Thursday, August 30, 2012

Memoires & Isaac


Ah, yes, memoires and memories too often can be enlarged either deliberately or unconsciously. And no matter how much we try not to, we tend to inflate those moments and happenings in our lives. Maybe not as large as a whale, but certainly bigger than a minnow. I tried very hard to get my memories and moments right, to preserve them for my own sake as well as for my children and their children. I’ve said before how much I regret that my dad didn’t do the same for me and my siblings. His early life would have been very interesting, and I miss that connection with him. Maybe next time.

Isaac seems to have moved sluggishly north and wasn’t as strong or devastating as the weather people were forecasting. That’s good. Still, that’s a lot of water to deal with from the rain and storm surges, lots of people flooded out again. I still wonder about people who keep building and rebuilding in flood zones along rivers and ocean coastal areas. I guess that’s their business, but when they expect state and federal disaster funds to bail them out, it’s partly my business. I don’t agree with the dispersal of such funds and especially don’t agree with how much of those funds is wasted on incompetent, bureaucratic mismanagement. We’ll see what the totals are in a few weeks.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Charlie & Squeakie


I know, I know. It’s like the new parent who just has to show everyone pictures, telling them he’s got the most beautiful, smartest, cleverest child ever born in this world, and the pics come out in an endless stream like photos from a very large steamer trunk. I guess in this age of instant video, it would more likely be cell phone videos of this oh so bright and wonderful child. Well, Charlie is, he really is, the most astounding, clever, different, wonderful cat ever born in this world. He really is. Just look at all my pictures. From what I’ve read about Cornish Rexes, he’s probably not a pure-bred Rex, ears too small, coat not quite as rippled. But like any bastard offshoot, he’s probably better than the puries—tougher, less effete. He has all the other characteristics, though. He’s a born gymnast and should be going to Rio in 2016. And he could probably make the US soccer team from the way he can foot-bat his stuffed mice around. He seems to sleep less than other cats I’ve known, spending much of his time underfoot or watching to see that we don’t go anywhere without him. And he’s decided he most loves our screened-in back patio where he can lounge around or sit on one of his various perches to watch the backyard critters perform for him.

And earlier and earlier, he now wants someone—me—to get up and open the back door so he can go enjoy the patio in the dark of night. At first, it was 6:00 a.m., then 5:00, then 4:30. Last night it was 2:00. I held out for fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes of his leaping onto the bed, landing stiff-legged on my stomach or back to let me know it was time. But one can only take so much of that. So I got up and opened the door for him. At 4:30 he returned to his leaping to tell me he wanted some company on the patio, to tell me to get up and join him. I didn’t. He gave up.

Enough of Charlie. What about the elder stateswoman of the house, our 14-year-old Squeakie? Do we totally ignore her? Certainly not. She’s still our darling, just not as eager to run and play as Charlie is. But she had her moments in the past. See, see, you wanna see some pictures?

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

-Ologies


Last week I was scheduled to confer with a urologist about my elevated psa count. According to my primary, the count had gone from 3.6 to 5.2 in the year since it was last checked. Not an alarming high at 5.2, but the rise in one year was a warning flag. But then I had my blood checked again and the count was 2.8, lower than it had been a year ago. Go figure. So I cancelled my date with the urologist. He'd have been my eighth specialist seen since my medical world came tumbling down, my eighth “-ologist.” About the only one I’ve missed is a proctologist. But then, most doctors have a secondary specialty in proctology, shoving their too-high bills up our rectums. And tomorrow I’m going in for a colonoscopy, my last ever, I hope. I wonder what “-ology” is on the end of the specialist who conducts colonoscopies. So I go to the internet and find out. Amazing what information is available on the net. Usually, it’s a gastroenterologist who does colonoscopies. That would make my ninth “-ologist.” I’m not looking forward to it. I guess I might be looking backward to it, considering where they’re going to stick their camera. Many years ago, right in the doctor’s office I remember having what was called a rigid sigmoidoscopy. Oh, my, was it ever rigid. It was an examination of the first part of my colon, as far in as the rigid scope could go, and was it ever painful. At least they now put one peacefully to sleep for the modern version. So, today, at 4:00, I begin to drink four liters of my prep stuff, a little more than a gallon, eight ounces every fifteen minutes. That means about eight glasses in two hours, punctuated with rapid flights to the commode. Just one joyful medical experience after another.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Movie Memories

