A Fish Story

Two Christmases ago, S- gave me an aquarium. I may have mentioned before that the deal was that she would give it to me, but I had to take care of it. It didn’t turn out that way, but that is another story.

Last year we had built the fish colony up to an interesting mix – only to suffer a monumental fish kill in the fall.We cleaned the tank, put in new water, treated the water and bought kits to check for noxious materials. We left the aquarium fish-less for several months with the filter going full force. Finally, nervously we bought just two little red wag tailed platys. They were pretty, but inexpensive and ideal for “testing the waters”.

The fish thrived and we were about to add more “When what to our wondering eyes did appear…” tiny, wee, bitty, micro things with two eyes bigger than the rest of their bodies. Now, just a few months later, we have a tank full of at least twenty red wag tailed platys!


I suspect we have reached the peak of the population curve. There is no place left for the fry to hide.

Anyone want a dozen or more fish?

Big Falling Out

Today is a sad day. I finally broke off my passion for "Meet the Press". I feel sorry of David Gregory. He just doesn't get it. He continues to act like his interviews must be tough gotcha games. His programs sound like bitter arguments. Tim Russert knew how to challenge a person with a smile. He and George Stephanopoulos could and can make their "...but you said this three years ago...?" come across as a friendly request for clarification. I'm just an old fashioned guy who thinks civility has a place in debate. (Except in the "frat" house where you can say anything you want just to get your opponents goat.)

Life in a Torpedo Tube AKA Hyperbaric Chamber

This was my seventh afternoon in a clear plastic tube. It could go on for as long as three months. I think I have already gone through the “getting used to it” stage and am getting bored with it. They roll you into this tube exactly the way they do in submarine movies when the bridge gives the order “Load tubes One and Two”. For hours the first “dive” I worried that someone would say “Fire One, Fire Two”!

Actually, the nurses do use dive jargon. For instance, they refer to a treatment session as a dive. The pressure you are subjected to is expressed in the equivalent number of feet under water. For example, I am under the pressure you would feel at 33 feet below water. When you are snuggly locked in the tube and can’t hear anything outside, they signal that they are starting to raise the pressure by signaling with the hands that you are going down. When, at the end of a dive, they signal with an upward motion, it means the pressure is starting down toward normal.

These times of changing pressure are the only times when there is a physical reaction to the dive. You are busy popping your ears by swallowing or taking a sip of water and swallowing or whatever works for you. If you have flown, you know about pressure changes. In my case, it takes about fifteen minutes for the pressure to get up to the treatment level and about the same time to reverse the process. I am taken to a pressure equivalent to 33 feet under water and held there for 110 minutes. Other folks go deeper for longer times. Doctor’s choice.

I guess everyone’s concern is claustrophobia. The concern intensifies when you ask, “Can I get out any time I want to?” The answer is, “Sure, but remember it takes fifteen minutes to return the pressure to normal and we can’t open the hatch until then.” But don’t worry. Everything to alleviate you concern has been thought of. The transparent tube is a big help. They promise that someone is always in the room with you. Then there are very large curved mirrors that allow you to see the whole room and everyone in it. If you rap on the tube, a nurse will pick up a phone and you can chat with her. She will reassure you all is well. Also large, school room clocks are visible so you know how long you have to go. A separate TV with DVD and tape player is clearly visible for each chamber with sound piped in to you.

There is no way to make a fashion statement in a hyperbaric session. On arrival you must be free of any antiperspirant, lotions, after shave, any jewelry, false teeth, and most important for women – no perfume nor make-up of any type.. As the nurses insist, you must be as God made you. You must change clothes, wearing nothing of your own, but just special hospital scrubs. No books, newspapers, watches, iPods, no cellphones, no nothing can go in with you

During your time in a chamber (tube) everyday air is replaced by 100% oxygen. This presents a very real fire danger and explains the restrictions on what can be on your skin or what can go in the chamber with you (nothing). To emphasize the point, a chamber blew up at a clinic recently with loss of life. Don’t cheat!

So what have I been doing for two and a half hours everyday? Well, I watch DVDs and television, I sleep a little, and I think a lot. You know in normal life we seldom have the freedom to think. Previously, cross-country trains were my favorite think places.

All this for a little bitty wound that does not want to heal.

Good Gracious Sakes Alive!

We went to the mall this noon for lunch. There is a door right next to the restaurant we enjoy, so we parked near by and ducked in without really glimpsing the mall proper. After lunch (we commented that it was unusually lacking in people eating) we made our plan for attacking the mall, my wife to the department stores and I to the Apple store and the like.

