Category Life

Can You Heat It Now?

Michael Leave a comment

I was working on a household budget for this year over the weekend (so I’m a little late – things happen), when I had to make the decision of whether to renew the car’s satellite radio subscription. That got me thinking about all the iterations of mobile music over the years.

The first car radio I remember was in my father’s 57 Chevy. Of course that was in ’61 long before it would become a classic but that’s a story for another post. That radio was a simple AM job that got music, news, and sports from a handful stations that were within 20 or so miles of the read mounted, stainless steel antenna. It came as a package option that included the radio, an under-dash heater, and cigarette lighter. Talk about luxury!

Sometime in the mid-60s I remember friends’ parents with cars that had AM-FM radios. Now that was something. None of us knew exactly what FM was although a few years later in high school physics they talked about the different types of sound waves and that had something to do with the difference between AM and FM but by then we were too concerned with the music coming from the radio than how it worked. But back in the 60s all we knew about FM radio was that was where the classical music stations lived and that one station that played what they called “album tracks” that our parents wouldn’t let us listen too.

radioAnd that was it for car radio until those high school years. Then the changes came fast and furious. Nobody’s factory model was good enough. The aftermarket offerings included AM, AM-FM, 8-Track, and that newest alternative, the cassette player. Cassettes were cool. They let you listen to “your music” instead of relying on the DJ choices on the radio, they didn’t skip when you couldn’t dodge the potholes fast enough like the 8-track players, and the really good ones include auto-reverse so you could listen to the same album over and over without even having to pull the cassette out and flip it over.

Fast forward (no pun intended but now that I think about it not a bad segue) through college and young adulthood when nothing much new happened other than the ubiquity of CD players in addition to or in place of the cassette to the 1990s and the advent of MP3 players, Bluetooth, and satellite radio. Suddenly deciding on a source of music while riding down the road brought back memories of debating the merits of cassette versus 8 track.

After a few years you didn’t have to make a choice which one to get as much as which one to use since every car seemed to offer every option. Even in my modest family sedan I can choose between AM, FM and satellite radio, an auxiliary jack into which I can plug an MP3 player (or a portable cassette or even 8-track player if I could find one, or the other, or both), or anything that can transmit Bluetooth such as my phone that could play music from memory or stream music from an outside source. With all that decision making to do it’s no wonder only 85% of people decide to buckle up before pulling out.

Now that I’ve put this all down in writing I can see I have plenty of options even if I don’t opt to renew the satellite subscription. That saves me a couple hundred dollars for this year that I can use on 5 or 6 weeks of cable. Hmm, I think it might be decision time again.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Michael Leave a comment

You’d think after running into somebody five hundred times you’d probably know him pretty well. If you’ve read every post I’ve uploaded you would have gotten 500 pieces of my mind, and as I look back at some of them, there isn’t that much there to really let you know who I am. Before I go on, let me say that if you’ve read every post I’ve ever uploaded you might be that person out there who actually has more time on his or her hands than I do. We may have to talk about that.

Five hundred. That sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Certainly it’s not in the same league as 19 trillion as in the U. S. National Debt, 9 billion as in Apple’s 2016 fourth quarter net income, or even 32 million as in Hillary’s net worth. Still, if somebody offered me 500 – as in dollars – I’d be considering just what unnatural act I’d be willing to consider for such a payoff. But the five hundred I’m talking about isn’t any form of currency. No, it’s more like those 500 meetings from the first paragraph. It’s the 500 posts that I’ve uploaded to the Real Reality Show Blog since its debut on November 7, 2011.

Wait a minute. I see you. You’re number crunching. Five hundred posts in a five years and two months. Plus a few days. That’s not so many. Some people post something every day. Some people post more than one something every day. I might have that kind of time but I’m not that kind of ambitious. I figured when I started this that a couple of times a week would be plenty for anybody to hear from me. After all, the intent of this was to demonstrate to the world what reality really looks like to normal people. And back then I was leading a fairly normal life.

