Author Archives: HippieBoy

Why is Health Political?

Poor Wifey is just sitting in her comfy chair, staring out the window. The stress of uncertainty has stolen the resilient upbeat attitude she’s known for and has replaced it with a tense heaviness, bordering on despair.

Every morning she listens to the news as she lays in bed, preparing her shots, doing her breathing treatments, the ever-present oxygen machine humming in the corner. “Do they know I will die if they get their way?” I shrug, trying not to think of the decisions being made, the bribes (I’m sorry, “campaign contributions”) being made. What can I say?

Every day about noon she starts to get anxious and will go sit in her comfy chair even though she can only sit up for a short time before the pain and cramping get too bad. She’ll listen to her Bible studies with her special Bible in her lap, her hands too weak and painful to hold it for more than a few seconds, gazing blankly out the window waiting for the mail ma’am to drive by. “It’s here,” she’ll say. I’ll put my shoes on, “I’ll be right back.” As I walk up the lane I can see her in the window, anticipation, resignation, fear, anger, all showing in her eyes, all overshadowed by sorrow as she watches me meander up to the mailbox. I can never make myself do this chore without childish attempts to stall; I’ll pause to pull a few weeds, maybe throw the frisbee for the dog to chase before making myself open the mailbox.

“Anything?” she’ll ask, her voice tense. “No, just bills, I’ll reply, setting the various envelopes on the table. She’ll painfully pull herself out of the chair and follow her walker back to her room, one foot slowly in front of the other. The doctor is proud that she can make the fifteen-foot trek without her wheelchair, but it costs her – she’ll be on oxygen, napping most of the afternoon. We won’t talk about the mailbox until evening.

“Do you think we’ll get it?” she’ll ask. “Of course,” I answer. But after two and a half years of waiting, two routine denials, and nearly three months after her hearing, I have to admit I’m not as sure as I once was.

If the judge rules that she’s disabled, she’ll be eligible for Social Security payments. That used to feel important to us, it was all we thought about after Lincoln Financial stopped her disability payments- that little bit of money she’d get each month to help with the bills. Not much – about enough each month to cover one day’s worth of medication if nothing else goes wrong – but enough to make her feel as though she’s contributing, as though the three degrees she earned and three decades of work mattered. But now our focus has changed.

If the judge rules she’s disabled AND backdates the ruling, she may be eligible for Medicare or Medicaid in a year. If those in our Senate succeed in repealing the Affordable Care Act, or change the rules to include a lifetime cap on insurance benefits or allow insurance companies to use pre-existing conditions to deny coverage, she will, inevitably, die – unless the judge rules that she’s eligible for Medicare in time. The timing is excruciatingly critical, with the highest stakes.

“Do you think we’ll hear from the judge soon?” she asks. “Of course,” I answer. “I’m sure the letter will get here this week for sure.” I smile and kiss her on the forehead, careful to avoid bumping any needles or tubes that may be connected to her. “Probably tomorrow.”

I go to my room and lay down for the night and pretend I don’t hear her cry. She’s too strong to cry from the ever-present pain, and her faith is too strong for her to cry out of pity for herself. When she cries, she cries for the thousands, millions of other people who are in similar situations. And, I think, sometimes she cries in sorrow that our nation now values profit over compassion, that we allow private disability insurance companies to blatantly break their social contracts without fear of retribution as long as they show their shareholders a profit. She cries because she’s not the only one.

She cries because she can’t do anything else.

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Memories

(This is an e-mail I sent:)

Hello and Happy Day!

I splurged a bit back in 2002 or 2003 when I bought a neato WhirlyPop Popcorn Popcorn Popper at the World Market in Omaha, NE. Being newly married my wife and I didn’t really have any spare money back then, but just looking at the picture on the box of the popper brought back sooo many memories of my Grandmother that I just had to have it!

