too many words

in my previous post, i was unduly cavalier about my odd relatives.  my first electronic act upon getting home from the hospital friday evening was to jot down [or laboriously peck out on my lilliputian keyboard] an email to the best brother-unit a sister could wish to have. that's right, i found myself unleashing a week's worth of pent up emotion all over sweet Grader Boob -- the self-imposed and preferred nickname of my english professor sibling, forever wading his way through a swampy, gassy pool of purported essays and research papers.


he's been in the game a good 30 years, has Grader Boob, and still spends 45 careful minutes on 2-3 page bits of underclass erudition.  he provides the most helpful and attentive commentary these youthful writers are likely to ever receive. i'm not saying that 'cause he's my brother-unit;  i'm also saying that because his standards are not simply maintained over Lo, These Many Years, they are, if anything, more stringent.  it's a sign of hope for those of us who aren't as convinced of a cheery future based on what we witness in the classroom. 


you know, stuff like having your hip broken by a student because you were the only physical barrier to his escape from the police officer hot on his heels. and having your students steal your walker when you make it back to work after the hip replacement!  stuff like that.


yeah, i dunno why, but that large "instance" keeps coming back to haunt me and will always inform my assessment of today's yutes.


of course, that was my experience at the level of high school instruction.  there weren't, thank goodness, any corresponding moments of physical violence in my 19 years of university teaching.  


no, those years had other offerings designed to maintain a steady state of depression. 


you know, stuff like having college freshmen and sophomores assert that the crusades date from the early 1900s -- before the american civil war of the 1950s -- and after world war II, that awful conflict of the mid-nineteenth century.  this academic high point occurred during my oh-so-brief stint as a latin teacher.  decades of research in determining pedagogical best practices have shown that the intermingling of disciplines, in this case ancient history and classics*, leads to student confusion and decades of lower back pain.

* in case you were wondering just what sort of radical latin class i was conducting by my unreasonable expectation that tomorrow's leaders might see parallels between humanity's tedious insistence on holocausts in various guises across time... it was a freaking warm up exercise designed to seamlessly review a few expressions with bellum and to introduce a short essay assignment.  instead, my brain exploded.  for those of you interested, these chestnuts were to be the inspiration for those 2-3 sentence-long masterworks:

bella horrida bella  (Virgil)

bella detesta matribus (Horace)

bellum omnium in omnes

bellum domesticum 

Ibis redibis nunquam per bella peribis (Oracles of Dodona) [a teacher's favorite, this one]

honestly, i've no clue why my mind went on this bender but, as you know, the guiding philosophy here at elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle is "whose blog is it, anyway?"


i blame everything on the nefarious influences of Grader Boob.  


has he made any suggestions to moi-même, as to how my writing might be improved?  yes.  one suggestion, repeatedly -- making me worry over the possibility of early onset dementia.


hmmm?  what?  oh... right!  "too many words."  

***  **  ***  **  ***  ***  **  ***  **  ***  ***  **  ***  **  ***  ***  **  ***  **  *** 

hi boob,

i spent the week in the hospital and am in a foul mood.  

you have been warned.

it was awful but could have been much worse.  i had the headache from hell, nausea and vomiting, topped off with more of a fever than "normal." called my MDVIP go-to-guy doc last saturday, taking care not to phone until he'd had time to get home after temple.  even though he encourages patients to call whenever there's a real need, i hate messing with anyone's sabbath.  god might get pissed.  so go-to-guy answered on the second ring and informed me he had just arrived in barcelona, to which i replied, "but you can still call in a prescription, right?"  


[i came close to demanding why he had not been available six hours earlier, that being the time differential between tête de hergé and spain, but managed to hold my tongue.]


so that's why his partner, dr. k, was on call when i decided i couldn't take this particular constellation of symptoms any longer.. then dr. k's aunt up and died and he flew off  to new york, making the time differences for my doctors simply untenable -- fred put one watch on each wrist but that only made things worse. 


i booked passage on the queen mary, anxious to keep up with the jet-setters in a manner befitting my socio-economic realities. but due to partner-man's in-flight telephonic insistence, we ended up at st. jo's emergency room instead.


why, yes!  that *is* the very same hospital what gifted me with crps to begin with, by a well orchestrated Sentinel Event back in 2002. had i lost my mind, returning to the scene of their crime?  well, yes, i suppose i had lost my mind... to a mother of a headache (imagine me, whimpering while rocking back and forth, to and fro...) and several days of high fever and nausea.  he tricked me, that wily partner, into expecting just a bag or two of fluids and some cortef.  


they wouldn't release me, of course, and as i was being wisked around the corridors and back alleys of that infernal place,  i decided to keep an open mind and a closed mouth... 


...until i couldn't any longer.  i managed four whole days without a single smart-assed comment, without any hint of the fear for my life that emerges whenever i'm within a nautical mile of that place.  did the fact that i was under a gag order by their risk management department legal eagles assist me in holding my tongue?  nope.  forgot completely about it.  fred's eyes bugged out.


how am i to remember that the murderous staff there cannot be held in any way accountable for their crimes against humanity? let's review, darling boob:  pounding head, empty and spasming stomach, high heat, extreme pain -- much of that pain from the pre-existing crap for which they are largely responsible -- adrenal (and renal!) insufficiency, lupus, avascular necrosis, osteomyelitis, and a partridge in a pear tree.  i think four days was admirable.


i strongly suggested discharge home to the hospitalist who rounded this morning. the bottom line?  despite kidney and sinus infections that were piddly and refusing to grow in cultures (that's my leitmotif), the ID docs decided it was my left shoulder at fault and ordered a CT scan of the whole area -- head, left shoulder, kidneys, hips, the squatters in my estomac, etc.  they even seemed to have clear ideas of why the pus in my shoulder wouldn't grow in the lab -- blaming the phenom on one of two sort of ordinary bacteria that have become resistant to antibiotics. since i am immunosuppressed, these average-joe sorts of bugs can be a problem. not the zebras doctors have been chasing for the past three years, but good old pedestrian plow horses.   


so we were all anxious to get the CT results.  i actually entertained thoughts of getting cured of these accursed bone infections! drum roll, please... because radiology, despite discussing the areas to be scanned with me, despite the written orders, despite doing preliminary imaging to make sure all was fine... radiology reported that they failed to scan the left shoulder.  


