It ain't all pizzas and cream

Day 58: Laying low

Well just recovering from a stomach bug today. Trying not to worry about money, but it's difficult to keep the topic off my mind. So I tried to think of what I'd advise someone in my position to do...take constructive action.  So I took the day to catch up on some editing. Not very exciting, but it pays the bills.

The insurance company sent me two letters yesterday: one approving me for a head CT to rule out a brain tumor. The other denying me a SPECT imaging study of my carotid to rule out, well, a clogged carotid. I guess their money's on brain tumor.

I've been putting off a dental extraction of a tooth that cracked last month. Will have to get that taken care of next. Ugh.

Someday it will be warm, and the sun will shine, and we will all be healthy and have money. Someday.

Day 57: Stomach bug

Ya know, I never intended this blog-every-day thing to chronicle my decline and fall. Really. But I'll be surprised if I'm healthy and have a roof over my head come Xmas. No, a coffin lid does NOT count as a roof.

Woke up nauseous...seems I finally caught the family bug.

Sorry, another short and gloomy entry.

Wanna cheer up?...watch this.

Day 56: Check the appropriate box

So I was musing the other day...because I do that. I muse. And I was thinking of all the trouble we've had lately: money trouble, health trouble, and I was trying to guess what would come next. Legal trouble? Marital trouble? Car trouble?

Who guessed car trouble?  Was it you?

This morning, Cecily's out with the baby and the home phone rings. First thing she says is, "Everyone's fine." Which is code for: something's happened but nobody's injured. Which is, after all, the important thing. Seems there was a fender bender. (Let me say this is NOT the norm, and that Cecily is an excellent and seasoned driver with a near-perfect record. It's jut that well, shit happens.)

Fortunately, there's lots of good news...
...the other car was unoccupied at the time,
...the other car is owned by a friend who was very sweet about the whole thing,
...Cec only backed into it, so the airbags didn't deploy,
...and the baby hardly noticed it had happened.

If you're wondering, yes, insurance companies were called, and they were very understanding as well.

But at least we can now check the box next to our lives marked "Car Trouble" and get that out of the way.
Right?

Day 55: [title missing]

Gathered my resolve and my 1099's today and went to get my taxes done. Of course, there were snags, and missing info. Of course. So I left the documents I had with the preparer, while I went home to assemble the missing pieces. Ugh. Seems all I have these days are missing pieces.

Short entry tonight. Sorry.

Elvis
has left the building.

Day 54: Expect delays

Waiting for the doc's office to schedule n my CT and cardio stress test.
Waiting to get my taxes done.
Waiting to get the old Maverick inspected.
Waiting on a paycheck.
Waiting to start a new round of meds.
Waiting for the pills to kick in.
Waiting to hear about a loan.
Waiting to win the lottery.
Waiting fir daylight savings time.
Waiting for Spring.
...is like waiting for the candle to light itself.

Day 53: Doctor doctor: The good, the bad, and the suck

Today was doctor day. Shrink first. Bottom line, we're gonna try me on Lexapro for anxiety/depression.

Primary care doc was 2nd, for yesterday's dizzy spell.

The Good: she says it sounds like benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) or "ear rocks". Basically these little Chicklet-like calcifications inside the bones of  your inner ear sometimes dislodge or get stuck and fool you into thinking the room is spinning. Nice. Treatment is symptomatic.

The Bad: They need to run more tests to rule out things like brain tumor. So I'll be getting a head CT in the next couple of weeks.

The Ugly: There are some problems on my EKG. Also my BP is too high. And my pulse is too quick. So I'll need a treadmill stress test and blood work, and possibly an arterial MRI to rule out some potential vascular issues (like my carotid artery closing up and cutting off blood to my head...sweeeeet).

Fuck.

Guess I'll really need that Lexapro. And beta blockers. Yummy.

Day 52a: 911 at the jumbo-bounce

So decided about 2 hrs ago to take Tori to the jumbo-bounce. The lot was full, we parked in back. The place was crowded, we signed in, and Tori headed for the big slide, which she loves. There was a line for everything and the place was crazy loud. I kept asking Tori what she wanted to ride, or if she wanted to eat. Then the whole world started spinning. And I couldn't stop it. Every time I looked around, I felt the ground slip out from under me. I sat on a bench and phoned Cecily. Then took Tori best as I could out to the lobby, where I fought to stay conscious (years of being a blackout drinker had trained me well).  Even seated in the lobby, I couldn't make the spinning feeling stop. So the owners of the jumbo-bounce called nine-one-one. Meanwhile Cec arrived to comfort the baby, who was sitting in a kiddy chair looking like she'd just seen the family cat eaten by a shark. The EMTs were very nice, took some vitals, and hooked me up to a portable EKG, which was normal. They asked if I'd eaten normally today (yes), if I'd been sleeping (yes, thankfully), f I was taking any meds (no), or had any pain (again, no). My EKG and BP were ok, tho the EMTs said I might want to take a ride in their little red truck. I decided instead to let Cecily take me home. So now I'm wondering exactly what the fuck happened?  Did I have a stroke, aneurysm, mamifestation of a brain tumor, or justsome weird new flavor of panic attack? I honestly don't have anything to compare it to (except being really drunk). The only thing I'd been doing differently is taking one Kava Kava herbal supplement nightly before bed, thus far without incident, for about 5 days. So what do you guys think?

