Near and her glorious red hair back in the mid-eighties, being all troubleshooting troubadour-ish on Sproul Plaza.  But really, what a shit of a song.

You know it and I know it -- were we really singing for our lives, it wouldn't be such a whine.  It'd be glorious.  It'd be red hair glinting in a setting sun.