remember the port i had put in some time in march, before the ketamine infusions?  well, it has never been accessible for blood draws.  fine for infusions, but not available for anything else.  [grrr.]  the nurses, in attempting to explain to ID why some labs were not done, blamed the confusion on a member of the "iv team" who was supposed to draw the blood from my port...  i may have, kind of, sort of, sat there like a silent lump while the lying liars lied.  


yes, scientific method remains at its finest at st.jo's;  the brainiacs are still at the wheel.  


the thing that sent me over the edge, however, was the damned rsd/crps.  


fred and i have tried every trick we can think of, from making cute little signs for the bed, distributing informational fliers, having doctors write entries in the chart,  putting notes on the door, even suggesting it as a great topic for an in-service, etc. 


all we are asking is that folks not touch my legs and ask before touching my hands.  we have never had a positive response.  tell a nurse (or doctor or phlebotomist or tech) not to touch and you engender, apparently, that very urge in them.  the unfailing pattern:

me:  please don't touch my legs.  thanks!

health care professional:  of course not! [pokes at feet in order to feel pedal pulses, grabs calves for some unknown reason]

me [from the ceiling]:  DON'T TOUCH MY FREAKING LEGS!

health care professional:  you don't have to get nasty.  all you have to do is tell me nicely, profderien. [hates me for the remainder of my stay]

common variations involve "oh, i didn't think you meant me" and "i can't help it if the stethoscope around my neck swings down and hits your feet."

very, very, very disturbing?  since the declaration by the state that their screwup in 2002 was a Sentinel Event?  i kind of thought they would know by now what CRPS *was*.  it was disheartening in the extreme to find only two doctors (the ER doc and an ID doc) and ONE nurse who knew that it is a central nervous system disorder involving severe pain, allodynia, movement disorders, etc. -- just, in general, what it is about.

everyone else said yes when i asked if they knew what crps/rsd was (i unpacked the acronyms for them as well).  these folks all proceeded to then do you know what, leaving me on the ceiling again...  i cried, not from the pain, but from pure sadness and frustration.  the doctor who was in charge kept telling me it was a combination connective tissue disorder and cellulitis.  she apparently wrote that in the chart and the nurses all thought it a great quote.

my favorite moment?  two nurses leaning over, their elbows propped on the the footboard of the bed, staring at my feet.  one of them has a big smile on her face, and keeps advancing her index finger toward my swollen, dark-purple and decaying right foot, saying, "i can't touch this, hmm?  what would happen? i seen this before, ms. profderien.  this here is cellulitis.  you got to keep it clean. what would happen if i touched it, hmmm? we need to scrub this foot." she actually winked at the nurse next to her.  yep, she's gonna wash off discoloration from lack of blood supply and i shall be cured by soap and water.  i confess:  i didn't bother with please or thank you, or if you don't mind... and went directly to cursing at her.

okay, i feel better now.  
i guess i let things build up a bit too much.
okay, so maybe tears are still running down my moon face.

the ID docs want me to see dr. d (ShoulderMan!) asap.  it just so happens that i had already made an appt for next week, because the shoulder was getting pretty awful.  the best advice, though, was "go where they know you, know crps, and until you get there here are some antibiotics, stay in bed, but come back to the ER for a fever of 100.5 or higher." 


at that moment, the tech came in to check my temp, and it was 100.7!  we all had a good chuckle and then i went straight home where i promptly threw my thermometer away.  really.  i did.

i wouldn't mind one bit being something of an ambassador for crps, because it is very odd and despite not being all that rare, is something rarely encountered by your average medico. i am, for instance, my MDVIP go-to-guy doctor's only crps patient in 30 years of practice.  so i had to become an expert -- a dread occupation -- in order to get any kind of decent care. now, of course, go-to-guy is a crps pro.  


but to discover that the hospital that compounded error upon error such that crps was the end result has not even taught the staff to recognize it during the nine years since the sentinel event... leaves me tired, depressed, destitute -- and angry.

so much so that my dear brother has to field another rabid communication in a litany of rabid communications.

fred has had it,  is very tired -- of me, of everything.  i don't blame him at all.  just wish i could just wish it all away.

let me know more about classes and your writers... are you enjoying the reprieve from freshmen? i wish you knew how good a teacher you are. 

love,

your sister-unit, the gimp

SENTINEL EVENT: “An unexpected occurrence involving death or serious physical or psychological injury, or the risk thereof.  Serious injury specifically includes loss of limb or function.  The phrase, 'or the risk thereof' includes any process variation for which a recurrence would carry a significant chance of a serious adverse outcome.  Such events are called 'sentinel' because they signal the need for immediate investigation and response.”

My apologies

Dear Readers, Friends, and Odd Family Members --

Well, that greeting sounded nice in my head... but I guess it is too full of assumptions.  Then, O Misery, I would have to explain those assumptions, and would lose all my "Readers," most of my "Friends," and definitely the majority of those oddities known as blood relations.

So I shall keep it brief.

I just got released from the hospital, an unexpected stay, to say the least.  Nothing was accomplished and despite days of truly dubious treatment, I am home feeling about as bad as I did seven days ago, when the detritus hit the fan.

O, how I love the Manor and all of its art and tapestries, its bizarre twists and turns and unexpected staircases.
O, how I love Fred.
O, how I adore the Domestic Staff, whether genetically pre-determined as Marlinspike Hall servants or whether servants by the exercise of good old fashioned Free Will!
O, how I prefer The Big Round Bed with my Big Old Quilts, washed into soft submission years ago.
O, how I missed the Feline Remnant... all three demanded immediate brushing and kisses.  It's nice to feel needed, no matter how that need comes.

But I did pick a nice title, I think.  I do apologize -- for neglecting visitors to elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle, and neglecting people I care about, the two sometimes not being mutually exclusive.

At least I can promise that my time spent attached to i.v. solutions and at the mercy of medicos was not a total waste.  I feel an onslaught of blog posts coming on...

Hillbilly Handfishin' and Some Good News for Kate! Woo Hoo!

Kate, 9.13.2011, "Waiting to hear..."

Good news for the McRae family and their many friends and supporters (We're everywhere!):  Daughter Kate's MRI yesterday was unchanged from the one in July.  Her mom Holly explains in her journal post on CaringBridge how difficult it is to plan treatment in this type of cancer after remission.  They've decided to continue her current chemo regimen for a year, contingent on continued good scan results.  Her next scheduled scan is in November.

