Best Chair Ever

Skip got a new wheelchair yesterday. She had a pretty cool one before, but this new one has every bell and whisle imaginable. It's a mid-wheel drive machine, so it has a tighter turning radius that her previous chair, which had rear wheel drive. It's got all sorts of power features, primarily designed to help the user change pressure points to head off development of pressure sores. It tilts. It reclines. The legs can be raised up. The best feature? You can raise the seat up a full 12". This will be great for Skip, especially in social settings, where she can be more at eye level when speaking to people who are standing. It's just completely cool.

At rest - cool body color, eh?

With the seat elevated

The seat fully reclined and the legs lifted



25 Random Things

If you're a Facebook user, you may recall a lot of your friends in 2009 posted lists of "25 random things" about themselves as a Facebook note. A friend of mine, Gary, recently posted his list from that era and suggested others do the same. I think this is a great idea and I'd love to read others' lists if they're up for posting them.

I dug mine up and post it here. Of course I would, as it states in #1, I'm my own favorite subject, so I'm happy for the option to share this stuff about me. In rereading the list, I see that a lot has changed in the 3 years since I wrote this. My Dad and my favorite dog ever, Sally, have both died. Sally just over 2 years ago. My Dad in May of 2010. I no longer have a job (yay!).

Without further ado, my 2009 25 random things ....

1. I am my own favorite subject (so this kind of exercise is really fun!).
2. Because of #1, I often share too much information about my personal life to those I know only professionally or as casual acquaintances.
3. In my best moments, I wonder how Skip (my wife) has been able to put up with me for almost 28 years.
4. Even at 52, I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. By this, I mean I have never found a job that aligned with the things I’m passionate about. And, I also have trouble figuring out my passions.
5. I have an excellent vocabulary and love to use it to good effect. While I think this provides greater clarity in my speaking and writing, I suspect it often has the opposite effect, as the words I use are not always understood by my audience.
6. At times, I try to focus on what’s really important, such as the love of others and loving them in return. But, it’s really, really easy for me to get mired in the crap of daily life and forget how privileged I actually am.
7. My parents never thought I’d graduate from high school. I flunked 5 of my 6 classes freshman year (passed algebra with a D-). After I got suspended 7 times in my sophomore year for cutting classes, my parents sent me to private school. For some reason, I excelled there and managed to graduate when I was 16.
8. I live in the house I grew up in. For the first 10 years we lived here, that was totally intimidating to me, as my parents were frequent visitors and I worried what they thought of how we maintained it. I eventually grew out of that mindset and now mentally “own” it. We’ve now been here 20 years.
9. We have two dogs, piebald mini dachshunds. I always related to dogs as dogs, not pseudo-people. However, all that has changed with one of them, Sally, about whom I am absolutely besotted.
10. 2008 was the worst year of my life. Too many bad things happened to me and those around me; worst of all were my reactions to those occurrences. I look forward to the return of my resiliency in 2009.
11. Sad to say but my musical tastes pretty much calcified when I was in college.
12. I have huge respect for my dad, who is a real renaissance man. Now in his 80’s, with significant health issues, my respect continues to grow as I see how he grapples with those issues.
13. Speaking of health issues, I am continuously impressed with how Skip deals with her MS. She’s had it for over 20 years and it has robbed her of so much, yet she manages a positive outlook most of the time. In her shoes, I suspect I’d not deal with it with such grace.
14. I’ll read just about anything I can get my hands on.
15. My parents didn’t own a TV from the time I was 8 or 9 until I was in college. I think this helped me develop the love of reading that I have to this day.
16. I am at my best in the early morning. It’s strictly downhill from there.
17. My ears have been ringing for 30 years and my hearing, left ear especially, is not so great. Ironically, the cable box in the bedroom makes a low hum that I can hear and find quite annoying while Skip can’t hear it.
18. I have passed out from the violence in two movies, and almost passed out from a third. They are Le Chien Andelou, The Piano and the almost was Catch-22. I have a reputation for squeamishness about movies that is not entirely deserved as one of my favorite movies is Fargo, which has a lot of violence. However, I am very careful about screening movies for this before viewing them and find it’s best to watch a questionable movie at home, so I can easily stop it.
19. I am fortunate to have a job where I can work from home. To date, the most extreme thing that’s happened while I’ve been working at home was the time Skip fell out of her wheelchair and turned her ankle 180 degrees, breaking it in 3 places. When she called out to me for help, I was on a conference call that I was facilitating. Through instant messaging, I got a colleague to carry on and went to help Skip. When I got back on, no one knew I’d been away.
20. My mother thinks I’m too conservative.
21. I am a huge Red Sox fan, but perhaps don’t have the right temperament for baseball fandom. Even a good season usually has about 60 or 70 losses and each one is hard for me to take.
22. I have been fat since I was 5 or 6. I figure it’s in my genes. My mother’s father weighed 400 pounds and I’m distantly related to America’s fattest president. Lots of other fat folks in my family tree.
23. Starting in my teens, I developed the perspective that my size wasn’t a problem, instead it was society’s reaction to it that was a problem. My mantra: being fat isn’t inherently unhealthy, you can be fat and lead a healthy lifestyle. In my early 40s I had an epiphany: I was eating unhealthfully, my weight was creeping up year after year and decided I’d better shape up or I’d start feeling the effects on my health. Lost 98 pounds. Put a good portion of it back on in the last 6 years, but still working on the healthy lifestyle.
24. My favorite personality type to work with? Curmudgeons. You always know where you stand with them.
25. I’m a true child of the 1960s; I still have problems dealing with authority figures or being told what to do.