My grandmother was a very gentle, upright person. A few times a year if it seemed to be a special occasion of some sort she’d send one of us grandkids up to the attic to find the box with the Whirlypop Popcorn Popper, knowing full well the popper was actually in the basement. But she also knew full well that sending a horde of children up into the attic would entertain us for at least an hour as we found little treasures hidden in the dusty corners, maybe a postcard from someone with old-timey handwriting with a picture of the Statue of Liberty on it, or one of my uncle’s old books on Ancient History with pictures of camels and pyramids… We’d dust off the treasures and put them back in their spot and search for something new. In due time, by the time we’d tromp back downstairs, smiley and happy and full of stories of the wonders we’d found in the attic to find Grandmother at the stove patiently stirring the popcorn. “I’m sorry, it was in the basement the whole time,” she’d say.

(It just now occurred to me – sending us into the attic to search for the popper was her way of dusting and reorganizing the area. Smart lady!)

Smart as she was, though, my grandmother wan’t much of a cook… She’d dump half a pound of lard and what must have been a full cup of table salt into the popper along with forty or forty-five meager kernels of popcorn. The treat was never quite a treat for us – Gramma’s popcorn pretty much sucked. (She could quote any Bible verse you requested, she could do multiplication in her head like a whiz, she could recite poetry, but for pete’s sake don’t eat her chicken!)

All this came back to me in a flood that day in 2002 or 2003 as I stood in the World Market staring at the box. I had to have it, and indeed, I did make the purchase. “Cheap food,” I explained to my wife. “It’ll save us money in the long run.”

Little did I know that I would make at least one batch of popcorn every single night from then on. Sometimes two batches. Every single night without fail.

I would estimate the popper has made over five-thousand five-hundred batches of popcorn over the years.

Sadly, it is now showing signs of age… The nylon (or plastic) gears are slipping, popcorn is burning (much to the delight of our two dogs who get to snack on the singed kernels), the top is starting to fall off at inconvenient times…My old friend is getting older now, and that makes me sad.

After analyzing my continuing popcorn habits, my wife and I are planning to replace Old Beloved with a new stainless steel model with metal gears. Sadly, money is even tighter for us now than it was 15 years ago when I bought Old Beloved. My blushing bride from fifteen years ago has developed serious health issues and is now disabled, homebound. While the numbers on the medical bills are very startlingly high, my wife is still insisting that we purchase a new popper, and that we get it from your company. “They make a good product,” she said from her bed. “You’ve had that popper for forever… And every night when you make popcorn you smile so nicely.” (I’m thinking of my grandmother and how exciting it was to play in her attic.) “And the pups sit and watch so they can get their treats. You need a new popper. Don’t worry about money. Go buy one. A nice one.”

And that led me to your website. I’ve bookmarked it so I can purchase the nifty new Stainless Steel Whirley Pop Stovetop Popcorn Popper with Metal Gears in a week or two when Old Beloved finally gives up the ghost. I saw your e-mail address and thought I’d share my happy little story with you. Yay!

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A Patient’s Perspective

“So how are you doing today?” asked the nice lady at the desk.

“Okay, I guess,” I answer, glancing at the clock. I’d got hung up getting out the door – the lady who was supposed to come to care for my wife while I ran to town was a few minutes late. We live 18 miles from the clinic and it’s harvest season, so I got hung up a few more times following tractors on the way. The rule is that if you’re less than fifteen minutes early to your appointment they cancel you, but I’d made it in time, thanks to a six-mile stretch of clear road where I could push our aging Toyota up to eighty miles per hour. It took three days of planning for me to be able to get time off work and find someone qualified to watch my wife so I could be here; another minute and I’d have lost the appointment.

“Birthdate?” she asked. I mumbled the numbers, keenly aware that the year I was born was a history subject to the lady. A natural introvert, this isn’t easy for me.

“Okay, have a seat.”

I wandered to the nearest open seat and obediently sat. I glanced around at the others in the waiting room. A few people sitting, staring sullenly at their cell phones. Some oldsters gazing inwardly towards the television that’s been stuck on FOX News since 1986. Children. Quite a few children. Coughing openly as they ran about the room… I’ll need to take my clothes off outside before I go back into the house when I get home.