Films have been such an important part of my life. I know in my September and November years I've been going to a lot of movies. But, in fact, I've always gone to a lot of movies. And remembering the oddest things about them. I can see Gary Cooper in Sergeant York licking his thumb and then transferring spittle to his rifle sight, giving his little turkey call, then picking off Germans who stick their heads up to see what’s going on. I can see that unpleasant bar where Ray Milland lost himself in Lost Weekend, but even more vividly I can see the shadow of the bottle he’d hidden in the overhead light fixture in his hotel room. I can see Alan Ladd and Van Heflin laboring over that tree stump in Shane. Also the shootout in the bar with nasty Jack Palance. And the final scene with Brandon De Wilde calling out to the receding horse bearing the wounded Shane into the setting sun, “Come back, Shane! Come back!” I still shudder when I remember that final scene in The Innocents, when Deborah Kerr kisses the dead boy Miles. You must remember, films in 1961 didn’t take up such issues as sexual relationships between adult governesses and their young charges. The shocked silence as we all exited the theater was memorable. I remember the acknowledging salute his pursuer gave to Cornell Wilde when he successfully escaped him in Naked Prey. I can still see that open book flipping its pages in a ghostly breeze in The Uninvited. Other odd remembrances involve the audience rather than the film itself. Sometime in the Fifties, I was seeing Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and midway, a guy several rows in front of me, issued the loud and surprised comment, “Oh, he’s im-PO-tent!” You had to be there. Another time, Rosalie and I were attending a high school play, and someone in front of us was telling a seatmate how much he liked the music from "Guy Guy" (Gigi). Such silly things to remember. I’ll probably think of a bunch more now that I’m tuned into this game.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Ho Hum Sunday

Another do-nothing Sunday. Rosalie is at work and I’m watching baseball and golf and twiddling my thumbs. I’m really tired of twiddling my thumbs. What an odd verd—"to twiddle." I’ll have to look it up to see if it works with anything but thumbs. “To toy or trifle with some object,” according to Webster. Okay, I guess you could twiddle rings or buttons or people. Next time you want to confuse someone, tell them you’re twiddling them. Good, the D-Backs just scored five runs in the fourth. Now I can switch over to CBS to see if Sergio can win one. Poor guy. Ten years ago he was going to be Tiger’s competition. Never happened.

This Thursday I’m scheduled for a colonoscopy. Oh, the joy. It’s not the procedure itself, it’s that ugly preliminary. You’d think they’d have found a simpler, less awful way of cleaning one out. Oh well, my doctor assures me this will be the last one. They don’t bother with folks over eighty. Just let the old farts die of colon cancer, I guess. And next month I’m having the rest of my uppers extracted and three of my lowers. I’ll then have a partial on the bottom and a full plate on top. And a radiant smile. And a bite that actually works, unlike this damn partial upper I now have. Now if I can just get the rest of me fixed, life will be better.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

The Close of The Closer & Dreams

Oh Brenda Leigh Johnson, how I'm going to miss you. As you would say, "Thank you, thank you. Thank you so very much." Kyra Sedgwick became Brenda Leigh, and I don't see how she can ever go into another role as someone else. But then, I didn't think Ray Romano could either, and he made the transition. Major Crimes can't possibly live up to the standard set by Kyra Sedgwick and The Closer. So, goodbye, Brenda Leigh. I'm really going to miss you.

My dreams are getting weirder and weirder. And so many are only half-awake, half-asleep dreams. Last night I dreamed about Miniver Cheevy. I think I was prompted by my thinking about my old buddy Bill Pilgrim, who, in a letter to me, called me Miniver. At the time I didn't know why he called me that. And then, in my teaching career, I taught the poem "Miniver Cheevy" to my Am lit classes, even had it memorized because I'd taught it so many times. All right, so, in my dream, I thought about Miniver Cheevy, couldn't remember who wrote it, could only remember the first verse. "Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, grew lean while he assailed the seasons. He wept that he was ever born, and he had reasons." But I kept going over it and over it in my half-dream, half-awake state. At first I thought it was from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology (an idea which came to me in the dream). That led me to "Richard Cory," which I'd also taught enough to have memorized it, thought it too was from Spoon River. That reminded me of the old Beatles' song "Richard Cory." I remembered the first stanza and the final two lines but not the middle sections. "Whenever Richard Cory went down town, we people on the pavement looked at him. He was a genleman from sole to crown, clean favored and imperially slim." And then the last two lines, "And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head." Over and over and over again and I just couldn't come up with any other lines from either poem. Weird dream. This morning I looked up both poems, "Miniver" (1910) and "Richard" (1897) by Edwin Arlington Robinson, the bleakness, the blackness of both poems the result of hard, depressed times following the panic of 1893. And the closing stanza of "Miniver Cheevy"? "Miniver Cheevy, born too late, scratched his head and kept on thinking. Miniver coughed and called it fate, and kept on drinking." So, I guess my buddy Bill was suggesting I was too much a romantic to be happy living in a starkly realistic world.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Sad Charlie

