I'm quite sure I'm uncertain.

Thanks for the kind comments on the last post; and thanks to Mary Ellen:

mary ellen said...

Miss you Greenpa. Hope all is well with you and the beautiful girl.

I miss you guys, too. I've been struggling with a bad dose of "writer's block" for some time now; not the blog so much, but some professional writing I've promised to do and need to do. I've been trying to break that block, so all my available writing energy has been going there. To no real avail.

Many reasons. And it's not as easy to just whip off a blog post here as it used to be. The world has become even more uncertain. I could fill up the blog with lists of our woes, easily enough. But; really- I figure you guys have woes enough of your own, yes?

My Theory Of The Popularity Of Soap Opera is not so much the commonly cited "misery loves company", but that the great majority of folks can watch a soap and sigh in relief "at least my life isn't as screwed up as they are!" I could probably provide that sort of entertainment.

But it's kind of cheap relief. I would like to be able to offer something more substantive. And right now, between tornadoes, earthquakes, nuclear meltdowns, hurricanes, political chaos... etc.... it just gets hard to find, sometimes.

It's all pretty depressing, in fact. And neither you, nor I , need more depressing.

At my time of life, I've been through multiple episodes of depressing circumstances. When you find yourself becoming petrified by it all, one of the tools that can help pull your socks up is to remember - actively - there is good, and beautiful, stuff in the world, all the time. Then you make yourself notice it. That's the thing- when the burdens get really heavy, and the blows from the careless universe pile up- we stop seeing the good bits.

They're there, though. And in exactly that frame of mind, I looked up and out my window.

And this is what was right, immediately in front of me. Burning-bright in a spot of August sunlight, surrounded by the shadowed forest.

It's just two sprays of goldenrod, lost in the woods. I have fields full of the stuff. So much that I forget to look at it.

But I looked at this. And remembered. There is beauty to be seen. Pleasure to be taken, just for the look. If the "click for bigger" feature is working, you will find a wasp in the upper left corner; collecting nectar I'm pretty sure. Good to see one out doing simple work.

Of course the irony of having this natural gold, mine for the visual collection, occurred to me; with so much intense, fierce, fussing about the metallic kind now going on.

It's there. Free. Easy. Eternal. If you can remember: look for it.

I felt better, after noticing. And - two days later - it's still with me.

Hang in there, folks. We're all in this together.

Render unto Timex...

We've been having fun here with our "land hurricane"; and the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded, either in the USA, or at least the Midwest, depending on your source. We didn't get the absolute worst of it, but it has been work to get through it; tarps ripped off, ripped up, a tree or two down on a road or two, smoke in the house from more atmospheric turbulence than our chimney can handle.

Coulda been worse. Actually, I've seen worse winds here, just not so heavy so long. We've been averaging 30 mph, with bursts up to 55 for three days; but any good summer thunderstorm can have short duration winds up over 70, and I've seen 90 mph. But only for 10 minutes or so.

In the middle of it all, we got to drive to our doctor town for me to have an "upper endoscopy"; the doctors going fishing for anything down my upper gastro-esophageal system that's out of whack and could explain some of my whining. (Can't remember any of it, which means they did a good job; and the bottom line was "nothing obvious" but they did take a couple biopsy chunks to look at closer.) The car blew around on the road a bit, but again; coulda been worse.

When I came out of the anesthesia (this is how we do it in Minnesota),

I was not, surprisingly, gasping for air. Besides being droll and musical, our Midvestern anesthesiologists are very competent. So I woke up surprised.

It was all over and I didn't even remember falling asleep. (thanks for the video to my big brother, who has more time to cruise youtube...)

The next thing on the agenda was a little woozy shopping (with Spice along as unmedicated driver) for the necessities of life.

For me, the necessities include a working watch. I know; half of youse guys out there cheerfully do without one (and even brag about that, from time to time), but as I noted today over on Sharon's post about the relativity of time, I now need to know where I am in the day; how much is left to work with, etc. And no, you can't tell time from the sun in Minnesota in late fall/early winter; more than half the days are sunless.

And my sturdy, reliable, Timex Ironman Triathalon® (can't tell you how manly it makes me feel to wear one!) watch had recently done what they all have done; the watchband broke; long before the watch itself was near the end of its life.