Now by way of background, The Mall at Wellington Green is quite classy, in keeping with its name. First class merchants all have stores there. The second thing to remember is that I have not been out of home, nursing home, or hospital for several months.

Well, I got on my little electric go-cart and headed off to see the sights. I wasn’t gone a minute when it struck me – My God! Where are the stores? I have been hearing lots about the recession on TV, but this was the first I had seen it up front and personal. My first impression was that every other store was empty. It wasn’t quite that bad, but pretty desolate. The only store that showed any bustle was the Apple store. I went in Dillards Department store to buy three pair of socks and there I saw the other side of the phenomenon . In the Men’s Dept. it was 40% off on everything and 70% off a wonderful array of racks of long sleeve sports shirts. The few men that were in the store were hovering over the racks looking for more shirts than the ones they had clutched in their arms. In retrospect, I should have bought six pairs of socks.

I had a question for someone in the Verizon telephone store. I am used to standing in line there. Today there were four idle clerks and me. They all wanted to “help me” and they didn’t even back off when I said I just had a question.

I was too young during the Great Depression to realize things were different than normal then. This time I was shockingly aware that change may be coming that could be irreversible.

Wow!

AWOL

I forgot to record on this blog that I would be absent for a month or so. Sorry bout that. I probably have mentioned that my years of heavy smoking (even though I had quit 35 years ago) have been catching up with me. This hospital trip was for the removal of another toe which was infected in rhe bone. It hurt like the dickens and it is a relief to have it gone. Poor circulation, don't you know. Had to go to Rehab for two weeks to get my balance under control.

When I was in the army, our Supply Sergeant didn't want to go to the Far East after we got back from Europe. He took a forty-five and carefully shot off his big toe with a bit of "collateral damage". It was an effective way to get out of our company, but not the army. I never saw or heard from him again. I cringe when I think of him trying to put on an army boot and walk after he healed up. That must have hurt!

Small Notes

While attacking the mess in my office recently, I came across one of the notebooks my wife had provided me to make notes while in the hospital. I had added a bunch of ideas from the past (and some the present) which might make blog subjects. That ended my efforts at cleaning up. I sat down to read.

My first thought came not from anything I wrote, but from what I didn’t write. Why the blankity blank can’t I date things? I write notes like, “Dr. Garcia, Friday, 1:45PM” No month! I have gazillion menus with no dates. I don’t know why I care, but it would help me figure out how many times I had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in any given week.

I remembered that my Dad could not hear high frequency sounds. He wired a light into the phone so he didn’t have to yell “Is THAT the phone?” His hobby was building HiFi phonos, He had meters to see if something that he built really worked. Nothing got him down.

Dad never told me (or anyone I knew) that he couldn’t tell me what he was working on at work. He simply didn’t tell. Once I twitted him about that and he told that on that day he and coworkers took a radar up on to the roof of the building he worked in. They shot at pigeons with a radar gun and killed several. Since I had no idea at that time what a radar gun was, I didn’t know if I was being teased or not.

Wish I had dated the note that read: “Today, I had the nurse from Hell. Bad Breathe, Chewing gum, and Body Odor.”

This and That

I was perhaps too optimistic. The doctor sent me back to the hospital last week. They pumped me full of blood again and when the tank was full I came home. Hospitals allow for a lot of thinking, but these largely consist of random, scattered thoughts. For instance:

Boy! Am I out of step with most of the political talk I see on TV and read in the papers! I watch congress people, Senators and Representatives, tell the CEOs of three giant American corporations that they have mismanaged their companies for years. I watch these congress people and I have my doubts that the majority of them could profitably and honestly run a simple, local automobile agency. These are experts in corporate management??

I like a large car. I have a large car. Why shouldn’t the companies have made it, and continue to make cars that I prefer? Note that the sales of foreign made cars tanked at the same time that domestic manufacturer took a dive. Don’t you think that the failure of the financial institutions (regulated by the government) may have sparked the collapse of the auto market.

Perhaps I am crazy, but I swear there are fewer out of state license plates to be seen on the streets and in the parking lots of Palm Beach County. It’s winter. The snow birds should be here. My bet is that they flew down and rented Florida cars.

Our faithful old (17 years) TV was beginning to hiccup at all the wrong times. This made us nervous, particularly since the date of the switch-over to all digital is fast approaching. Even with cable, our old friend was going to need its own special box to convert. A quick glimpse in any electronics store (or doctor’s waiting room) was all it took to show we weren’t getting the best picture. So in a clever bit of scheduling, I managed to be in the hospital when our choice of flat screens was delivered and installed. Dear wife did a wonderful job and I arrived home to an all-set-up beautiful new TV. Science and my wife are amazing.