Her father Aaron tweeted yesterday, as they faced the anxious period of waiting for results:

Hoping @hollymcrae and I can watch another episode of 

'Hillbilly Handfishin' to distract ourselves tonight!

{rolling::eyes}
Say it ain't so, Aaron and Holly, say it ain't so!

This whole family is on a journey and so here's a shout out to Kate's Most Excellent Siblings -- Olivia and Will.  Maybe the three of you can influence your parents' television choices?!  As always, Kate, you are very special and much loved by everyone here at The Manor.  Keep up the great work in school and at therapy.  I so much admire your good attitude, too, about chemo and all the testing, appointments and stuff.  My dear friends Captain Haddock and La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore are also big fans of you and your family, and want to send along their best wishes.  The Captain is thinking of naming his next miniature pink submarine The McRae, and Bianca loves to sing "Little Light" in the shower...




Uploaded to YouTube by Brian Wurzell on Jul 12, 2009

This song was written by Audrey Assad, a Nashville Singer-Songwriter, during an online Global Night of Prayer for Kate McRae. The lyrics came in one pass that night and the chords/melody came the following morning.

 Little Light

(Audrey Assad)

                                                                                                                                                 Look at all the angels watching you

They’re singing songs that we have never heard

Their voices ring like bells over the mountains

Oh, if only we could hear their words

God is near, little girl.

                                                                                                                                             Your eyes are brilliant, deep sky blue.

Your quiet wisdom is an evening song.

The angels must be breathless at your beauty

Like the world catches its breath before the dawn.

God is near, little one.

                                                                                                                                             And Jesus bends to hear you breathe;

His tender hands are holding you tonight.

His heart is ravished when you look at Him,

and oh, the endless mercy in His eyes;

God is here, little light.

a nod is as good as a wink

I have glaucoma that is advancing kind of fast -- and now cataracts in each eye -- so there are some unanticipated difficulties in day to day blog maintenance.  You may have noticed some odd things going on, font-wise, for instance!  Bizarre spacing strategies.  More than a few instances of original spellings!  After hours of messing around with formats and styles this morning, in a vain attempt to avoid doing anything of real consequence, I have hit on this font style as being easiest on the old eyeballs.  Even though a couple of people suggested color changes as well, probably because I've put together a pretty boring scheme, I am keeping a basic stark dark-on-white.  Still, the white background is a problem.  White and light are both my biggest visual challenges, really, and they only become more troublesome as the day progresses.  By the time I pack it in, usually in the wee hours, my vision fairly throbs from all the brightness.

I have built-in strobe!

For some reason, my ophthalmologist refuses to entertain any discussion of removing the cataracts.  You probably wouldn't believe me capable of tolerating obtuse and deflecting responses to my health questions, but you'd be surprised how fear can still the tongue.

The oft-mentioned MDVIP Go-To-Guy, a true Godsend, finally deciphered my frequent whine about the eye doctor, finally figured out how scary I find this ongoing loss of vision, and suggested a new specialist.

This change is not at all like yesterday's defection to a new cardiologist.  My former Heart Dude was and is simply outstanding;  It was his hospital affiliation that spooked me, not him.

Where does this guilt at changing doctors come from?  Why do I care what my ophthalmologist thinks of me, if he even does?  It's ridiculous, this ego-driven world view of mine.  We simply don't communicate well.

No, that's not true!

He ignores my complaints and will either talk over my questions or answer them with sarcasm that I just don't get.  Before every appointment, and Good Lord there have been enough of them, I would sternly tell Fred that "this time" I would not leave until I understood the "plan." About five years ago, the doctor made the only clear statement of intent that I can recall, saying that "[his] job is to preserve what vision [I] have."

Well, that battle has been lost!  I asked when he planned to remove the cataracts, and he answered with "Never, if I can help it."  That left me speechless but also finally motivated me to turn to Go-To-Guy.  In addition to refering me to a new dude, Go-To-Guy explained that glaucoma complicated the seemingly simple decision of how and when to remove a cloudy lens.

This is one area of my health concerns where I can be considered non-compliant and generally a rotten patient.  I had years to observe the stubbornness of my grandfather as he went completely blind from glaucoma.

One day, heh-heh, I should regale you with the stories of the Old Man firing a gun in the general vicinity of his brother-in-law, who had the unfortunate habit of belittling him.  People tended to allow his bullying, in large part because he was a wealthy old cuss, and without an heir.

I'm sure that, years later, when mean old James died, a lot of vague relations blamed their failure to inherit his millions on my blind gun-toting grandfather.

And it was something, too, to see him mow the lawn.  With a riding mower, without any discernible guide beyond his intimate knowledge of his own property.

He managed huge vegetable and flower gardens without apparent difficulty.  The only thing he clearly gave up was driving a car.

I am nowhere close to having his bravery or substance.

My failure to use the eyedrops designed to lower eye pressure is not a complicated behavior.  The whole issue scares me to death.  The drops may lower my pressures, but they also mess up my vision so much that I cannot function as a seeing adult -- can't read, can't write, can't watch television, play bridge, or make a discerning judgment based on the casting of one of Those Looks.  My eyes become red and irritated, the world shows up as a great big blur.  It's not even the kind of deficit where applying magnification has any effect whatsoever.  Granddad used to peer at the New York Times through binoculars.  That's not going to work for me.  I'd end up with magnified mess.

blah::blah::yadda::yadda

There is actually something else going on with these orbs but I cannot remember the term.  It has to do with the center part of my vision going to heck.  I take the stance of it-hardly-matters because I was told by Eye Guy that there was nothing to be done about it, sorry!  I was legally blind before being diagnosed with glaucoma and I guess that has given me a bit of fatalism over the whole business.

Predeterminism.

Defeatism.

blah::blah::yadda::yadda

If anyone out there has any expertise in layout/design with an aim toward ease on the eyes, particularly how to  handle disturbances that come from "halos" and distortions due to cataracts, please lay your opinion and advice upon me! Also, Eye Guy told me not to pay for new glasses, as my vision will be unstable for a good while... Is that right?  Am I just supposed to break out the Braille?

Jeez.

Me, and Damien Walters; Damien Walters and I!

parkour:  The art of moving through your environment as swiftly and effectively as possible using only the human body.

You should have seen me. You would have cheered.


It was the perfect storm of good things:  I slept an incredible four hours straight, enjoyed a balanced, rich cup of coffee in the predawn, then relaxed and laughed with the flitting, fighting chickadees.  