And, guess what? Just as always before (like 5 times, by now) - since I'd bought my Timex IT; the styling had changed, just a teensy, so that- nope, they don't actually have a replacement band available for that particular model... and the watch-girl (used to be the goose-girl, 300 years ago) doesn't really even know how to get this thing disattached...

The (mildly, given the state of the world) aggravating thing is that the watch itself is nicely designed, and has a long, reliable life. And the band always dies long before the watch.

Accident? Ha. We know better. It is, of course, a ploy to sell more watches, keep the profits rolling. I can hear the conversation in the Timex marketing meetings: "Ok, look, the damn engineering department has screwed us again; these bloody things run without a problem for 4-5 years! How the hell can we justify our bonuses if we're only selling one per customer in 5 years?? Here's how we can fix this disaster...)

It's a broad huge problem with our world, of course; the waste of resources, where there is no actual need for it, just greed for it.

But. I've come to be resigned to this kind of little irritation; it's an intractable problem, and not quite as urgent as some others (like all-time record breaking weather); and not a fight I really have the time to get into, anyway. Hélas.
.

So. I'm calling it The Timex Tax. Sure as death and. Inescapable. You pays your money, and you takes your chances.

But at least, now, no matter where I am on the farm, chopping water or hauling wood, I'll be sure to know how much longer I have to struggle onward, today. My Timex Tax is paid for another 2-3 years.

Good news.

Everybody needs a little these days, right?

I (me) finally found the cause of my illness; which has kept me >50% bedridden for many months.

Good ol' overmedication.

I really don't blame the docs (exactly).  But shortly after my bellyache posts here, and right after one of my docs prescribed a new drug to add to my list; I decided I really needed to go back to square one, and find out what my unmedicated symptoms might be.

So I took what the docs call a "drug holiday", which they chuckle about when they mention it.  A holiday from drugs, not on them.

I quit.  Not cold turkey, but tapering off; and I told the docs after I'd done it.

After 2 months of letting them all clear out of my systems- holy fecal material - I'm well.

Or at least back to my old complaints, not the new ones that were so debilitating.

So those thousands of you who have been losing sleep worrying about me- all the worry vibes seem to have worked, and I'm back to my quasi-normal self.

:-)

The rebound effect, though is fierce.  There's a shipload of work that's been waiting for me, so I'm like, um, really busy.  On the road, at the moment, visiting, talking, looking.

But smiling.

tummy upchu, uh, date.

  I can't tell you how much I appreciate the concern about my tummy, guys.  Very seriously.  And, you're all correct, it was way past time to do something.

  It means a lot when people yell at you.  :-)

  As it turned out, I didn't even need Crunchy's dulcet coo of "dumbass!" to get me motivated.

  All I needed was the emergency room.

  Ha, I hear you crow, "told you so!"

  Yes, you did.  :-)  and yes, you were right.

  I'll keep this as short as I can; other fish to fry; but, Sat evening, the nausea got uncontrollable and the vomiting rate was up.  So it's time for urgent care.  Saturday night is our standard choice for emergency room visits.

  I lucked out and got my old family doctor who knows me intimately, and is sharp as they come.  Just to prove everything, not that I had to, I threw up for him.

  He's been friend as well as doctor for decades; he checked everything; liver function, etc etc, blood, urine, barium swallow/injected vascular visualizer CAT scan.

  And.  Nothing.  very slight elevated white count, tiny bit of protein in urine- and nothing.  Definitely no cancer, etc.

  SEE!?  Told ya.

  This is my life story.  "yup, you're sick- but we can't find it."

  Then, for more fun (I LOVE artificially berry flavored barium) - one day later; Smidgen started throwing up, at 7PM.  Spice started at 9 PM.  Smidgen stopped around 4 AM, Spice about 6.

  Pretty clearly, my urgent visit was not an escalation of the chronic problem; but a case of "stomach flu" (aka food poisoning) grafted on top of it.

  Got the CAT done for the chronic thing, anyway.

  We're all still recovering from the food poisoning; gripy stomachs; and it looks like square 1 for the chronic.

  Who knows, maybe the food poisoning will knock out the chronic, right?