My wife has an immune system disorder, so I need to be aware of these things. The last thing she needs is for me to come home and give her a cold. The last thing I need is to be here.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked my e-mail – six new messages since I left home, all work-related, all urgent. I ignore them and glance at my texts. Three new texts, two work-related, urgent. One from my wife wishing me well.

I go back to the e-mails and start reading through them. I could feel my pulse rate go up – a customer isn’t happy with a design I’d done for them, and my boss wants a redesign done right away. I jot off a quick “I’m sorry, I’m at the doctor’s office – I’ll get this first thing when I get home” note, even though I’d told her yesterday that I needed some time off. I love working from home, but sometimes it’s awkward.

The second e-mail was another customer wanting a revision. The third was a message from the boss asking me to upload a file to the server. “I need this in ten minutes or we’ll lose the account.” The message was thirty minutes old… Gaaaahh…

My employer is very, very patient with me and goes way out of their way to accommodate my needs, but sometimes things at the office get a bit tense when deadlines loom.

“Chris? We’re ready for you.”

I pulled my gaze from my phone, blinked, and realized the nurse was talking to me. “Oh.” I hoist my carcass off the chair, drop my phone into my pocket, and follow her into the maze. After six or eight random turns we came to a scale. “Up you go,” she said.

Seriously? NOW? I’m wearing work boots, thermals, two shirts, a leather coat, belt, I’ve got about twelve pounds of miscellaneous crap in my pockets… But what do you do? “Well, looks like you’re up a few pounds,” the nurse said, writing down what looked like a four-digit number. “Well yeah,” I thought to myself, “last time I was here it was summer.”

“Okay, follow me,” the nurse said, resuming her course through the maze. Fighting the impulse to drop a trail of breadcrumbs I meekly trailed along behind her, hoping that I’d be able to find my way out later. “Here we are.” She opened a random door and ushered me into a closet.

I made my way sideways to the chair in the corner, wincing a bit as the nurse closed the door – the room was so small my ears popped.

“So why are we here today?” she asked.

“We?” I thought to myself. Out loud, “Well, because you told me to.”

“What?”

“Last time I was here you made an appointment for me and told me I had to be here in three months. So… here I am.”

“Uh… Do you have any complaints? Is there anything wrong?”

“Yes,” I thought to myself, “I’m here and I NEED to be home, that’s what’s wrong.” Out loud, “Well, I suppose my knee has been hurting a little lately.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s just get your blood pressure here…” The phone pinged in my pocket, my boss (I could tell by the tone). I took off my coat. My phone pinged again, the boss again, trying to text me again. I rolled up my shirt sleeve as the phone pinged a third time. The nurse cuffed me and pumped the doohicky… The phone pinged again.

“You’re running high,” she said.

“Yeah,” I thought, “I probably just got fired for not being at my desk.” Out loud, “Oh.”

“What medications are you on,” the nurse asked.

“I dunno, whatever the hell you put me on,” I thought to myself. Out loud, “Um… I take four pills, three in the morning, one at night.”

“Okay, I see you’re on Pskanipnadnapie, two milligrams of Snkapndmnapodsin, six kerfloogies of Kkdpaoasdfnkpa, and you take Sknasdfkdsnpp as well….?”

“Seriously, you’re the ones who gave me this crap, don’t you write it down?” I thought. Out loud, “Sure, that sounds about right.” I have zero clue what’s in those bottles – all I know is that one costs me three hundred and forty dollars a month and I don’t know what it does. I only take it half the time anyway – we need the money for my wife’s medications more than mine. It’s not like anyone cares enough to check.

“Okay,” she said, looking at her notes. “The doctor will be in in just a minute to check on your ankle.” Out the door went the nurse. My ears popped again.

I looked at my phone. I had to leave by 12:40 to to be here by 1:15 in order to keep my 1:30 appointment. Twenty-three minutes in the waiting room, five more in the closet, it’s 1:45 now. Over an hour. I checked my e-mail again. Another message from a customer wanting me to change a few words on their design and send them a proof by 1:45 so they could take it to their board. Crap. Feeling helpless I flip over to Facebook and wait for the doctor’s WiFi to connect. And wait. And wait. Nothing… I glance at the three texts from my boss – all I see is the word “NOW.” She must be way stressed, which is unusual, but there’s nothing I can do. Phone goes back into pocket.