And, if I do say so myself, I was quite nattily dressed.


Yes, there were the normal oddities.  La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore was, inexplicably, curled up on the lower shelf of the kitchen block table, covered with an antique Point de Venise lace tablecloth.  Granted, she was sacked out in a kitchen that I don't normally use, as the replica of the Karaboudjan's galley is not my idea of the ideal place to prepare or consume food.  Still, for an early morning view of the cluster of spruce trees and the bud- and canker- worms so beloved by my beloved chickadees, nothing beats the view out of the galley's over-sized portholes.


Right. Well, anyway, things began well.  That's all I am saying.
I was feeling good; I was feeling lean and mean.


I had an early morning cardiology appointment and let's face it, early mornings are not exactly what we are known for around here.  Fred and I even retrained the circadian rhythms of all the livestock and domestic animals so that their days don't actually start until mid-afternoon.


Despite my penchant for equating left with west and north with straight ahead, we had an uneventful trip into Lone Alp. 

My MDVIP Go-To-Guy referred me to a new cardiologist this year.  It's not that the old one was in any way not a great doctor, he was.  Is.  No, it is more, for me, that I just cannot tolerate dealing with anyone or anything associated with the CrapAss Hospital that has so contributed to the demise of my earthly usefulness.  Not that I've given that much thought or anything!  


I remember, in fact, my Former Cardiologist with great affection, for he once told me that I would not die so long as he was taking care of me.  I loved that brash idiocy.


Unfortunately, ever since he actually had the chance to snatch me from the jaws of death, he has been caught up in the evil machinery of CrapAss Hospital.  Because of the great Shoulder Adventures of the last three years, I've only gone in to get an echo done, and only once, and did not deal with the doctor at all -- except to have one of his partners bless me out over the phone.  (When he was done blessing me out for having skipped a few echos, he told me not to worry about my aortic dilation blowing up, "because you will never see it coming...")


Oops!  Oh, well!


So we cruised into the Free Gimp Parking, gave Ruby the Honda CR-V a pat on the butt, and found the office with nary a wrong turn and not a bit of confusion.  [We don't do well in new office buildings.  Sometimes we duck into the first cozy looking waiting room and pretend we're in the right place.  It's usually the urologist's or the plastic surgeon's joint, though, and they catch on pretty quickly and toss us out.]


The New Cardiologist's place is incredibly well-organized.  I didn't realize how much I appreciated that until I was there, in the midst of streamlined forms and efficient people.  Everyone was so good at what they did, and they communicated!  Not just with me and Fred, but with each other.


Excuse my excitement.  Little things just send me!


Now... here is the part where it's all about me, and Damien Walters, Damien Walters and I!  That's this post's title, in case you've been distracted. 


I've long been a fan of parkour, then free running, free styling -- the martial arts, too.  As my body has crapped out and essentially imploded on itself, I've traveled beyond this body via the Internet and television, finally carving out for myself niches of the imagination.  


On one of my baseline days, I'll cue up the greatest of tennis matches, admire the most powerful and musical ballet dancers, and I let my body go.  It's enjoyment.  It's distraction.  For a few years, I could even pretend it was muscle memory!


On intolerable days, I might visit PopThatZit and replay Pete Popped a Pustulant Pimple ten times in a row... or I might not!  But I will *always* end up watching Damien Walters, usually his showreels, one right after the other.  I fly, jump, fall, push, pull, defy gravity and embrace gravity, all at the same time.  I feel no pain and my tendons never retract, my muscles never seize.  I'm lithe, light as air, fast as lightening.  Pliant, compliant, but steel, I am jiu-jitsu.


When I was escorted back to the echo room, this morning, the first thing that jumped out at me was the behemoth of an exam table.  It looked as tall as a freaking elephant.


The nurse asked me if I could change into the gown on my own.  "Sure!" I said.  She asked if I could walk to the exam table.  "You betcha!" I crowed, adding, "I brought my magic cane, even. But then you are out of luck, because there's no way I can get *on* it." 


"Not even with this stepladder?  How about if I hold you up?  How about if you hang onto me?"


Because of the instability, swelling, and pain in my ankles, knees, and hips, I cannot step up or down.  The last time I tried to use one of those stepladders was in a radiology department and the tech did not entirely believe my protests that I couldn't trust my legs.  I ended up on the floor that day, and pretty mad about it, too.  I have fallen quite enough in this lifetime, thankyouverymuch.


She picked up the phone to call for the nearest Big Guy, so that my own petard could be hoisted...


But something of the spirit of Damien Walters showed up in me, today, unexpectedly.  I told her that, no, we would not be needing assistance, and that, yes, I could do this if she wouldn't mind parking my wheelchair somewhere out of the way once I vaulted out of it, pirouetted in midair, onto the beastie table.


She looked a tad bit skeptical.  She was staring at my legs and wincing.


It might have been choreographed by Balanchine.  Danced by Edward Villella.  You'd easily imagine that I was inhabited by Martina, Chris, Monica, Hana, and Steffi, tour à tour.  


But it was in every way inspired by Damien Walters.


I planted one leg here, the other there, becoming my own source of symmetry.  I plumbed the potential energy of every surface.  Briefly, I was here, then there, now attracted, now repelled.  Once, twice, I was standing --sideways -- on a cabinet.  Thereafter, I was free of surfaces altogether.


I usually crane my neck and nervously watch the progress of the echo -- it's kind of neat to see your heart as it beats, to listen to the woosh-woosh.  The nurse, after verifying that I had survived my feats of athleticism with bones and internal organs intact, was all business.  She reminded me that talking, coughing, and such interfered with the test, so I stopped talking, never coughed, held my breath when instructed, but mostly just ran Damien Walters' videos in my head.


In a first, I managed to crack up both myself and the test operator, and did, I guess, disrupt things.  They record the sounds produced by various parts of the heart, concentrating, I think, on the valves.  I heard a series that were familiar from past tests... and then, out of the blue, came what can only be described as Island Music.  "They're having a party in there!" came out before I could stop myself from talking.  Seriously, we are talking ukuleles, tambours, maracas, and seven kinds of guitars.  


Go, mine heart, go!


There were a few abnormal results from the echo, but none of them were new, none of them were worse, and one of them was actually better.  I'm really happy with this new place.


The nurse was on the warpath as we left, threatening to quit if she wasn't given an adjustable table for her echocardiogram patients, going on and on about some "debilitated" people of her acquaintance.  Whoever they are, I hope they get better soon.