So twice a week seemed to be plenty. Yet somehow, even posting twice a week for over five years I can honestly say that if I didn’t know who I was before I read any of these ramblings I wouldn’t know that much about me after. Yeah, I like pizza, hockey, and maple syrup. I hate fine print on TV ads, people who insist on bringing their three-suiter suitcase and then continue to insist that it will fit in the overhead compartment, and waiting in line to be seated at restaurants. But who am I? You know I’m male, I live somewhere north of the Mason Dixon line, I’m past middle age unless I get to one hundred (I’m holding out for that), and I had a happy life and enjoyed poking fun at it up to about three years ago when life poked back and hit me with a still ongoing frenzy of medical issues. But outside of that, who am I?chefman

I’m probably you. You see, although this never intended to be an anonymous blog it sort of ended up that way. At least sort of. But that was ok. I wanted it to be a reflection of what everybody is. Whether man or woman, boy or girl, young or old, or whatever you want yourself to be of any of the above.  Whether American, Canadian, British, German, Australian, Indian, Italian, Vietnamese, Brazilian, or from anywhere else readers have found their way from, this was supposed to be so you could see yourself in that post. I might have put the idea out there but they all have been pretty universal ideas. Everything from the spirit of sportsmanship in the Olympics to using time travel to eliminate crowding leftovers in your refrigerator.

Every other milestone I’ve hit I’ve spent the entire post assembling links to my favorite posts of that particular achievement. I looked back over the most recent 100 posts and found that I kind of like them all. They’ve all come at a pretty stressful but still very gratifying time of my life. They might be a little more revealing than the 400 that came before them but they still can be seen through anybody’s eyes. Maybe even yours. So instead of me telling you which are my favorites, I invite you to keep scrolling through to find and read, or hopefully to re-read, your favorites. If I did it right, each time I posted my thoughts there was enough universality in them to stimulate some of yours too.

Will I get around to writing another 500 posts? As long as someone keeps reading them I suppose I’ll keep posting them. And since I insist on reading each one each time after it’s posted I guess I’m stuck with it. If you’d like to continue along with me, feel free. It would be really nice of you. I’m glad we met.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

Looking Back

Michael Leave a comment

Sometime toward the end of last year I mentioned the Real Reality Show Blog turned five years old. That happened on November 7 but I didn’t get around to mentioning it until much later that month. Shortly after that it became December and life got turned upside down for me. Again. I ended 2016 two days shy of actually being home from three separate hospital stays during the last month of last year. Hanging around for so many days in a hospital bed leaves one with only so many things to do. Read. Watch TV. Work a crossword puzzle or two. Roll over on top of the nurse call button. Think about life.

I hate thinking about life. Here’s why. Why is because thinking about life interferes with life. While I was lying about wondering “what had I done to deserve this” I got to thinking of life and the life I specifically had last year.

It started celebrating the end of the holiday season in a strange place. For the first time in 29 years I wasn’t in my old, wonderful house with a Christmas tree in every room highlighted by the 12 foot job under the cathedral ceiling of the natural wood finished sun room. And worst of all, I didn’t have all 37 of my nativities displayed. That’s because for the first Christmas after 29 years I was celebrating it in a miniscule one bedroom apartment so I could move about and function better in my new “challenged,” – screw that, make it disabled! – state. But then but the end of the year I got used to those not that miniscule quarters, I got used to working around the complex, I got used to hanging out at the pool, I got used to my new neighbors, and I missed those, that, and them when I wasn’t there in December.

In April I turned 60. I didn’t think anything of it. But for some reason my sisters thought I should have a party to celebrate that milestone. I look at milestones for birthdays years like 16, 21, 30, maybe 50, definitely 75, and by all means every year from 80 on. But I figured, why not. At least I knew I’d get a more extravagant meal than I was planning for myself and maybe even cake. Now, it happened that the last party I had thrown for me to celebrate a birthday was indeed at 30. (Hold that thought.) The selected venue for last year’s event had a guest limit of 25.I got to thinking how I was going to limit a guest list to 25. I pulled out my address book and mentally started drafting explanations to those who wouldn’t make the cut. After much serious review, and even more serious reflection, I handed my sister a list of 22 names. Thirty years previous there were three times that many people on hand to commemorate my becoming a thirtysomething. Had I or anyone got around to hosting a 50 year party I could imagine at least one guest for each lived year. Now, I couldn’t scrape up two dozen friends to watch me move another year closer to Medicare. And then the day came and those few all showed up and I realized these were mostly the same people who were around to see me turn 16 and a few years later, 21, and would have been among the crowd at 50. Friends. Old friends, close friends, real friends. Friends who saw me move not only from year to year but from trials to successes to failures to challenges to successes to every high, low, dull, and exciting phase of life. My life. And I hope they’ll all be there for 75, 80, and every one from then on.