I stare at the wall, my eyes idly searching out patterns in the drywall texture as my mind wandered. There’s so much that needs to be done – I haven’t had a chance to get to the dishes for days, laundry is piling up. The oil in the car needs changed about two weeks ago, I haven’t figured up taxes for the quarter yet. I have six ads to design, plus whatever’s in my e-mail. I know all I need to do to make that customer happy is swap out the placeholder photo in the third subcomposition, change the framerate to 24 on the main comp, add some motion blur on the logo… I just need to get home to do it. My phone pings again, a text from the caretaker. “Your wife just had a seizure, but I think I have everything under control.”

“So how are we doing today?” said the voice from the doorway. I tear my eyes away from my phone and look up. The doctor, eyes glued on her iPad, made her way into the room. “I see you’re having some problems with your hip? Oh, your blood pressure is a little high, let me retest that quick before we start.” She took her eyes off her tablet long enough to wrap a cuff on my arm and start pumping the doohicky.

pump pump pump PING pump pump pump….

“Ping.” I thought. “Wife just had a seizure.” I thought. “Think I have it under control” I thought. “If I don’t check that message in the next three seconds I’m going to explode,” I thought. My wife often has an asthma attack following a seizure, and sometimes she quits breathing altogether and loses consciousness — I hope things really are under control.

“Well, you’re running pretty high,” the doctor said. “I’m going to have to increase your medication. Have you thought about exercising?”

“What? No. What?” I glanced at my phone – the text wasn’t from the caretaker after all, but I couldn’t tell at a glance who it was from or what it said.

“You need to exercise more to keep your blood pressure down,” the doctor said, her eyes glued to the iPad in her hands. “I see you’re gaining weight as well.”

“Ping” said my phone.

“So what brings you here today?” the doctor asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “You told me to be here, so here I am.”

“Oh. Well, how are things going? How do you feel?”

“Well, to be honest,” I said, “I’m not doing real well. My wife has severe medical problems, I’ve had to rework my life in order to stay home to care for her. She’s having seizures now, and sometimes she quits breathing. I don’t know how to cope with this – I can’t sleep, she can’t get out of bed except to pee so I need to do all the household chores as well as my job, her insurance cancelled her policy when she got sick, we can’t get her on Social Security – I’m falling apart. I don’t know where to turn.”

“Ping” said my phone.

“Well,” the doctor said without looking up from her iPad, “I’m not sure what to tell you about your hip, but you need to exercise more. That should help. I’ll increase your blood pressure medication by ten klagemeters. That should help. Is there anything else?”

“To be honest, my stomach has really been hurting lately, my knee really does hurt, I’ve been having headaches, I’m not sure if I’m exactly sane any longer,” I thought. But she’s just poking at that iPad, looking impatient. So I said, “No.”

“Okay, I’ll get that script for you for your blood pressure and I’ll see again you in three months.”

“Okay,” I said. “But what can I do about my wife? Can you tell me how to care for her? What can I do?”

The doctor glanced up for the first time, said, “Just do the best you can. And get some exercise. The nurse will show you out,” and left.

I sat for a few moments, trying to absorb the fact that two day’s planning, an hour and a half of time, and who knows how much money just got spent on the last two minutes, then “Ping.”

I fished the phone out of my pocket just as the nurse poked her head in, “Okay, just take this paper to the front desk, you’re all set now.” I fumbled with the paper, my coat, the phone, and eventually managed to limbo my way out of the closet into the maze. No one in sight – I picked a random direction and wandered until I bumped into the Money Lady.

“How would you like to pay today?” she chirped.

“I wouldn’t,” I thought. Out loud, “Huh?”

“Cash or credit?”

“I don’t care – here, I have a card.” I gotta get out of here before I explode.

“Ping” says my phone.

“Let me just look up your insurance quick… Okay, you have a fifty dollar co-pay.”

