I fell down...and did a magic trick!

I guess getting clumsy comes with getting old, and having Parkinson's disease doesn't help much.

Yesterday I was going into the dining room, sipping my lunchtime can of Pabst Blue Ribbon when I accidentally tripped over Taz and Squeak, our two constantly under foot, constantly shedding, growling, or barking to get in or out, fuzzy, funny, lovable (to us) dogs.

I did a not very graceful pirouette, stuck my other foot in a basket full of dog toys,and promptly threw the half full beer across the room where it bounced off a heavy brass lamp and disappeared behind an overstuffed chair. I landed in a pile of yipping dogs, squeaking bears, alligators, pandas and other unidentifiable stuffed animals .

Carol, who was on the phone talking to our son Brad, came running in to see what happened.

“Are you OK?” she asked as she helped me get up. I was more humiliated than hurt and the dogs looked kind of embarrassed too. Carol checked the three of us out, and after I hobbled around for a few minutes and the dogs returned to their normal exuberance she declared us “fit for duty.”

“Oh shit!”I said, “My beer.”

I peered behind the chair where I had seen it ricochet and there it was; sitting upright as though someone had put it there for safekeeping. I looked for spillage but there weren't any wet spots to be found – anywhere. I picked up the can and was amazed to find that it was still a half full!

I held my can of PBR high and said, “Ta-Daa! And now for my next trick...”

My Space ship

Over thirty years ago Carl Sagan hosted a TV show on PBS called Cosmos. One of the visual devices he used to transport his audience out into the billions and billions of galaxies, nebulae and star systems was what he called a “Star ship of the Imagination.” To me it was absolutely riveting television, even though his voice, and the soothing background music were mesmerizing. Watching the reruns years later I still find it spellbinding, piquing my imagination and conversely causing me to nod off into dreamland.

A few days ago I realized that I have my own “Star ship of the Imagination” and it disguises itself as an old, threadbare, beat up recliner. Carol picked it up at a local garage sale 20 years ago, with a broken foot rest and a dire need for some TLC.

“It looks pretty lumpy,” I said, thinking that maybe it really should have gone to the dump. After fixing the foot rest mechanism with a bit of wire, I sat down, pulled the handle up, and leaned back. With a series of clicks the chair enfolded and accepted me.

“Hmm, this is comfortable!” I said, as I realized that all of the lumps and grooves were in just the right places. It has been my favorite reading, napping, TV watching, and napping places ever since.

It's also been a favorite lap spot for 20 years of faithful dogs. Lady, a pound dog Cocker Spaniel, Chewy, our Lhasa Apso, and now Squeak and Taz come into the den when they hear the clicking of the foot rest and sit in front of it, waiting for me to give them permission to jump up onto my lap. Together we nod off into our separate dreams, happily snoring, growling, barking in falsetto and drooling as we travel on mysterious journeys in the “Star ship of Our Imagination.”

How Much?!!!!

Our old, (1992) Chevy pickup has been having problems lately. Like it's owners, they're mostly age related problems. It sits in the driveway rusting away most of the time these days, only getting used to haul trash to the dump or to move things too large or too dirty or smelly for our little Toyota wagon.

On the last dump trip, after unloading the recycled items and dumping the rest, the shift lever refused to go into Drive. I cussed and pushed on it until it finally clunked in to gear. When we got home I found that I couldn't shut the ignition switch off. I turned the key toward the Start position and was rewarded with a grinding noise as the starter tried to engage an already running engine, but at least then it let me turn it off.

The same problem came and went over several weeks while I tried to find out how to fix it. The consensus I arrived at, mostly from the Internet, was that the ignition lock cylinder needed to be replaced and that required removing the steering wheel with a special wheel puller and delving into the turn signal, windshield wiper and washer, cruise control, headlight dimmer, and turn signal wiring just to get at the thing. “A job for a Chevrolet mechanic, not me!” I reasoned.

The last straw happened at JC's house when no matter how I jiggled or wiggled the key the engine just kept running. I finally opened the hood, climbed up on the radiator shroud, removed the air cleaner and pulled the coil wire to shut it off. When I climbed down off of the engine compartment, JC asked me, “Why don't you get that damned thing fixed?”

“I guess you're right,” I said, “I'm afraid the Chevy dealer will rip me off, but I'm pretty sure from what I read on the Internet, that's where I should take it. The thing is, I think that they charge thirty or forty dollars an hour!”