Day 52: Oscar and Mickey

So tonight, many of us will be watching the Oscars. I've watched almost every year since age 8, when my parents let me stay up late enough.  Even though my movie attendance has dropped precipitously since Tori was born, I still like to see the awards get handed out.

And this year, first-time nominee Mickey Rourke is up for Best Actor for his performance in The Wrestler. I started following Rourke's career since 1982's Diner, in which he played bad boy "Boogie" Sheftell.  Follow-up performances included a leading role as Charlie in The Pope of Greenwich Village, as Henry Chinaski in Barfly (written by Charles Bukowski), and as Harry Angel in the voodoo-driven mystery Angel Heart.  I even enjoyed the less successful Year of the Dragon.

Then there were the 1990s, when Rourke tried boxing again (a career he'd begun in his teens) and the ties to mobsters, the weird inappropriate comments during interviews, the plastic surgery to correct the boxing injuries. And a bunch of movies I didn't see.  (Small spoiler here: there's a scene in The Wrestler, where Rourke and costar Marisa Tomei are having a beer at a local bar, and sharing a laugh while the jukebox plays. "Yeh, Rourke says with a laugh, "the 90s sucked." The character was talking about Grunge music, but Rourke fans can see a wider meaning.)

Tho Rourke's "comeback" in Spun is remarkably entertaining.  And Sin City, if you can embrace the idea of a comic book (no, I don't say "graphic novel") as a full-length feature film, gave Rourke some great moments. 

So tonight, I'll have my fingers crossed for Rourke. Not just because he gutted it through some tough times (as Henry Chinaski says in Barfly, "I got the guts, Jim. I got the guts."), but because his performance in The Wrestler is truly exemplary.

Day 51: PTM boot camp

Philly's new Please Touch Museum rocks. For kids. For old dads like me it's a bit like boot camp. Except they don't make you get up at oh-five-thirty. And the food's better. Spent the morning chasing Tori thru the jungle, around some Pennsy rail coaches, thru a Detroit of cars and a Canaveral of spaceships.  Not to mention all of Wonderland (the Lewis Carroll version, not the Michael Jackson version, thankfully).

She had a BLAST.  And she was on pretty good behavior. Even kept the running-away to a minimum.  And the experience probably qualified me for an obstacle course somewhere. At the very least one of those lame obstacle courses the networks occasionally make former TV stars like Erik Estrada run so we can all mock them.

If you're the parent of a toddler-to-10-year-old, and you're under 40 (or want to give yourself a full cardio workout), I highly recommend the Please Touch.

Cecily is scheduled to return tonight.  *sighs with relief*

Day 50: Dad 101, poetry, and the process of submission

While Cecily is at "Mom 2.o"...I'm at Dad 101. Kickin' it old school with Miss T, who does a fair share of her own kickin'. Mostly the DVD player in the car. And occasionally Daddy.

Am blogging now because last night, after she finally went to sleep, I nearly forgot and hastily typed some gibberish into the machine before sailing off to Slumberland.

So, just waiting for the 2-foot-tall Serbian prison guard to awake from her nap, I thought I'd jot a note or two... have been working on new poems but those will have to stay under wraps awhile, since I think it's time I submit some of my stuff to the mags again (if we don't run out of money before we run out of stamps). Anyway, putting a poem on one's blog can be construed as "publishing", hence all the secrecy.  I do understand tho, because when I was sending my poems out in the 80s, it was all old school... you sent a stamped self-addressed envelope, 3 to 5 of your poems, and a cover letter, then you waitwaitwait until you get a slip in the mail from the mag's Editor, and if you're lucky and you get a piece accepted, you waitwaitwait about 6 to 9 more months to see your work in print, likely in a mag whose circ is about 250 copies, so the only people reading your work, outside of the other contributors, are those select few who actually subscribe or the even fewer who pick up a copy at their local college bookstore. Of course, on a blog, you can get anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand readers in a day (tho I'm a whole lot closer to the few dozen). Nonetheles, it beats waiting.

Poetry fans, fear not. I'll still be putting pieces on the web (both new and previously published). It's just that a few will have to get rejected by the publishers before they appear here.

So here's an old one...unpublished, until, I s'pose, now.

____________________________________________________

drunk-a-log


After one drink: human
After two: bulletproof
After three: God (and then some)
After four: a catamaran off Aruba
After five: two sneakers
joined at the laces
and slung over a telephone
wire
After six: a broken umbrella
After seven: a Buick
up on blocks
radiator gone.
After eight, nine, ten: I don't remember
            I don't remember
                I don't remember.