“Sure, whatever…”

*ping*

“Okay,” she said, “the doctor wants to see you again in three months. What time works best for you?”

Seriously? Like I know exactly what I’m going to be doing three months from today? “I don’t care, whatever.”

*ping* I can tell without looking at my phone – either I’ve been fired or my wife has died.

“Well, let’s see…” A pause. “We have an opening at one-fifteen on…”

“FINE! That’s fine. I’ll take it.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll just write that down on this card for you… Oh, my pen doesn’t work, just give me a minute and I’ll find another…”

*ping* went my brain – remember the *ping*

Out the door, finally. Three angry customers, one angry boss, a wife having seizures, a fifty-dollar bill that the insurance company will undoubtedly refuse to pay leaving me to foot the entire two-hundred and whatever dollars myself, it’ll be after three before I get home – and I’ll need to find a way back to town tomorrow to pick up a prescription for medication I don’t need and can’t afford… All so I could see the doctor for less than four minutes to talk about what she wanted to talk about instead of what was bothering me.

*ping*

Someday I need to try to find out how much the blood pressure medication company pays her. “Probably more than I do…” I thought as I drove my broken Toyota past the Porsche parked in the “Doctors Only” space.

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Random Bass Isolation

For a zillion years I played a cover of this song with the Smokin’ Clams. I’d never really listened to the song, I just made up a bassline that fit what the guys played in rehearsals. My version fit, sorta, but it wasn’t right by any means. A few years ago I decided to try to learn the “right” way to play it and found that the bassline was actually quite a bit more intricate than I’d thought. Sadly I forget the original bassist’s name at the moment, but I believe he was a studio session player who came up with the bass part on the fly as they recorded Van Morrison’s album…

Anyway, here’s me fumbling through “Brown Eyed Girl.” (And I did fumble quite a bit – my headphones kept randomly cutting out on me…)

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It’s More than People Think…

“Oh yeah, there’s no doubt,” the doctor told me about a year ago. “Absolutely no doubt at all…” She looked down at the test scores for a moment, then back up to me again. “You definitely have ADHD. The results are clear — and by a very wide margin.” She then explained what the test’s results were and what they meant, but to be honest I don’t remember what she said. *ahem*

The psychologist and my family doctor worked together and soon I had a prescription for some tiny little pills. “You won’t feel any different,” the psychologist told me, “but others around you will be able to see a difference. And you’ll be able to get things done.”

And she was right. I didn’t feel any different. But the pile of work on my desk rapidly dwindled, I was able to clean and re-arrange the basement, other projects were finished… And of course I researched ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) a little at a time.

I wish I could “shut it off” like that.

I was surprised — it had never occurred to me that I might have ADHD. I mean, when you think of ADHD you think of the ten-year-old kid who fidgets and doesn’t pay attention. The jokes on the Internet, on Facebook, all reinforced that stereotype. The assumption that ADHD is just “not paying attention” is endemic. And erroneous.

ADHD is a real thing. They can test for it in a variety of ways. Scans show distinct differences in the brain activity of those with ADHD and “normal” folks. It’s NOT a made-up illness by any means. And it’s NOT just a matter of self-control or simply “buckling down and paying attention.”

Most people think that folks with ADHD either simply can’t be bothered to pay attention, or their brains are constantly whirling around in circles. That’s what I thought, anyway. And that’s how I felt — my mind was always flying around in a manic, unstoppable chase. I could never finish one thought before the next three interrupted. But the truth is a bit different… If you have ADHD, your brain actually kinda, well, falls asleep.

People with ADHD don’t produce the chemical (I think it’s dopamine, but I’m not sure) that “rewards” the brain when it stays alert and finishes a task. It’s a real, measurable, definable deficiency. The result of that is that, as I mentioned, is my brain basically stops a few times a minute. I could be looking right at you, engaged in the conversation, and have absolutely no idea what you just said… I wasn’t daydreaming — far from it, I was struggling very hard to stay involved — but part of my brain simply shut off. This is what earns us the “he’s just not paying attention” badge.