Twofer: A Hooker Story and a Stripper Story

The poker blogs I read have been writing stories over the last few weeks about hookers and strippers. I didn't think I had any stories that would fit these categories, but, while reading a post from Very Josie, I remembered a couple anecdotes that would fit right into these two themes.

Hooker Story
In my freshman year at Simmons College in Boston in 1973, some friends and I went together to see Aretha Franklin at the Boston Garden. They were coming into town via the subway, and we agreed to meet in front of the only landmark I was sure they'd be able to find -- Madame Tussaud's wax museum, across from the Boston Common -- as we'd gone there together a few years prior.

I got to the meeting place before my friends. I'd guess it was around 6:30 or 7, and it was early winter, so already dark. I was dressed in my usual attire: flannel shirt, jeans, boots and a plaid wool shirt for warmth. No makeup. Long hair tied back in a ponytail. After standing in front of Madame Tussaud's for a while, I realized that the other folks lingering there were, shall we say, ladies of the evening and their clientele. Accidentally, I caught the eye of an older fellow, who raised his eyebrows and gestured with his head as if to say, "come with me." Sheesh! I figured that a tall, fat female dressed like I was (I was straight-identified at the time, but still dressed mannishly) would never be taken for a prostitute, but I was wrong! I moved away from this guy, staying as close to the street as possible, but still in the area for when my friends arrived. After some more loitering, this same guy came over to me, grabbed my arm and said "c'mon, let's go!" After some resistance, he finally got the message and left me alone. I'm sure he was greatly disappointed! .

Soon thereafter, my friends showed up and I was rescued from any further unwelcome advances. We had a good laugh as we headed over to the Garden for the show. The seats sucked but the show was great. Gotta love Aretha.

Stripper Story
This story actually happened to Skip, but it's a goodie worth retelling. In her late 20s, Skip was still healthy and worked as the bar manager at a Japanese restaurant on the waterfront in Boston. We lived in Boston's South End. Sometimes I'd go pick her up after the restaurant closed but other times she'd get a ride from the restaurant manager, a gay guy she was good friends with.