And I hope the cardiologists keep that massively tall, unwieldy table, maybe tucked away in some storage room for when I come back next year.  


I haven't had so much fun in I-don't-know-when.

That would be heaven

I am having a weird day.  No, I don't feel like justifying either my definition of weird or exactly how any other day might be called less weird.

Part of the problem is that I am on a new medication that is kicking mine buttocks.  Of course, I looked it up, sure to find big old looming black-boxed warnings and pictures of necrotizing fasciitis -- only to find bolded and underlined reassurances as to how freaking mild a drug it is, how virtually no one has ever experienced even a twinge of a negative sensation from this pharmacological concoction (it's two, two, two drugs in one!).  Yes, according to my research, even an overdose is cause for balloons, cake, and karaoke.  The most severe reaction ever recorded?  A sneeze.

Me?  I've had the room go black three times since starting it yesterday morning.  You know, that lovely feeling of the lips going cold as vision fades and the floor rocks-and-rolls.  Given that the other endearing side effect is diarrhea, the fainting part -- from orthostatic hypotension -- is not much appreciated.  I don't stand very often... In fact, the only standing I do is when I take the perilous journey of five steps from wheelchair to toilet, or from door to bathtub, also about five steps.

I am a tough person.  I know that I have to give medicines a chance, have to allow time for adjustment, and so on, but I do get tired of the process.  There's little point in calling anyone, the situation doesn't demand a brainiac to decipher its intricacies, and besides, the prevailing attitude is that I can, and should, put up with most any physical./mental/emotional problem.  It's my lot.  It's the dealt hand.  It's -- well, you get it.

Since "we" are talking medications...

Twice yesterday my judgmental self went into overdrive over "wrong" attitudes.  Of course, in my present mood, an attitude that is wrong would be any attitude that deviates from my own, "right" one.  I need life to be simple for a day or two.

Let's see.  First, Fred came begging for tizanidine because he has a terrible backache.  That's fine -- he showed up begging because I suggested he take some of the drug to begin with.  I had given him about 10 or so a few months back, as his back has become more and more of an issue.  For Fred to make an issue of pain is an occasion of note, to be taken seriously.  Another important detail?  We are both, after our fairly extensive experimentation with recreational drugging as middle-aged youth, ardently against drug abuse and tend to undermedicate ourselves as a result.  In other words, I know that Fred would never wrongly or casually take medication.

But the boy does suffer from a sometimes severe case of ADHD, as well as living with the tough distractions that come from PTSD.  Organization is a constant struggle, memory more an ideal than a reality!

He moves around the Manor, showing me that he is actively searching for the aforementioned previously gifted bottle of tizanidine.  "Look," his actions cry out, "See me search?  See me search and not find?"

Rather than have *that* to watch all afternoon, I decided to gift him with some more tablets.  I was hurting rather awfully myself, had just put mine self in bed, and didn't want to move a single muscle.  So I asked him to bring me an empty pill bottle for the stuff...

He first brings an old pill cutter thingy that also has three compartments for pills.  The problem is, each compartment is full, occupied by previous pharmaceutical offerings on my part.  Me being me, each compartment is labelled, and none of the labels say "tizanidine."

"You actually expect me to mix tizanidine, a round white pill, in with this prednisone, also a round white pill?" Knowing, as you do, Dear Reader, that I am feeling pissy and that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool teacher-type, you can imagine the tone I adopted.  (Yes, I also find that tone repulsive.)

"Hmmm?  What?  Oh, yeah, that will be fine.  I'll remember the difference,"  he proffers, while staring distractedly at the Nadal-Roddick match on the telly.

Anyway, after I reject that idea, he repeats it... and later, when my own pain pills have kicked in, I give him a properly labelled, single-use bottle.  But I make a point of adding a review of all those bottles on his side of the Big Round Bed to my Long List Of Seemingly Pointless Tasks.  It scares me, the thought of him reaching for one thing and possibly ingesting another.

My other pet peeve is activated, usually, on the internet.  I am incredibly judgmental of "pain" patients when they allow their tone to become too casual in referencing opiates, or any other strong medication.  It's my contention that that very laxity is what can get us in trouble, perhaps addicted to opiates even when/if our condition improves.

Language *is* attitude.  So when I read "perks," in lieu of Percocet, or "meth" instead of Methadone, I respond pretty negatively.  To everyone rolling their eyes, I say that vigilance in these smaller reflections of larger attitudes is warranted.

Even writing "scripts" for prescription bugs me.  I'm hyper-aware, hyper-judgmental -- which is just as abnormal as romanticizing tablets and pills, but I'd rather be sick with an abundance of caution than sick with opiate withdrawal.  Oh, dear God, I will never forget the Great Jump Off back in May and June! Never, ever.

Along with an inevitable hardening of my arteries, I am experiencing a hardening of my heart.  On the one hand, I am generous and would do anything for a loved one;  On that other hand, I am amassing a disturbingly long list of things that I find notably distasteful.  I thought that the apotheosis of my propensity for Hate came with the cut-out picture of Jesse Helms (next to one of Augusto Pinochet) that was neatly held to my apartment door by the knife embedded in his forehead.

I was wrong.

I'd better change the subject.

I bought a vacuum cleaner.  Two vacuum cleaners, actually.  Sad to say, I am all a-dither over my purchase.  Once upon a time, I felt that way about a new pair of shoes, a dress, a book, a reliable source of endive, inexpensive printer ink, or a sale on my favorite tennis balls.

I spent about a week researching vacuums.  I engaged the dichotomy of canister versus upright.  I did Consumer Reports, I did customer reviews.  I gauged the importance of  pet hair;  I pondered the impact of noise on my hearing.

I role-played.  I envisioned.  I convened a Blue Ribbon Panel.

Vacuuming via wheelchair is different from doing it while standing.  That's pretty obvious! Also different is losing the use of one's shoulders and having diminishing strength in the hands.  Clearly, we needed lightweight sucking tools and maneuverability, simplicity.  Ah, but the first thing that goes, I found, when you push those requirements to the head of the list?  Power!  Effectiveness!

So... I dragged out the adage of my youth:  It only costs 10% more to go First Class (an adage not known for its accuracy).  A more popular variation:  You get what you pay for.