I just need more self-discipline.

What earns us the “squirrel” badge is how many folks with ADHD react when their brain kicks back on a few seconds later… Imagine being in a conversation with a friend. You suddenly realize you have no idea what has happened over the past few seconds, you just “wake up” in the middle of a situation. What does your brain do? It automatically looks at the most interesting thing in the area. I remember soooo many times I’d be talking with someone and realize I didn’t have the foggiest idea what was going on, and had no clue why my attention had refocused onto something else — the TV, the dog, a sparkly rock in the driveway, a squirrel… I just knew that I was lost and had just done something rude (or at least a bit odd).

So where does the “my brain is spinning in circles and I can’t shut it off” part of the equation come in? Well, when my brain blanks out for a few moments and restarts, it tries to tie the threads back together best it can, chasing around fragments of half-finished thoughts, trying desperately to remember all the details… Then the system crashes again, fragmenting the fragments and the brain scrambles around even harder and I’m trying to listen to what you’re saying and crash… A hundred thoughts, a bright light over there, someone’s talking, I don’t remember what was going on I need to pay better attention to what’s crash… Five hundred half-remembered thoughts floating around the conversation seems to be about dogs, I like dogs, did I remember to shut the lights off in the crash… Five thousand fragments in my mind I’m thinking about dogs and I don’t know why and what’s that light in the corner and someone’s talking and how am I ever going to remember what happ… crash.

It’s all my fault somehow.

I remember very vividly thinking so very often, “I need to throw beer at my brain until it slows down enough for me to think!” And I did. A lot. And it helped, some. Or at least I didn’t feel so frantic as I’d try to chase the million fragments…

So we covered the “Attention Deficit” part of “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.” What’s with they “Hyperactivity” part of the deal? Well, people with ADHD learn coping mechanisms at a young age. Most folks have a reasonably steady supply of dopamine (I think that’s what it is) that keeps their minds alert and happy. ADHD people try to keep their brains awake in other ways. In children it’s often fidgeting, being in constant motion. “Very often if you take a hyperactive child aside and hold them snugly in a blanket, they’ll fall asleep in a matter of minutes. Even though they’re in a constant whirlwind of activity, they’re exhausted,” explained my doctor. “The movement, the motion is just their way of trying to stay alert, to pay attention, to learn. As long as they keep moving, their minds are calm. When they stop moving, their brains start to shut off, which causes the jumble of thoughts.” As people with ADHD grow older, their means of coping changes, often involving drugs, alcohol, risky behaviors… The adrenaline junkie who takes his motorcycle out on the Interstate at ninety-five miles per hour without a helmet, whose hobbies involve sky-diving or kick-boxing, might just be coping with ADHD, trying to keep the constant buzz and jumble of half-understood thoughts at bay for a few minutes.

It must all be in my mind.

My wife, Dagmar, bless her soul, has always, always had a problem that I do crossword puzzles at the dinner table. She believes meal time is a time to share our day, to talk, converse, interact. And she thinks I’m ignoring her as I idly peck away at the latest puzzle, and she often — understandably — will quit talking to me, get up and leave. The truth is, though, that by distracting my brain with the puzzle, I can listen and comprehend what she’s saying. If I put the puzzle aside and pay strict attention to what she’s saying, my brain will invariably shut down and start the cycle of fragmenting my thoughts… With the end result that she’s happy I paid full attention to her while I have zero idea what she’s been talking about and my mind is going a million miles an hour trying to tie things together and now I’m grumpy and confused. If I play my puzzle, I can listen, comprehend, understand, and do everything except engage. (It must be said, Beloved Wifey has learned along with me and doesn’t take such things personally any longer, and actively tries to help me.)

As a child I don’t know how many times I was scolded for reading at the dinner table. Same thing. Reading distracted me so I could, oddly, pay attention.

I tripped over this article earlier today (as I was trying to figure out why I’d recently fumbled a very important project at work), and was intrigued by how a few other people described having ADHD… “Like having fifty-nine televisions blaring in my head all at once. Medications turn off fifty-eight of them.” Another described it as, “Like driving in the rain with faulty windshield wipers. Moments of clarity along with lots of blur.”