“Get it fixed, I've got a lot off stuff to haul to the dump!” he said, “I'll even pay for it!”

The next morning I called the Chevy dealer in Newport, told the service manager the problem and made an appointment for the following day at 9 am.

JC followed me to Newport and we dropped the truck off. The mechanic showed me which fuse to pull, a much easier way to shut it off. We did some shopping and drove home. I'd just walked in the door when the phone rang and Carol handed it to me. It was the service manager who told me,”We found your problem. You need a new ignition cylinder and the canceling cam was completely crumbled. It will run about $400.00. Do you want us to go ahead and fix it?

I started to say OK, but then the $400 sunk in. “How much?” I sputtered. He repeated the amount. “Holy Crap!” I said.

He waited in silence while I thought about how much the truck saves us in monthly trash pickup charges and how handy it is for hauling stuff, but on the other hand is it really worth fixing...and what the hell is a crumbled canceling cam?

Reluctantly I said, “Yeah, go ahead.” I told him I'd pick it up in the morning and hung up, shaking my head.

“What's the matter? Carol asked from the kitchen.

“$400.00!” I replied.

“Holy Crap!” she said.

The next morning I asked the service manager for an explanation of the bill. He used his pen to point out the charges.

“Well, it needed a new lock cylinder, and that was $46.70. The canceling cam, which was crumbled, was $13.98 and it took the mechanic over three hours to do the repairs. He looked at me as if that explained everything. I'm not good at math, but as the wheels in my head slowly ground away, I finally spurted “But that's a hundred dollars an hour!”

I suffered through a detailed explanation about rising costs, yadda, yadda, yadda, reluctantly signed the bottom of the statement and left, poorer budweiser.

JCs Bad Day

Bad Day for JC

I think JC knew it wasn't going to go well when the usually competent nurse got distracted while draining his catheter and filled up one of his tennis shoes. Then after sending his blood draw to the lab the results came back horribly bad. Really, horribly bad!

A hemoglobin count of 9 calls for a one unit (about a pint) transfusion of good old type o+ which he usually gets a couple times a month, but this lab result showed a hemoglobin count of below 5! They immediately started pumping two units of blood into him and scheduled him for another unit in the morning.

The nurses were shocked and amazed that he was getting around as well as he was and that he had driven himself to the clinic with such a lousy blood count. (I couldn't drive him because I was in Corvallis seeing my doctor.)

I can't imagine how discouraged JC was driving home that afternoon with insufficient hemoglobin and a pee soaked tennis shoe, but it had to be bad.

Thankfully, later that evening a nurse from the hospital called, apologized and explained that the lab had made a terrible error and that JC didn't need to come in for another transfusion. Much relieved he went to bed.

He awoke realizing that he had rolled over on the remote for his adjustable bed and was being folded into a very uncomfortable position. With his free arm he fumbled for the remote and knocked it onto the floor where it came apart letting the batteries fall out.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Later that night his catheter bag broke and soaked his bedding.

It was just one of those days (and nights!)

Everyone who has, or has a loved one with, a fatal disease, hopes and prays for a “miracle” cure. Usually, promising new drugs are announced by the media with big headlines, but then at the bottom of the article is the disclaimer stating that it won't be out of the testing stage for ten years or so. That's not very helpful, or hopeful to someone who's doctor has told them that they only have months to live.

Recently though, several articles about a new cancer drug,”Zytiga” give hope to patients of prostate cancer that has metastasized into bone cancer;

1,088 prostate cancer patients in 12 countries participated in the trial. Each man received the standard low-dose prednisone treatment, with half also getting Zytiga and the other receiving a placebo. Researchers almost immediately discovered that, in the Zytiga group, the cancer progressed at only half the speed as the control group, with patients reporting significantly less pain and a noticeable delay before they had to undertake chemo. The results are so stupendous that the trial was canceled to allow every patient access to the drug.

Read the entire article at:http://www.impactlab.net/2012/06/03/science-may-have-just-beaten-prostate-cancer/

http://www.impactlab.net/2012/06/03/science-may-have-just-beaten-prostate-cancer/

My brother's doctor wanted him to try a “new” drug, but it was very expensive. (Four pills a day at $80 per pill!) He also suggested that sometimes the drug companies would cover this expense in return for patient feedback. John, (JC ) applied for this and was approved. Johnson and Johnson promptly began sending Zytiga.