So, yes, I spent a small fortune on my vacuum duo -- being both a lightweight upright and a canister with on board tools.  Rave reviews from me on the upright -- and consternation on the canister. That will change into the anticipated joy once I figure out how to carry it.  I looped it around my neck yesterday and that was quickly very painful.  It was designed to be tossed casually over the shoulder, but that I cannot do, so... I will have to find an alternative method of canister vacuuming.

O, but it has a beautiful telescoping wand for easy clean-up of things like slats and air vents!  O!

Ideally, I'd have gotten cordless devices but cordless and power don't go together any better than my initial demands.  And in this instance, the problem isn't solved by spending more money.

I do have a point, in case you are bored with reading about my Hoovering prospects: I end up spending more money (and working harder at the task at hand) than able-bodied people in order to achieve the same boring, everyday results.  Because I cannot work, I have less money to begin with... And it just is pissing me off.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Is it living when, at the end of a long day, I reflect on its various hours only to discover that almost every moment was dedicated to the alleviation of, or distraction from, physical pain, a goal never actually accomplished, and forever put off to the next day?  I don't think so.  It's not the way I wish to live.

At least the available remedies aren't difficult to assemble -- suicide, asinine sublimation, or less-asinine sublimation.  Whatever I chose to do, I am either dead, essentially dead, or a living-falsehood-biding-its-time -and-wasting-everyone-else's-time-until-dead.

You know what would really improve the gimp-friendly high end vacuum cleaners -- until that glorious day when cordless cleaners truly are powerful enough to clean Marlinspike Hall's peculiar kind of filth?  If they were all equipped with retractable cords.  That would be heaven.

Out in it, Lost

This is the thirty-fifth post on this blog about missing child Lindsey Baum.  Now 13, she was 10-years-old when she went missing the evening of June 26, 2009 while walking the short distance home from a friend's house in McCleary, Washington, a small town west of Olympia.

It's probably only a slight exaggeration to say there have been no leads in the case.  Most of the press about Lindsey has come in the form of reward announcements (now $35,000) and commemorative events -- her birthdays, anniversaries of her disappearance.

There is no new information about her case except for the occasional weirdness contributed by internet "sleuths" -- like the forensic astrologists and the disturbing number of psychic crime fighters who don't seem to have a clue as to the damage they might cause.  I've lost serious sleep over some of their contributions, as they've been known to call/write in tips to law enforcement without including the elucidating tidbit that their information was obtained in a backwater séance conducted by a wannabe Miss Marple whose cusped ass is ascending in venetian retrograde.

One of the worst offenders is a warlock named Ren.  (Now that's a sentence I never thought I'd write!) Ren claims residence in Japan, or Seattle, whichever suits his warlocky mood.

Please note, I've nothing against Wicca, and a great deal for paganism, in fact.  (My Beloved self-indentified, once upon a time, as a Druid.  One of our first dates had for purpose my introduction to a certain tree he knew.)

In 2009, I'd never followed a missing child case before, not with any sense of personal commitment, and I tended to believe in the integrity of anyone I "met" who shared my interest in this lost little girl.  Yes -- even online. Call it an exaggerated extension of my own sense of virtue. This tendency has caused me a whole host of difficulties and despite being made to attend workshops like How Not To Be (Quite Such) An Idiot and So They Say You're Gullible! -- I've not made much headway into becoming Savvy.  You know, Perceptive.  Shrewd.

What is making me squirm right at this very moment is my desire to Show-and-Tell, to sit with my Respected and Respectful Readership and vent, saying, "See!  Would you just look at this crap?" It might make me feel less alone in this big warehouse crammed to the rafters with carefully folded, rolled, bagged, and labelled Remnants of Insanity.

[With the help of psychotherapy, I've traced my Insanity Imagery back to the traumas of my youth. When I was but a child of five, I participated in a three-day forced search for the perfect rug to furnish my grandparents' living room.  Dragged from one textile outlet center to another, pushed through a frenzy of opium-drenched bazaars, insidiously trained -- against my will -- to prefer antique silk or wool colored by natural vegetable dye, by the third day of my carpet enslavement, I distinguished Turkish Ladiks from Iranian Kashans, but did so without enjoyment and in near catatonia.  I learned, above all, that the purportedly loving and discerning adults of my sphere had been rendered completely daft, dotty, buggy, batty, bonkers by a bunch of carpet.]

Give me a moment.
I try to remember that these sordid events of my childhood are also the experiences that shaped me into the perfect Caretaker for the Haddock family ancestral manor -- my knowledge of textiles, no matter how horribly obtained, is matched only by my grasp of the history of ductile iron development.

Okay, let's move on, or return, rather, to the online underbelly of internet cause célèbres -- cases that are not confused by truth value or hampered by much reality.

What matters is that folks like Ren not have their nonsense repeated, especially in a forum designed for the sole furtherance of mine own ridiculousness. There are, also, responsible members of his "community" who have begun to take him to task, as thankless an endeavor as I can imagine:

I think you are just using her as a vehicle to promote your non-existent psychic abilities.
I don't believe a single word you have posted about your supposed involvement in the matter, mainly because you have not posted any evidence indicating it is anything but another one of your fantasies.

Suffice it to say that Ren sometimes asserts findings from his Remote Viewings that could ruin a person.  He dreams, intuits, and magicks lists of potential child kidnappers;  He publishes small facts about real people with real names, with addresses, with jobs and telephone numbers, with shoe sizes and religious affiliations, and, sometimes, with tender children of their own.  He dribbles someone's reality all over his virtual pages and then illustrates them with, say, a helpful Google satellite view of their neighborhood.

You pray that it ends there, but it never does.

In short order, some poor fool, a Gullible, if you like, stumbles upon Ren's assertions through a search for "Lindsey Baum." To Our Bewildered One, not privy to the post-upon-post and site-by-site build-up of Ren's psychic babbling, it might well seem that here was someone with an insider's access to information.  Finally, some details about this innocent child's disappearance;  Finally, someone to blame!  How very exciting, how easily repeated, how effortlessly transformed from Pure Detritus into Semblances of Truth.

It's a fascinating but ugly process, watching inanity be teased from such threads, slowly divorced from the original conning murky source.  A name catches on, an idea takes hold, fevered brains go to work... and within days there's been so much cutting-and-pasting, citing-and-conniving, that you could find a housebound home-schooling Mom in Tucson blogging in red-faced exasperation about Ren's "suspects" and how these Walking Moral Turpitudes have repeatedly lied to the police and totally escaped justice... Though when they find time for police interviews is hard to figure, given that the pediatric sex orgies in the half-finished basements of their double-wides cannot long be left unattended.