Sometime in August I was at a routine doctor appointment. One of those that you get ready for a week before by going from lab to x-ray to CT to have as much of your insides available for the doctor to review as your outsides when you get there. She looked at the numbers and then at me and then back at the numbers and declared that I had a year, maybe, before my kidneys would go the way of so much else in my insides and I’d need the use of a dialysis machine to do what comes naturally to most others after a couple of cups of coffee. She was off by just a little. About 8 months. It was, in fact, while I was thinking all this in the hospital sometime in early December after I had been transported back to my hospital room from the dialysis unit after the second or maybe third of what would become a new thrice weekly event for me. But it wasn’t that much later that I reminded myself that the reason any doctors were even looking at lab and x-ray and CT scan results for the state my kidneys was that 15 years ago I was diagnosed with a pretty rare, chronic condition that feeds of internal organs like kidneys and if they found just the right treatment for me I had a 37% chance of living longer than three years. Somehow they hit it right and I was one of the lucky ones who got at least 12 more years so I could have a birthday party in a non-milestone year and all I had to do now was give up a dozen hours a week that I wasn’t doing anything with anyway and maybe make it to 75, 80, and a few more after that.

See, those are just a few reasons why I hate all this “looking back.” It just ends up finding the silver lining instead of dwelling on the uncontrollable like human beings are supposed to do. And it means I spent the entire 500th post of the RRSB talking about me. Instead of talking about the me you got to see in the past 500 posts. I guess I’ll do that next time.

Hmm. Five hundred. Not as compelling as 75, or 80, or all the numbers that come after that. But I bet somewhere there’s a word for that.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

Flavor of the Month

Michael Leave a comment

“Orange or grape?”

It was a simple enough question given the context. Where my mind went added a level of complexity three words had rarely seen. Orange or grape? Well, some orange stuff actually tastes like orange. Orange juice (the good stuff.) Orange marmalade. Chili orange stir fry sauce. They taste like orange because they come from oranges. Then there are orange popsicles, orange jello, orange baby aspirin. Hardly orange.

But at least orange has some orange tasting progeny. Grape. Poor grape. I have eaten thousands of grapes over the years. Perhaps hundreds of thousands. And I have had many grape things: juice, jam, gum drops. Some are good. Some are questionable. Some just suck. But none taste like the grapes that I chow down in when I’m looking for a tasty snack. Just what are those things flavored with? I don’t understand.

And while we’re at it, another food thing I don’t understand is why crackers are perforated. Go on. Check out your graham crackers and saltines in your cupboards. They’re not like the Townhouse Crackers are they? No, those got cut all the way through at the cracker factory. If you want two Townhouses you take out two. If you want two grahams you have to snap them apart yourself. And douse your counter/table/lap with graham crumbs.

But the question is “orange or grape?” What was it? A shot of a protein drink. I figured neither was going to taste like the real thing. In fact, they probably taste the same.

There are all kinds of flavors that when you have them the first thing you say to yourself is “yum, grape.” Unfortunately, none of them are grape flavored.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

Resolved to Not

Michael Leave a comment

If you’ve been following along with me for the past several years you know I’m in no danger of breaking my resolutions before this week is up because I won’t be getting around to making them for a few months. (See “Be It Resolved,” Jan. 2, 2012 if you don’t remember or understand.) While I think I have a perfectly reasonable self-help program going on there (even though I seem to be actually helping myself very little most of the time), most of the world has already gone out on that New Year’s Resolution limb. And many of them armed with a chainsaw.

I was enjoying reading an article on an on-line journal yesterday when a link at the end caught my eye. It was something to the effect of why you should make “non-resolutions” this year. If you consider that “to be resolved” is a quite strong statement in that one who is resolute is adamant and unwavering  about one’s decision, to make a “non-resolution” would be to plan on faltering or even failing. Which seems to be what happens to most of our resolutions anyway. This, I thought, bears some further study. Maybe.

I clicked on the link to see what the author had in mind but what he had in mind was to sell some of his books on positive thinking and I thought I was pretty positive that I could think fairly well on my own. So I thought for a while and I think I came up with something. This “non-resolution” idea just might go somewhere.

Consider what most people resolve to do in the shadow of empty champagne bottles, pork roast remnants, more sauerkraut than was really a good idea, and still more empty champagne bottles. To lose weight. To stop drinking. To eat less sauerkraut. They are negative goals and success means not doing something. And unless you are really adept like to a professional level at problem solving, you probably do set personal goals from a negative perspective. Eat less. Reduce debt. Don’t be late for work. It’s not unnatural to our thinking because it is indeed easier to not do than to do.