Over the past several weeks, after at first undergoing painful and debilitating side effects, JC has improved astonishingly. The change in his appearance alone has amazed us, he went from a gray ghost sitting in his living room covered with blankets to being able to get up and work on projects around the house. He has color in his face and a little spring in his hobble!

JC's friend's and family are hoping and praying that Zytiga truly is a “miracle drug!”

Revenge of the Morning Glorys

Our greenhouse has been invaded by wild Morning Glory vines or “Bindweed” as it's sometimes called. We've sprayed it, dug it up, and pulled it out by the roots, but like “Arnold” it just keeps coming back.

The amazingly fast growing roots are long, white tubes that can reach the size of a pencil and sometimes you can pull three or four feet out of the soil before they break off and start growing again. Any broken pieces will regenerate into a new vine and every day new sprouts appear, giving us the daily chore of pulling them out.

Several days ago I spied some new vines creeping out from behind a piece of plywood leaning against the greenhouse wall. I pried the board out a bit so I could see what was behind it, and Eureka! There was a bonanza of tangled Morning Glory roots hiding there.

I pried the plywood out some more, slid my hand down and started pulling out fist full after fist full. I couldn't believe how many of the ropey things I was yanking out of their hiding place. I had a 5 gallon bucket half full of roots before I was almost done. I saw one more, way back in the narrow crevice and I jammed my hand in, grabbed it and pulled it out.

Imagine my surprise when it curled around my wrist, opened it's mouth and hissed at me. On second thought, “surprise” is too mild a word for what I felt. Maybe “terror” or “horror” would be closer, but I don't think there's a word in the dictionary that has the definition “almost crapping your pants!” (At least I couldn't find it.)

Now, most folks would say, “That was just a harmless little garden snake!” but they haven't seen the bruises I received while I was flailing my arms like an out of control windmill, trying to get rid of the damned snake and get out through the green house door.

It's been two days now and I think my pulse rate has dropped back to nearly normal. It's occurred to me that a temporary cure for the slowness of movement that happens to older people like me with Parkinson's Disease might be to surprise them with an occasional snake. But count me out!

Blue Ribbon Bacon Pancakes

Blue Ribbon Bacon Pancakes

I've just discovered my new favorite breakfast!

After much experimenting with a wide variety of recipes, this is my hands down favorite;

1 cup Krustease pancake mix. (Not white flour)

1 sprinkle of bacon bits. (Preferably not the dog treat kind.)

½ can of Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) beer. Stir well.

Fry in a cast iron skillet, add butter, and top off with 2 over easy eggs and 2 slices of bacon..

Wash it down with the rest of the PBR.

Enjoy!

Rubber Hash Browns

This morning when I was getting ready to fix my breakfast, I was pleased to find a plastic bowl of grated potatoes that Carol had evidently left for me to make hash browns with. I started heating a small egg pan, and put on a larger cast iron skillet for a sausage patty and the hash browns. I put a couple of pieces of Rye bread in the toaster, cracked the eggs in the little pan and started the sausage frying.
   When the sausage started sizzling I dumped the hash browns in with it and grabbed a jug of milk out of the fridge. While I was pouring a glass of milk I noticed that the hash browns looked kin of weird. I tried to slide a fork under them to flip them over but it stuck like they were fastened  down with Gorilla glue. Oh oh, I thought, those weren't hash browns!
   Realizing that I had a pile of cheese melting in a hot skillet I began scraping under the molten glob with a kitchen knife, which kind of freed up the fork, except that both the knife and fork were still attached to the gooey cheese.
   Wait! I thought, I can save this by putting the melted cheese on the eggs! It'll be good! I stretched the stringy mess out over the egg pan but no matter what I did I couldn't get it loose from the knife, the fork or the now smoking glob in the cast iron skillet. If I just had a pair of scissors and another hand!!
I had my arms spread as far as I could but it just kept stretching out like rubber spaghetti.
   I finally got most of it on top of my surprised looking eggs, and after cleaning the stove top, I managed to scrape the remainder out of the skillet, into the trash without setting off the smoke alarm.
   ( I did that later while I was lighting a fire in the fireplace.)