One evening, Jim the manager and she decided to go to a strip club called the Naked I in the Combat Zone, which used to be where Boston's strip clubs were located. The Zone doesn't exist anymore, largely because land values got too high downtown to waste the property with some sleazy bars, brothels, XXX theaters and XXX-rated bookstores. They went to this club because the bartender was an old friend of Jim's. Skip was always ready for an evening out back in the day.

Skip decided she'd buy a drink for one of the strippers, a woman named Misty. Skip wanted to know why Misty had become a stripper. Her answer has faded into the "mists" of time ... this was over 25 years ago ... but they chatted for a bit and then Misty went back to her performing.

Some days later, Skip and Jim went back to the Naked I again. When they arrived, Misty was up on stage doing her thing. Bent over, looking back at the crowd between her spread legs, she saw Skip come in, she waved and shouted out, "Hello, Skip!" Now there's a memorable greeting!

And now, we shall return this blog to its regularly scheduled programming.

Batter Up!

I love baseball, especially Red Sox baseball. Opening day is this Sunday. The game is nationally televised, so it's been set at the ridiculous time of 8:00pm. I can tell you the last thing I'd want to do is sit in Fenway Park on an early April evening, freezing my butt off, even if it is opening day against the Yankees. I will be comfortably settled here, watching it with Skip, enjoying our first meaningful baseball game in many months.

In 2004, the year the Red Sox ended their 88-year long drought of World Series wins, we started going to games at Fenway Park. We discovered that the Park had set up a few wonderful spots for wheelchair fans and a few awful spots as well. In our very first visit, we found ourselves sitting in the front row, along the first base side, right beside the ball boy (who collects foul balls and such during game play). The seats were unbelievable. It was the clinching game of the American League Divisional Series, where the Red Sox swept the Angels in 3 games. It was a wonderful game, with lots of scoring, that went into extra innings. David Ortiz (Big Papi) hit a 2-run HR over the left-field wall (the Green Monster) in the bottom of the 10th to win the game for the hometown team. That was such a great feeling, to see the ball go over the wall and join in the celebration as the crowd erupted.

Another excellent spot for wheelchair seats is up in a relatively new area of Fenway, the right-field roof box. This area is set up with tables and waitress service. Along the top rung of tables, there are at least 3 tables that can accommodate wheelchair users, with the table seating 5. Skip doesn't have the best view of the action, but it is otherwise a wonderful way to take in a game.

Honestly, it doesn't get much better than a wonderful, sunny Sunday afternoon at the ballyard with your friends.

The World is Spinning

Warning: I probably included way too much detail in this post.

I occasionally have bouts of vertigo. Fifteen months ago, I had two bouts in a two-week time period after having gone, I'd guess, about 15 years vertigo-free. This, combined with other symptoms like partial hearing loss in one ear and tinnitus in both, is a lovely condition I seem to have inherited from my dad, Meniere's disease.
When I had those two bouts in November 2008, they frankly scared me silly and I was very careful to limit caffeine and salt, both of which can trigger attacks. I had gone back to my old coffee-drinking and food salting habits, though, within a few months being attack-free.

The first attack occurred at an otolaryngologist's office while I was waiting for an audiology exam. I'd gone in for an appointment because the ringing in my ears had spiked dramatically in the previous few days, apparently a foreshadowing of the upcoming vertigo. I couldn't move my head without throwing up. They finally called an ambulance and had me taken to a nearby emergency room where I spent about 8 hours alternating between holding my head as still as could be and violent vomiting when I didn't.

Almost two weeks later, on a late Sunday morning, I felt the symptoms coming on again. I got Skip as settled as possible as quickly as possible and went directly to bed. During the 10 hours or so of the attack, I only threw up twice, each time I got up to go to the bathroom.

While I'm having one of these attacks, I can feel the world slowly spinning. My sense of position is gone and it becomes hard to walk upright. I spend most of the attack lying on my side with my eyes open, staring at a fixed spot. Things slowly rotate around that spot.