I have a lot of little yellow stickies floating around the desk that contain more brilliance which I will delve into as time passes. Just one more thought before I go to bed—

When will some courageous gas company accept another 1/10th a cent for gas and stop the silly pricing that ends in 9/10 of a cent? Eliminating all the extra fuss and arithmetic involved could save the economy, maybe?

Good night!

Long Ago - But Memorable

December, 1945, and the war had been officially over since September: Christmas was a-coming. Company A was still sending patrols out to try to convince the Japanese hiding in the mountains behind Manila that the war was over. These forays could get dangerous when they weren’t believed that Japan had surrendered. But as Supply Sergeant, I happily didn’t have to go.

When it was announced that Episcopal services for the holidays would be held at another regiment several miles away, I decided to go to the Christmas Eve celebration. I used my job to get a spiffy new uniform and I found a native woman from the near-by village to iron the proper creases into it. I shined my shoes as they hadn’t been shined before. I even found some Vitalis in Manila to use on my wavy locks that evening. (Don’t laugh. That was pre-shiny scalp.) Oh, I was going to be the sharpest guy in the chapel.

We awoke on the day of Christmas Eve to pouring rain and it continued all day. But this did not deter my plan to be “Dapper Dan” of the 342nd. The transport truck backed up to each tent where someone had signed up to go. A quick dash and each of us was aboard. However, this extra maneuvering took time and we arrived late. The service had already started. The chapel was actually a large tent with open sides. The truck backed up to the tent where vanity was soon to take its revenge. As I jumped from our transportation, my heel caught on the tailgate and I went plop! – into a very deep mud puddle. My reflex reaction was to utter words spoken in infantry talk at the top of my lungs. Quite inappropriate for the time and place.

After the service, the priest laughed mightily as he looked at this mud encrusted GI. He forgave my language with a brief reprimand . (He, too, had been in the infantry for several rough years.)

Happy Holidays!

Hillary Clinton

Someone on TV just said that there is a lot of support for Hillary Clinton as Sec. of State on the internet. I would like to go on record as being on the internet and NOT supporting Hillary. I feel that appointing her will give Bill credibility that he does not deserve. We do not need Wild Bill traipsing around the world preaching the word according to Bill .

A Sunday Morning Thought

I love eggs. But for the biggest part of my life they were a forbidden food. Now -- They are practically a health food. The rehab I've been in served eggs in a different form almost every day. On Monday - poached, Tuesday we had scrambled , and so on.

I spoke to the nutritionist and she said that eggs are now considered a good protein source. Fine, but do I have enough years left to make up for all those decades of egg deprivation?

Oh Boy! Home Cooked Food

That was a long stay! Well, it really wasn't a "stay". I commuted between the hospital (lousy food) and the rehab place (good food, but institutional) innumerable times. I sure missed this computer, but I had lots of time to watch TV. I admit I did get quite tired of the political nit-picking. It was a historical event, however. No, not that one, the self-destruction of the Republican Party!

And what a ride watching the stock market the last month! Between the politics all the time, the market on week days and football on week ends TV actually was fun recently. I had my computer set to receive Aol Stock Alerts to report when our stock moved up (HA!) or down. They practically filled my inbox. I deleted them all when I got home yesterday. Ugly.

So all you smokers, make this the day you quit. Quitting is not as hard as waking up each morning with IVs in your arm and oxygen in your nose.

TLC

Let me tell you a little story that illustrates why I think of nurses as angels on earth.

I was chatting with my nurse one afternoon at our “Care Center”, aka Skilled Nursing Care or SNC. I was bemoaning that the next day was my wife’s birthday and there was no way I could get her even a card. Linda, the nurse, volunteered that she would get me one. I said something about that being too much and I thought that was the end of it. BUT, next morning there was a bag hanging on my room door-handle. In it there were two cards, one comic and one lovey-dovey, and a cute stuffed animal, a black and white lion. The cards were perfect and the lion thrilled my wife too.

In the Army, medals are awarded for going above and beyond duty. Nurses simply earn a few more love points to cash in at St. Peter's door.

Day 3

Sorry I missed a day (yesterday). There is just so much to catch up on. We have arranged for a nurse to come in once a day to re-dress my "wound". And today I am expecting to have someone come in and arrange for more physical therapy. I have trouble with phys and occupational therapy. The exercises are so boring that I listen to all the conversations going on in the room and I lose count of how many silly exercises I have done. I simplified the process of trying to remember where I was and always start over at nine. I figure that there must be some statistical proof that nine is a valid average and it all evens out in the end.