Charlie is sad, so sad. Tiger looked bad, so bad. Well, not as bad as Luke Donald (+2), Phil Mickelson (+3), Vija Singh (+3), Jim Furyk (+4), or Ernie Els (+5), but not as good as Rory McIlroy, Boy Wonder, or the other nine who finshed ahead of him in the PGA.

Charlie is shocked and open-eyed at all these weekend failures of Tiger's. When, oh when, will his hero return? No one seems to know. Certainly not Tiger. The problem as Charlie and I see it is in his confidence or lack thereof with the putter. Youth assumes every putt will go in; middle age begins to doubt; and old age knows damn well that nothing is going in. Tiger seems to be lacking his youthful optimism, and is beginning to doubt his stroke. Too many pulls and too many pushes, too many mis-reads. Charlie wants to cry.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Charlie Golf

Charlie and I are watching the PGA championship this weekend, and Charlie's decided he's as big a fan of golf as I am. He's especially fond of his big cat buddy Tiger. Here, he's studying Tiger's setup.

And here he's getting a closeup view of his bcbt.

Here he's checking the leader board. "Hey!" he says. "Where's Tiger?" I tell him, "Don't worry, Charlie, your buddy will soon be up at the top." I keep wondering if and when Charlie takes up the game whether he'll swing from the right like Tiger or from the left like Phil. From the way he bats his toy mice around, I'll bet he'll be a great putter.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

A Charlie Kiss

Charlie loves the Olympics almost as much as I do. Here, he's even giving Misty May a kiss on the forehead. We were happy to see the two American women's beach volleyballers make it to the gold/silver match. And we're finally finished with all the gymnastics. Good. And now we're finishing off the volleyball and water polo and getting down to track and field mainly. Good. And tomorrow I get to watch the first round of the PGA in South Carolina on that awful Pete Dye course, Kiawah Island. And I'll be rooting for Tiger as I always do. So much to see, so little time.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Olympics, Tiger, & Charlie

I seem to be watching more Olympics coverage than I want to. I've watched all the vollyball (both beach and non-beach--go, you lovely women), all the swimming and gymnastics, water polo, equestrian, rowing, and table tennis. My eye can't quite adjust to the table tennis, though. The camera angle makes it look like they're playing on a table only four feet long. And what about that funny head to the table, almost caressing the ball before they serve. I can't wait for the track and field to begin.

The evil twin Tiger is playing in Akron this week, and the good twin Tiger seems to have disappeared. Furyk is going crazy and Tiger is just going blank. His putting is again so bad he can't contend. Will the good twin show up next week for the PGA? Who knows.

Charlie is almost a year old and has been with us for seven months now. What a joy he is. He no longer has his front claws out when he plays with us or with Squeakie. I guess he now knows how easily he could hurt us. He loves our back patio, and every morning right at 5:00 I'll feel him extend a little paw to touch me on the arm to let me know he wants to go out. So I dutifully get up and open the back door. What a funny boy he is.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

A Good Day

What a good day yesterday. My anxiety about the dental plan was unnecessary. They'll do the least expensive plan and it will, in about six months, give me a mouthful of teeth (granted, most will be artificial) and a bite that actually works, unlike what I now have. The D-Backs beat the Dodgers for the second time. The lady gymnasts won team gold for the first time since 1996. Michael Phelps won his nineteenth medal to become the all-time biggest winner of medals. And I don't have any medical obligations for a week. Hooray! A good day.

I've noticed, as has nearly anyone else who's watching the Games, that nearly all the participants are really attractive people. It must have to do with the kind of food these athletes have eaten for their entire lives, the amount of physical training they've been involved in for their entire lives, for the dental work they've all had. They're nearly all really attractive people. Missy Franklin, the Colorado swimmer, only seventeen and still with a year in high school, gets my vote for best all-round person. She's tall and beautiful, personable, intelligent, and totally unselfish for turning down about a million bucks worth of endorsements to keep her amateur status so she could continue to swim for her high school team. Way to go, Missy.