A self-help expert would say to be successful you must plan positively and with a specific target or goal. You don’t resolve to lose weight you resolve to eat healthier, exercise more, and lose two pounds a week over the next 4 months. No wonder nobody ever loses weight starting in January. That’s a full time job you’re taking on there. Now what if we give those “not to” abstracts some still real measurable goals? Without changing the negative of course. Eat less becomes eat three less desserts a week or eat at McDonald’s one less time a week. You’re still planning on not doing something and you’re brain is still comfortable with that. But now you have something specific to not do and if you don’t do it you meet your goal.

Sure it’s not for everybody, but maybe it’s worth a try just so you can say you didn’t break your resolution before you took down the Christmas tree.

Or. You could resolve to make your resolutions this spring. With me. When I’m pretty positive they should be made.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

Never Can Say Goodbye

Michael 1 Comment

As we get close to saying goodbye to 2016 I have discovered that we suck at saying goodbye.

In this last month of the year I spent a lot of time on the phone. I had to pick a new insurance and because it is a milestone change I used a broker. I have a car due for service and inspection. I was in the hospital, a couple of times, so I got a couple of “Hi! How are we doing?” calls, and I had to make a couple of rounds of followup doctor appointments. And it was the holidays so I had to check in with some folks to see how they were doing. So, when otherwise I might use my phone primarily as an alarm clock to not miss any of the several doctor appointments throughout the year, this month I used it as an actual communication device.

And thus discovered that we suck at  saying goodbye.

All the calls started out right. And calls with people who actually know my first name as opposed to those reading it from a computer screen were mostly able to successfully end a call. But the others. Oh, the others. It was like the final dress rehearsal for the bad movie scene in every bad movie where two people try to go through a doorway at the same time. After you. No. After you. No, no. After you.

It seems that those who have been trained to make appointments had training stopped somewhere before “Thank you for calling. Have a nice day. Good bye.”  Instead it goes more like this.

“You’re all set. Is there anything else I can do?”

“No, thank you. Good bye.”

“Well, thank you. And don’t forget to bring your insurance card.”

“Right. Good bye.”

“And please arrive 15 minutes early.

“Got it. Good bye.”

“Well then, you are all set. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No thanks. Good bye.”

Thank you for calling. If you need to cancel, change, or…”

–click–

See you next year. Probably 15 minutes early. Good bye.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

 

 

 

Cloudy With a Good Chance

Michael 1 Comment

It’s just a couple days to Christmas and that means children and romantics are asking will there be a White Christmas this year. Today’s weather people can pretty much tell you within one or two percentage points if it will or if it won’t wherever you are. It wasn’t always that way.

I remember many years ago there weren’t weather forecasts on the evening news. There were weather reports. TIROS I became the first weather satellite to watch over the Earth’s climate conditions when it was launched in 1960. Before that the weather segment was what happened, not what to expect. Probably the only weather men willing to take a risk and “predict” tomorrow’s weather were those in San Diego, or perhaps Phoenix, where you could say it’s going to be warm and sunny and get it right almost every day. Where I grew up the weathermen spoke of today’s weather in the East being pretty much what yesterday’s weather was in the MidWest. And if one wasn’t sure, it never hurt to predict “partly cloudy.”

One December back then we were closing in on Christmas Day and it looked like the only White Christmas we were going to see was the movie of the week special presentation. It was all but confirmed when the reigning weather champ said out loud, on TV, for all the world (or at least the local metro area), the next few days before the the holiday would be at best – “partly cloudy.”

I believe that was two days before Christmas and we kids sighed our sighs that even if we got new sleds (which we never did, now that I think about it), we’d not be racing downhill on them. So off to bed we went. And we woke up the following morning to about 6 inches of fresh fallen snow! Woohoo!! (Or Yippee!! as we would have said back then.)

Later that day on the local evening newscast the regular anchorman introduced a fill-in weatherman for the evening weather report. “And tonight we have John Smith filling in at the weather desk. Joe couldn’t make it in today. He’s still at home shoveling the partly cloudy off his driveway.”

So for all of you wishing for a White Christmas this weekend, I wish for you as much partly cloudy as your driveways can hold. Yippee!! in advance.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you.

It Just Happened

Michael Leave a comment

You wouldn’t think Dr. Seuss would come up when a 60 year old is looking back on the year almost gone by. Being just out of the hospital for but a few days I actually haven’t gotten all the way home yet. Since I live alone and am still a little while away from taking care of myself with a greater chance that I end a day in the emergency room rather than the bedroom, my sisters have opened their house to me so I can be pampered in the style an only son should be pampered…even at 60. But I digress. I think.