It's a wacky world, and Lindsey, in one form or another, is out in it, lost.

If you have any information regarding Lindsey Baum,

please call the Grays Harbor County Sheriff's Office

at 866-915-8299 [Tip Hotline].

NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING & EXPLOITED CHILDREN

1-800-843-5678 (1-800-THE-LOST)

McCleary Police Department (Washington) 1-360-533-8765

Or simply call 911.

From the Journal of Pain

The Specificity and Mechanisms of Hemilateral Sensory Disturbances in Complex Regional Pain Syndrome

Lone Knudsen , Philip M. Finch , Peter D. Drummond
Murdoch University, Perth Pain Management Centre, Perth, Western Australia

The Journal of Pain
Volume 12, Issue 9 , Pages 985-990, September 2011

ABSTRACT:
Hyperalgesia often extends from the affected limb to the ipsilateral forehead in patients with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). To investigate whether this is more common in CRPS than other chronic pain conditions, pressure-pain thresholds and sharpness to a firm bristle were assessed on each side of the forehead, at the pain site, and at an equivalent site on the contralateral side in 32 patients with chronic pain other than CRPS (neuropathic or nociceptive limb pain, radicular pain with referral to a lower limb or postherpetic neuralgia), and in 34 patients with CRPS. Ipsilateral forehead hyperalgesia to pressure pain was detected in 59% of CRPS patients compared with only 13% of patients with other forms of chronic pain. Immersion of the CRPS-affected limb in painfully cold water increased forehead sensitivity to pressure, especially ipsilaterally, whereas painful stimulation of the healthy limb reduced forehead sensitivity to pressure pain (albeit less efficiently than in healthy controls). In addition, auditory discomfort and increases in pain in the CRPS-affected limb were greater after acoustic startle to the ear on the affected than unaffected side. These findings indicate that generalized and hemilateral pain control mechanisms are disrupted in CRPS, and that multisensory integrative processes may be compromised.

PERSPECTIVE:  The findings suggest that hemilateral hyperalgesia is specific to CRPS, which could be diagnostically important. Disruptions in pain-control mechanisms were associated with the development of hyperalgesia at sites remote from the CRPS limb. Addressing these mechanisms could potentially deter widespread hyperalgesia in CRPS.

REFERENCES

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Earlier this year, in the fourth issue of Volume 12, Knudson and Drummond published this prefatory study investigating hemilateral mechanisms in pain modulation:

Cutaneous limb inflammation produces analgesia to pressure pain in the ipsilateral forehead of healthy volunteers
Knudsen L, Drummond PD.
School of Psychology, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia. Lone.Knudsen1@post.au.dk

Abstract
To investigate the pain-modulatory effects of a local inflammatory stimulus on pain elsewhere in the body, capsaicin was applied topically to the forearm of 14 healthy female volunteers. Pressure-pain thresholds and sensitivity to sharpness were assessed on each side of the forehead twice per day during 48 hours of capsaicin treatment, and in the treated and contralateral forearm before and at the end of treatment. Heat was applied to the treated area to rekindle pain at times of forehead assessment. Hyperalgesia to sharpness, but not pressure pain, developed in the treated area whereas sensations remained stable in the contralateral forearm. Sharpness ratings decreased bilaterally in the forehead after 6 hours of treatment, and ipsilateral analgesia to pressure pain developed in the forehead when the capsaicin site was heated after 48 hours of treatment. These findings suggest that pain modulation involves unilateral regulatory mechanisms in addition to local and generalized pain control. The dissociated changes to sharpness and pressure pain indicate distinct cutaneous and deep central pain pathways. PERSPECTIVE: The findings lend support to an increasing body of research which demonstrates that pain modulation involves hemilateral mechanisms in addition to local and generalized controls. Elucidation of mechanisms that modulate ipsilateral pain processing may help to clarify the pathophysiology of complex regional pain syndrome, which is characterized by hemilateral hyperalgesia.
Click HERE for References.

Sunday Morning

It's a scary thing, announcing that you've achieved some kind of relevance, and then offering as your first bit of evidence yet another piece extolling the virtues of hot heat applied to vegetable and animal flesh.  Okay, maybe "scary" is not the right word, just as more mushroom talk is not entirely appropriate, either.

Be these things as they may:



When your blood glucose reading is already low, and beginning to flirt with the concept of Plummeting, carefully prepare your perfectly seasoned black cast iron skillet  to receive the last two boneless-skinless-and-trimmed-of-excess-fat chicken thighs remaining in the refrigerator.  Salt them;  Pepper them.  Be liberal.

Sling them around a little on the cutting board while that pan gets so hot it would glow red if it weren't so black.  Get to know your chicken.

Just when you see the air start to shimmer, add a tablespoon or so of good olive oil.  If you're going to fret over how much oil to add, stop now and go find some other recipe to abuse.

Make yourself wait again, some more.  Squash any thought of caramelized onion or sweet red pepper.  Fuss at yourself.

Slap the chicken into the hot oil in the shimmering hot skillet, then don't touch it. Don't move it. Leave it the hell alone. Wait a minute or so -- in fact, yeah, wait exactly *90* seconds, then flip the bird parts, smartly, in one smooth move, and cover that sizzling mess tightly with foil.  Turn the flame down a bit.

Grab your mushrooms.  We only have big gorgeous button shrooms on hand.  I don't wash them.  Sue me.
They were large enough that, quartered, they were still meat-hunky.  How many?  That depends.  Today, I quartered six humongous mushrooms.  I didn't get 24 browned and caramelized mushroom pieces, though, so I must have either lied about quartering each piece o'fungus or I ate a few sections raw.  Or both.

Unseal the magic skillet, flip the bird again, toss in the mushrooms, seal it back up.  Again, refrain from touching the chicken.  Count the number of times you have chicken contact since it met up with the skillet -- to this point, three spears with a fork's tines.  That's it.

Learn not to touch the mushrooms, either.  Don't sprinkle them with special fruity vinegars or provide a nearly invisible crust of sugar.  Not necessary.  Hot hot hot heat and good fat, basic seasoning.  The side of the mushroom that touches the skillet is undergoing a transformation that reduces wide-eyed references to butterflies to annoying dead butterfly powder.