The Quest For The Golden Hummingbird

One fine spring day three years ago, JC and I were sitting on his deck sipping a glass of wine when we heard the familiar humming vibration of a Hummingbird. We looked up and saw an amazingly beautiful, golden bronze hummer hovering in front of a red plastic tip on an aluminum ladder leaning against the wall.

“Wow!” I said, “Did you see that?”

“That was incredible! I'm going to grab my camera.”

JC refilled one of his Hummingbird feeders with fresh sugar water and hung it from the corner of the awning near the ladder. Then he brought out his Canon SLR digital camera and got it ready, pre-focused on the feeder. Naturally the little guy was a no-show for the rest of the afternoon.

The next day I brought my little Fuji camera along and JC had his Canon mounted on a tripod so he could get a steady shot. We were deep into a discussion about who knows what, when the golden hummer darted in for a quick sip of sugar water. By the time we fumbled around to our cameras he was gone. From then on it became a game of when we had our cameras ready he wouldn't show up. If we left the cameras inside he would take his time and tease us by posing on the lip of the feeder. Once when JC went inside for something the little guy flew over the table and hovered there over JC's camera. JC even purchased a remote shutter release so all he would have to do to take a picture was move his finger. By the end of summer I had one fuzzy picture that almost showed his colors in the sunlight and JC had a decent one taken on a cloudy day, but neither showed what he really looked like.

Although a lot of Hummingbirds came to the feeders, and some even got their pictures taken, we didn't see the Golden bird for several years and we assumed that he was one of a kind and long gone.

Yesterday, almost exactly three years later, while we were enjoying a rare sunny day on the deck, the Golden Hummingbird, or probably one of his progeny, returned in all his glory. We are getting the cameras ready.

Let the games begin!

Pacific Lamprey

One warm fall day at Blackberry Campground, Carol and I were wading in the Alsea River, trying to catch Crawdads. We were splashing and laughing, flailing about with a big Salmon net which had too large a mesh to really catch anything smaller than a fairly big fish.

We were in waist deep, crystal clear water and we could see schools of small fish and the bright red Crawdads darting ahead of us as we tried to keep our feet under us in the swift current.

Suddenly Carol yelled “What's that?” as a long black, snake like thing swam into view. She made a stab with the net and somehow captured it, but when she raised the net it wriggled free.

“It looks like an eel,” I said, let's see if we can net it again!” It out maneuvered us, swimming between our legs and avoiding the net no matter how hard we tried.

“I don't see it any more,” I said, shading my eyes to stop the reflection.

“There it is,” Carol yelled, “right beside your leg!”

I felt a strange tingling on my right leg and suddenly I realized that the eel had fastened itself on to me.

“SHIT!” I yelled, “IT'S ON MY LEG!”

I began thrashing, splashing, and trying with some success, to run on water. The next thing I knew I had scrambled up the steep rocky bank and was standing there shaking, looking down at Carol who was having a great time laughing at me. The eel had come loose somewhere in the commotion and was probably wondering what kind of strange fish it had tried to latch on to.

Later, after my heart rate had dropped considerably, and Carol quit chuckling, I showed her the circular ring with two fang marks the eel had left during it's brief encounter on my leg. It still gives me the willies!

I love my Kindle

On my birthday last November, JC surprised me with a brand new Kindle.

I've always loved to read, but in the short time since then, I've read 52 full length books, probably more than I had read in the previous three or four years combined.

The Kindle is truly a magical device, I was going to call it a toy, but it's much more than that. It easily downloads books in just a few minutes from the Amazon website on 3G, it has a built in browser so you can access web sites, it archives the books you've read in Amazon's “cloud” so you can download them and re-read them if you want. It has speakers and a headphone jack so you can play music while you read or listen to audio books.

Amazon offers hundreds of free books with a new list of selections every day. I have over 80 unread novels stored on my little, skinny Kindle, and it still weighs the same and doesn't take up any more shelf space than it did the day I unwrapped it.

It's a godsend on these rainy, wintery days to be able to curl up on my recliner with a couple of dogs for warmth, a glass of wine nearby, and read, read, read.

%#** Dishwasher

Yesterday when I walked up to JC's house I expected to find him sitting in front of his space heater with his coat on and a blanket over his legs again. He's been fighting a kidney infection for several days and has been feeling really crappy.