I was sitting alone in a corner pondering how I got to this place in space and time while the younger of the two siblings, the one still working the poor dear, was modeling the many holiday themed hats she was planning on bringing to work with her on the next day. You know the kind you see this time of year. The baseball hat with antlers that reads “Oh Deer,” or the one decked out in gingerbread cookies saying “Oh Snap!” As she dug deeper into her bag of headwear I got a greater memory sense of a story about a boy with a never-ending collection of hats.

It didn’t take too much more reflection that I recalled the hats indeed did end. The young man was Bartholomew Cubbins and the tale was Dr. Seuss’s “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.” If you don’t remember it, it is the story of a young boy who cannot bare his head to the king. Every time he removes a hat another appears in its place. Finally at the 500th reveal he doffs the yet finest example and presents the highly decorated hat to the king and is rewarded with a bag of gold.

So, how do we get from a child’s story from the 1930s to my consideration of all that happened to me this year? The last line of the story tells the tale. Though they could never explain how it happened, “They could only say is just ‘happened to happen’ and was not very likely to happen again.”

And isn’t that really the tale we are all told?

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

Shower Power

Michael Leave a comment

Yesterday I had more fun naked than I’ve had in years. I took a shower. Talk about good, clean fun!

To many of us, pretending to be the recipient of an automatic car wash might not seem to be epitome of carnal satisfaction. But I had just been released from an 8 day stay at one of the cleanest places on Earth, a hospital. And boy did I feel grungy.

I am not at all unfamiliar with America’s health care system. For almost 40 years it provided me my pocket change as I toiled on the provider side and for almost 4 years it provided me a place to hang out and spend said hard-earn pockrt change on the patient side. I am very aware, and very appreciated of the advances it has made. Technically, that is. Humanly, maybe not so much. Consider the following.

With modern imaging they can see tiny slivers of our insides down to the 32nd of an inch in detail almost better than lifelike. They can see with sound. My surgeon worked to delicately open my abdominal cavity, clean and repair the offending parts, and then put me back together using a camera through a couple of holes not much bigger than one made by a flu shot needle. Yet when all of that was done I was left to recover in a room with a TV the quality almost as good as a 1960 portable set with rabbit ears wrapped in aluminum foil. (Ask your granfather. He’ll explain.)

I was attached with the necessary wiring so my pulse, heart beat, breathing, and temperature could be monitored from a station 80 feet away. But the aforementioned television was controlled by a remote that contained only Power, Volume Up/Down, and Channel Up/Down buttons. This in a housing that also held the Nurse Call button and, for some reason, a button to set the room lights to three different brightness levels. All that looked much too alike.

And of course, unlike even the smallest movement towards improvement the silly remote has provided to the patient since I started my career those years ago, the one thing that hasn’t changed at all is the hospital gown. The famous see-through garment with non-sleeves that nobody can get their arms into, a neck fastener reminiscent of a backward bow tie, and all in an indecent package that only makes it 80% of the way around your body. And of course the remaining 20% is not on the side.

Yet given all this, on my return I was not overcome with the urge to finger my high tech remote, triggering the high def TV and the surround sound, grateful for work done to keep me going for another 4 to 40 years. It was to strip off those clothes that completely covered me and bask in joy of hundreds of gallon of hot water pouring over me, drenching every pore, soaking every personal nook and cranny. Thank all that is holy that one imorovement we’ve never had to endure is the restorative power of water.

It was enough to make me want a cigarette.

That’s what I think. Really. How ’bout you?

The Pause That’s Necessary

Michael Leave a comment

Think about these three sentences please. My father, Tim is dead. My, Father Tim is dead. My father Tim is dead. Changing the pause between the words makes for three quite different scenarios from the speaker’s perspective. Not to mention Tim’s. Sometimes that pause needs to be stronger than just some well meaning punctuation.

I get to come to you today from a hospital bed. Ahh, the miracles of the ever shrinking electronics platform. I’m fine by the way. Just a scheduled tune-up. But because my body is the way (mostly reconstructed from spare parts) I’ve been here longer than anyone should expect. My daughter had been here every day until the one when she woke up doing a really good audition for an over the counter cough, cold and flu medicine. That day, she stayed home – to the rousing cheers of pent up germs everywhere.

One of my doctors noticed her absence and asked where adult child was. Oh, she’s home sick. It wasn’t until hours later that I realized how less a perplexing response I would have gotten had I instead said, “Oh, she  is at home and sick.

So whatever you do out there, to make yourself as clear as can be, keep your pause clean.

That’s what I thimk. How ’bout you?