Right now I have to go wrap plastic bags around my leg to water-proof the incision site so I can take a shower before before the nurse comes. Somewhere in there there is a logic to that sentence, but who cares? Also in ten minutes I have to take twelve pills and huff and puff on an inhaler to cure my wasted lungs.

I have cleared out the over one thousand e-mails and several hundred g-mails. Blogs remain a different story. I want to read all that I have missed instead of the heartless deleting I practiced on the daily mail from Penn State, the New York Times, etc. More later.

Home Sweet Home

Well, we beat the operations and nursing home one more time. We arrived back home on Thursday and are happily catching up on things. I saw some highlights of the decorations for the Beijing Olympic Games this morning and had the thought that the Olympic Games are replacing the World Fairs as "Show-Off " events for countries. Wish we could go, but I'll be lucky to get to DisneyWorld this year.

Just before I left for the hospital the 14th or 15th of April I upgraded to Mac's Leopard operating system. I've almost totally forgotten how to use it. If anyone sent an E-mail my way and had it returned, please try again. I exceeded the limit (1000) of messages received and the rest were bounced. Sorry about that.

More as the days go by. Incidentally, I had a birthday while I was gone, so I have to edit my template prose to read 83 years old. I don't have the faintest idea how to do that at the moment.

Ugly Day

Wednesday is usually our “errands day” This week was scheduled to be pretty routine, but it didn’t turn out that way. Our first stop was the “labs” over near the medical center to have a blood sample drawn for the tummy doctor. No problem. The next stop was the vascular surgeon’s office for a routine follow-up. Not routine. S- said later that she could sense trouble on the surgeon's face while he was checking the pulse in my left leg. He sent me downstairs to the Vascular Institute for long, high tech tests on both legs. I actually fell asleep. Instead of the nice lunch we had planned at Too Jays, we grabbed a bite at Burger King. Then we hustled back to the surgeon’s place for the results.

Big trouble! We go into the hospital Tuesday where after an angiogram and angioplasty, he will decide whether a complete redo of the bypass in the leg is necessary. Bah!

It was around 4PM by the time we got to the CPA’s office way out in Wellington to pick up our completed tax return. That was not good news either and we had to hurry to the bank (thank goodness they stay open late) to free up some cash to give the IRS. We never did get our planned browse through the mall!. Bah again!

Then yesterday, we had to spend half the day at the hospital for pre-op tests. Three times Bah!

Who are these people that fear having nothing to do in retirement?

Ageing

There seems to be another form of discrimination that gets little publicity. I have observed that as I have aged, lids and caps are placed on products with additional torque. Cokes have their twist type caps welded to the bottle and this morning I had a terrible fight getting the lid off a new jar of prunes.

Frustration Day

I have a new cause. I have become an advocate for the establishment of an annual Federal Holiday for each individual in the country. The individual would be allowed a free day from his employment and other responsibilities. His holiday would fall on the day after his purchase of a new piece of electronic equipment and would be called “Frustration Day”.

He would spend the day trying to decipher the instructions and manual that came with the electronic equipment. (Note: Thirteen year old children would not be eligible for the day off as they, strangely, have an innate understanding of the arcane language used in these instructions. This skill fades away upon their discovery of the opposite sex.)

OK, I was just blowing off steam. We bought (?) new cell phones Wednesday. All right, I’m caught again. We got them free for our years of dedication to Verizon Wireless.

First, I tried to set up an account online so that I could replace the awful ringtones that came with the phones. I got as far as establishing a user name. They said that they would send me a temporary password via a text message to the new phone. Picture the scene, we live in a big concrete and steel building, my office and desktop computer are located deep into the protective building where no cell phone signal can penetrate. So I have to run back and forth with the cell phone, out to the porch to get a cell message. No problem except the phone light fades after 7 seconds.The temporary password is 27 or 32 or something long and I can’t memorize it before the light goes out.

Solving that difficulty only led to the problem of how to find the ringtone I wanted and getting it onto the phone. I was following three different verisions of “how to”: those on the internet, those in the manual, and those on the phone. Frustration piled on frustration and the phone almost got thrown through the monitor screen.

But finally, my phone rings a snappy rendition of Feist’s “1 2 3 4”. I'm a happy camper. Now if I could figure out the DVD player.