Try not to get splattered. If you broke the covenant and washed your mushrooms, you're likely covered in burns, and all is lost.  I mean it, everything is ruined, so just turn off the fire and go hide somewhere. If you got splattered but did not transgress against your food, be sure you replace the foil seal before you commence to whining about it.

Wait the perfect amount of time.  Turn off the gas. (Don't cook with anything but gas. If you're just now realizing your mistake, Your Bad.  You should have read carefully through these ridiculous instructions before beginning.  What's wrong with you?) Drag that pan to an unused burner.  If you want, you can call this "resting." The aroma ought to render you a quivering five-foot-nine column of self-basting salivary gland.

While everything is squirting and leaking and juicing itself, getting all married and united and stuff, wash up.  Chicken germs:  Ew, ick. Lots of soap and hot water.  Wipe down the counters, even the ones you didn't use.  Once you've done that, that snooty resting phase is over.

Serve yourself.  It goes without saying that you should have waited to hear the screeching tires of the last church-goers as they left Your Manor, late for the opening hymn, before embarking on this juicified, quick-fire adventure in moist mouth sin.

It's gonna be hell, when next you venture into that kitchen, to clean the skillet, but give it love. The dish you just made is now part of the perfectly seasoned black cast iron skillet mystique. It was good to you so be good back.

You should be feeling much better now.  Round off your protein with a glass of extremely cold water and a large, flawless, crisp apple.  Don't claim that someone left you the apple on a plate next to an apologetic note about having devoured some sweet-'n-sour golden kumquats.

Nibble at a bit of lemon wedge, let it cut through all that is viscous.  Realize that while everyone who flew off to worship God will be rolling home, repentant, you are the one who ate the pan-fried chicken thighs with caramelized button mushrooms.  That ought to put things in perspective and be a singular rallying point for you, later in the week.

The Eve of my Return to Relevance: This, There!

I'm lacking sufficient sleep, as yet, to return to writing as creation.  My fatigue serves as perfect foreground, however, for writing as demonstrative adjective -- indicating specific items in relation to myself -- and, on weird occasion, for writing as demonstrative pronoun, which is, I suppose, an assumption of the thing itself, far or near, in distance, in time.

One way is a dance; The other, a requirement. A requirement of attention.

Kim Stengel (to play Bianca Castafiore in Spielberg's
Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, scheduled
for December 2011 release)

Were I feeling creative, I'd transcribe the argument La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore put forth earlier this evening over a beautiful meal of roasted vegetables -- mounds of caramelized goodness, celery, carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, new potatoes, three kinds of quartered onions, several heads of garlic, all tossed and drizzled with sea salt and good olive oil, left unmolested in a very hot oven -- bothered only by half-hearted, swift stirs every twenty minutes or so.  It is done when it's done.  It is done dependent on what you want roasted to be, there and then.

The Castafiore contends that the entire issue of verbal demonstration, be it blatantly dependent or pronominal in nature and style, is best explained by the state of one's lips, which is also in correlation with a certain ready tension of the mind.


French-speaking individuals, she points out, tersely, have thin, muscular, *ripped* lips.  And if they don't, she explains, they are supposed to.  On the other end of the Lip Buff continuum lie lisping and lazy English speakers, usually American English speakers, to be precise.  You will never catch a French phonetician begging students to make their lips round and soft, she crowed. The tongue, the jaws, the lips -- the French speaker holds their position for the life of the sound while the American English goof idles, lags, drones, and  vacillates -- eyes all vague, sometimes even crossed.  Oh, and they drool.  Frequently.  The big parasitic linguist lumps!


I had time to write a freaking treatise on the subject, or at least speak one, because the Milanese Nightingale burst into song at that point, ruining the pleasure of mushroom goodness exploding in my thirsting mouth.


Ah, je ris de me voir si belle en ce  miroir-oir-oir!


[In a linguistic side note, her once beautiful operatic vibrato has fallen into contrivances of trill and shrill tremolo.]  


Anyway, a remarkably wordy deposit for the normally reticent Bianca.  I hesitate to speculate, but ever since she began negotiations with Spielberg and Jackson over the terms of her nonappearance in the soon-to-be-released Tintin film, her English has remarkably improved, her French has grown weirdly circumspect, all while her Italian, Romanian, Russian and Hebrew have declined almost to the point of nonexistence. (Her Master Classes in Spanish continue apace, however.)  Prohibited from playing herself by odd media restrictions in Tête de Hergé entertainment law, Bianca calls the film "a nothing much of a petit  rien" and "an insult to opera lovers everywhere."


"It makes mustard go up my nose," she sniffs.


 Je perds le fil de mes pensées...


Okay, so there's a really neat hoity-toity* academic video that encapsulates the absolute enfer out of this whole titillating issue, but I cannot find it, of course.  It's an intense, slowmo, hot sweat of a black-and-white -- a languid, lingual scene, showcasing an American English speaker doing jitterbug lips with the word know, and a hep cat of a Français intoning -- with laser-like precision -- its homophone, the possessive adjective nos.


Like I said, I can't find it.


Ever-focused, however, I found *this* -- and it is sufficiently erudite to invite your trust as it breaks down the pedagogical complexities involved in "[l[earn[ing] to pout your lips and make French sounds."  Uploaded to YouTube in March 2007 by the inimitable Mickelino, whose video contributions to the world of social media are part of a "tentative de la Sorbonne" designed to level the academic playing field, it's a grand introduction to World Politics of the Lip.


What's that? You say I've lost more than that one particular fil de pensée?  Perhaps, perhaps.  Let's be kind, though, on this, the eve of my return to relevance.   Unless you absolutely chafe to faire la moue, to purse your lips in disapproval or skepticism, in which case, allez-y, mon ami, allez-y.                         


And so I wish you a pleasant Friday night, and good sleep with sweet dreams.  Language has been set loose and I am excited to see what tomorrow may bring.                                                                                    

My Intense Lassitude

I am not writing much, or anything, these days, because my kidney function has decided to mirror my declining intellectual prowess.  Who knew the kidneys were in charge of such matters as giving-a-hoot and doing-a-lick-of-work?

I hope to bring the blog up to speed this weekend.  Between now and then, I am going to sleep and vegetate as if those vague activities constituted the entirety of my Personal Mission Statement.  

Activities within Marlinspike Hall continue at their normal fevered pitch, in mockery of my intense lassitude.

Your forbearance is appreciated.  

(And if you'd do a little picking up as you take the tour, that'd be nice, too.)