The medication most often used to help those with ADHD may be a bit startling – amphetamines. Speed. Very, very tiny doses of speed… As it’s a controlled substance I need to visit my family doctor’s office every month to get a hand-written prescription that I need to take to the pharmacy — there’s no way of simply calling in a refill or having the prescription delivered. Even though the dose is tiny (I get no “buzz” or anything), it’s very well-regulated.

Does it help? Oooohhhh yeah!

I’ll take my “sanity pill” about seven each morning when I wake up. By seven-thirty I’m happily working away, able to do whatever needs done. But by one or two in the afternoon it starts to wear off and I find myself slowly losing effectiveness, getting more irritable as my mind becomes more and more cluttered, less able to follow simple conversations…

Yeah, okay, that’s actually pretty funny…

Generally by two in the afternoon I’m done being productive. I’ll switch over to tasks that aren’t very repetitive or don’t need as much concentration, often plugging my headphones in and listening to music or grabbing a beer to help keep my mind from derailing. If you call me after one or two in the afternoon and give me detailed instructions on something, chances are pretty good that I’ll screw it up… (I recently got myself into considerable trouble with a job this way – someone called late in the day wanting me to design something for them. A ten-minute phone conversation left me bewildered and confused, my mind racing a million miles an hour trying to remember what I was supposed to do… And of the entire conversation I only remembered one tiny thing. Loathe to call back the next day and admit that I had no idea what they wanted, I did my best, took a guess, and got it miserably and utterly wrong.)

I was hoping to wrap this article up with a fantastically concise recap, a wonderfully precise description of how it feels… But it’s 2:30 in the afternoon now. I found myself just moments ago standing in my Wife’s room, blinking at her, wondering why I was there, struggling to follow what she was saying, feeling irritable and angry that I didn’t know what to say or how to answer her question (as if I knew what she asked)… The Packers are playing, I think Atlanta just got a touchdown, the dog needs to go out, I’m not sure if we have enough coffee for morning, did I shut the lights off in the crash… I need to feed the dogs, the Packers are playing, I know my wife just asked me a question but I don’t crash… Did I feed the dogs? What’s the score? Why is that light flashing in the corner? Where’s my crash…

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It’s obscene

I didn't draw this, Martin Shkreli

Whomever drew this is a minor diety…

I know this is old news, but whenever I trip over the fact that in America pharmaceutical companies are legally allowed to jack up prices on medications that keep people alive by over 5,500 percent without warning… It kinda torques me off a bit.

Martin Shkreli is still an immoral, unethical, pathetic excuse for an American in my opinion.

 

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Sometimes I Almost Forget…

…that this happened.

Giddy Giddy Giddy!
Signing Autographs
The Smokin’ Clams
Chris Radloff (that’s me!)
Tim Schenzel and Dan Barnes
Russ Howard
Randy Paddock
Induction Concert
Monte Erickson
Induction Concert
Dan Barnes
Hitting the High Note
Randy Paddock
Tim Schenzel
The Induction Concert
Dan Barnes
Smokin’ Clams
Smokin’ Clams
Too Happy to Look Cool
Mementos Preserved
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Thoughts…

We often fear ghosts from our past that loom up in the night, not knowing that when they’re examined up close they’re really just harmless, faded memories we tossed sheets over years ago because they don’t match our mind’s décor any longer.

If it’s an ugly memory, throw it away. No need to keep it in the basement any longer.

Nothing is quite as valuable as the last tablespoon of paint in the bottom of the can two-thirds the way through a project when you know the store is closed.

I’m normally a very quiet person. I have a soft voice and tend towards quiet mannerisms. But when I sneeze everyone within a half mile knows about it. And I often have to pick myself up off the floor.

The closet is sorted. The upstairs is clean. The basement is cleaner than it was. Long holiday weekends are nice! It’s 4:17 p.m. on the last day of a three-day weekend – time for me to relax a bit…

If I were an electrician my basement would be a lot brighter.

 

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