If the Choice is Death or Taxes, I'll Take a Good CPA

Two or three years ago, I tore from the newspaper a column by Dale Dauten. It was a short column, but chuck full of witty advice and observations. I filed the column away and found it again only this week. Such is my filing system. He started out quoting Bertie Wooster in P.G. Woodhouse’s The Mating Season.

“A great weight had been lifted from my mind. Well, I don’t know what your experience has been, but mine is that there’s very little percentage in having a weight lifted off your mind because the first thing you know, another, and probably a damn sight heavier, is immediately shoved on.”

While doubtlessly a clever and true thought, it more or less, ruined my day. You see, on Tuesday, S and I will take such data as we (98% of the we is S) have collected concerning our coming income tax return to the CPA. He has the problem on doing all the right arithmetic and putting the numbers on the correct pages to satisfy the computers of the IRS. At that point, a great weight will be lifted from my mind. But then I will have “What’s next” to worry about.

Incidentally, does any one else have the same warm memories of Jeeves and Bertie that I have. I think it was back in high school when I got “hooked” on P. G. Woodhouse and read everything I could find. Age has erased the specifics but the feeling lives on.

Missing in Action

I got to be a Train Commander” by virtue of being the only one dumb enough to wear a shirt (or, at least the only one to wear a shirt with stripes on it) on a scalding hot California day. The bulletin board had listed those scheduled to leave the following day on a troop train from Camp Edwards bound for Camp Kilmer NJ where we would be discharged from the US Army. A casual formation was held in a company yard for the purpose of providing instruction for our train ride.. After we were told what to wear, what to carry and how to carry it, and how to dispose of the leftovers, my visible stripes got me appointed “Train Commander”. This mostly meant I couldn’t drink and play poker. The only real duty was to inform the Conductor of any serious sickness that required a special stop by the train for medical help. Nonetheless, I was impressed by the fancy title and stood tall.

When we reached Phoenix, Arizona, nothing important had happened to disturb my calm. Every few hours the train would stop in some desolate place so the troops could get off and exercise. After announcing that it was time to reboard the train, it was my responsibility to confirm to the Conductor that I could not see any soldiers that were not back on board and that it was all right to start the train. But at the Phoenix RR Station the train stopped for purposes of the railroad and I ran up and down the length of the train telling everyone to stay aboard. There were a few brave ones I saw dashing into the station to buy beer; but, knowing they were on the way home, most people were not going to take chances.

However, one fellow came to me and asked permission to go to the station post office and mail something home. He volunteered that he was afraid it would be confiscated if he took it into our destination, Camp Kilmer. Dumb once again, I asked what it was he wanted to mail. His answer repulsed and disgusted me. I had experienced a lot of quite horrible moments in the past years in combat, but the thought of shipping a Japanese skull home did me in. Stunned, I told him I didn’t want to hear about it. He was on his own. He opted to run for the station. I opted not to tell the Conductor that anyone was off the train.

Moments after the skull bearer went in the station, the train started. Last I ever saw of him he was standing in the doorway of the station, still holding the boxed skull, and looking a little stunned himself. What happened next? Did he sell the skull and buy civilian clothes and live happily ever after? Did the MP’s get him and put him in the pokey for thirty years? Or did he mail the box, sneak onto the next troop train, and blame it all on Army inefficiency?

A Loss

I have recently suffered a demi-disaster. I leaned back in my favorite chair and something in the framework of the chair gave way. My favorite chair no longer supports me in the manner to which I have become accustomed. This chair has seen me through pain and joy, good moods and bad. For years it has been my retreat, my nest, my comfy spot. Memory tells me I have had three favorite chairs, maybe four, in my life. Two were “easy” chairs and two were office chairs. Each parting was cause for grief. Only once has it been anger provoking. At work, I started out with an all-wood, factory veteran, painted a quite awful green. There was no cushion to protect my then-skinny butt, but it and the chair grew to know each other. As I changed offices, I always took my green chair with me. Always, until we built a snazzy new R&D Building. I thought I outranked the office manager, but she won that day. She wheeled away my friend and short of physical force or an unbecoming temper tantrum, I could not stop her. The replacement was pretty, but it never replaced solid oak.

While I’ll bet that most everyone has a favorite, I recall no blogger confessing his/her affection for a simple piece of furniture. I don’t what I will do next. You can’t really go to the store and ask to look at future favorite chairs, can you? That would strike me as the same as going to e-harmony to find a favorite spouse. Although it is possible to go to a pet store or a kennel and immediately know the puppy that licks your face will be a life long friend. Maybe I'll go for a puppy.

Oh woe is me!