When I knocked on the back door I heard JC yell, “I'm in the kitchen!” I was surprised to see him up and cussing; yanking and pulling on the dishwasher trying to get it out from under the kitchen counter.

“The damned dishwasher died!” he said, giving it another mighty yank for good measure. “It won't come out and I can't figure out what's holding the bastard in.”

I hung my coat over a chair and laid down on the floor to look underneath. “The linoleum is curled up in front of the legs!” I told him. “Maybe that's what's holding it.” JC found a utility knife and I cut some of the curled up flooring out of the way. We both lifted, yanked, pulled and cussed but it still wouldn't come out. “Let''s take a break,” JC panted, “the sun's still shining out on the deck, let's go out, relax a bit, and think about this.”

He poured a glass of wine for me and a glass of water for himself, (He's not supposed to drink while he's on his latest prescription.) “There's definitely something holding that sucker in there,” I said, pointing out the obvious, “maybe we need to drain the water out to make it a little lighter!”

“I already dipped all of the water I could get out of it,” JC said.

After our pulse rates dropped down to almost normal we tried again, using a crowbar to pry the front end up. No matter how hard we pried, pulled and cussed, the rotten piece of crap (JC's description) refused to come out any more than about a third of the way.

Finally, after yet another rest stop, JC shined his headlamp down the gap on left side and said,”It looks like there's a piece of wood jammed in under the bottom!” Sure enough, all it took was a little tweak in the right place with the crowbar, one more mighty yank, and it popped right out. A six inch piece of wood, probably used to level the dishwasher, was the culprit. We both breathed a sigh of relief.

It turned out that we had declared success a bit too soon though, because while we were wrestling the damn thing onto a cart to roll it outside, the drain hose fell down and was running water onto the floor. We were too busy to notice because when we found out that it wouldn't fit through the kitchen door, we had to back track and hump it out the back door onto the deck. The son of a bitch must have had five gallons of water stored somewhere in it's innards and it all drained out on the floor.

JC mopped and cussed until he got it cleaned up. We both were pooped, mostly from cussing the friggin thing.

Silent Night

In the early hours when the dogs and I arise, we try our level best to quietly go about our morning routine. Carol sleeps several hours later than we do and she doesn't appreciate loud noises interrupting her favorite time to snooze.
Unfortunately, every little thing seems to make a lot of racket when the house is still and quiet. When I try to gently set the coffee pot on the kitchen counter it somehow makes a loud clunk. The drawer that holds the measuring cups squalls like a banshee when I open it. When I open the back door to go outside with the dogs, the wind catches the storm door, pulls it out of my hand and slams it. In the meantime the dogs have found something that requires some serious barking, so I do my best to quiet them down and get them back inside.
After giving them a bacon treat for being so good, and after stepping on one of their squeaky toys that squeals like a pig, I start making a fire in the fireplace. I quietly unlock the front door and go out to the carport for some firewood and some kindling. Coming back in with my arms full, a piece of Alder slips and falls to the tiled entry floor. I can always tell a good, dry piece of firewood by the crisp, hollow banging noise it makes when it echoes in our entry. Cussing, I lean over to pick it up and a piece of Douglas Fir falls beside it. (It also sounds dry and ready to burn.)
I have a system for building a foolproof fire in our fireplace insert which requires two side logs, a back log, and some kindling on top of an empty Franzia wine box. All that's left is to crumple up a couple of sheets of newspaper to stuff underneath and to light it.
For some reason crumpling newspaper in the daytime hardly makes any noise, but early in the morning when I'm trying to be stealthy and quiet, it sounds like someone pouring a large bag of marbles into the kitchen sink.
After the fire is going and the coffee has perked, I go in the den, turn on the computer and click on the dial up modem icon. A blast of whistles, beeps, honks and whines come out of the surround sound speakers, but by the time I get the volume turned down the horrendous noise is over and the computer is connected to the Internet. While I'm reading email and surfing my favorite web sites, things quiet down and even the dogs go back to sleep.
When my coffee cup runs dry I leave the den to get a refill and check the fire. It needs another log so I open the cast iron door and toss a hunk of Fir on top of the coals, but before I can close it, the fire alarm goes off and the dogs start barking uncontrollably. (I'd forgotten to open the damper before opening the door.)

Oh! Hi Honey! Are you up already?