Thursday night was different, though. Earlier in the week, I'd been having a bit of mild vertigo, nothing nauseating, just unsettling. Then, on Wednesday, my ears felt plugged up and I thought that was the cause of the mild vertigo. That day, hearing was very difficult yet I was hypersensitive to sound. Whenever I'd go in to help Skip I'd have to make her either turn down or turn off the tv because the sound of it was so annoying. Thursday morning, the pressure was gone and things seemed pretty normal. But in the early evening, the vertigo came on with a bang and I knew I was in for trouble.

At first, the vertigo attack started out as the previous two had ... if I kept my head still, I'd keep from puking. But a few hours into it, it was like a switch turned on and I couldn't stop throwing up even if I held my head still. Also, I couldn't close my eyes to try and rest as that made the spinning more intense.

Skip needed some assistance, so she called MJ, the aide from the private pay agency, and she came over to help out for a few hours. She mostly helped Skip, but it was wonderful to have someone come over with an extra blanket and to change the bowl I was clutching.

In the morning, I was able to sit up then stand up without too much discomfort. I felt washed out and weak but the world had stopped spinning. I took most of the day off work and spent a good deal of it lying down, sometimes napping. Skip had smartly arranged with MJ for her to come for 3 hours that morning, so I was able to completely focus on resting and recuperating.

I am hoping mightily that history does not repeat and I have another attack in 2 weeks! I've cut out caffeine and am watching my salt intake. Who knows, I might even go back to the otolaryngologist to see if there's something he can recommend! I'll have to pay close attention to any of the symptoms that foreshadow vertigo so we can have a little forewarning to arrange for help.

Feeling a Bit Restless

Life is going along pretty smoothly. Status quo. Steady state. Same old same old.

I haven't been too cranky, though maintaining good spirits around bedtime remains a challenge. Skip is doing fairly well, except for a couple of wounds on her "undercarriage" that aren't healing readily. Work keeps me busy. All the routines around the house are comforting, and help to keep us grounded and feeling that life is in order.

I don't want a crisis to shake things up. But I do want to inject a bit out of the ordinary into our lives. Something like a trip into Boston to see live theater, a day out with Skip to "leaf peep" the fall foliage, or maybe a day where MW stays with Skip for the day and I run off to be irresponsible and play some poker at a Connecticut casino. Maybe we should take in a Red Sox baseball playoff game at Fenway Park (these tickets are normally unavailable, but wheelchair seats can usually be had for just about any game). At this point, I think I'd be happy just to go to a movie in a theater and eat too much buttered popcorn.

Whatever we end up doing, I've got itchy feet and they want to take me off to do something out of the house and out of my daily routines.

The Sky is Falling! The Sky is Falling!

Our house is surrounded by trees, as you can see by the photo above. Very, very large trees. Most of them are pines and white oaks. A few maples, alders and other varieties are sprinkled in.

Apparently this year we're experiencing a bumper crop of acorns and pine cones. Our yard is now liberally sprinkled with lots and lots of pine cones and acorns. Very little seed is being eaten from our bird feeders as all the critters who frequent them are off enjoying the natural fruits of the fall.

Yesterday afternoon, so many acorns were dropping, it sounded like the sky was falling. The acorns would ping off the roof, sounding like gunshot if you were sitting in the living room (we don't have an attic to muffle any of the sound). Out on the patio and under the gazebo, Skip and the pups were constantly assaulted by loud pings and bouncing cones and acorns. They so freaked out Ruby, who is prone to chickenshit-tishness, she eventually begged to go in the house!

Feeling Cranky - Laptop Died This Morning

Granted, this laptop has been a piece of %$#$# almost from the outset. I will never buy a Compaq again. It had a problem where it would overheat and shut down if CPU usage cranked too high. At first, this happened only when I was playing poker and had some software running that would track hands and display data about my opponents at the table. Then, it started happening when I was loading CD's into iTunes. Then, I joined Facebook and it seemed to happen frequently when I was logged into Facebook. This morning, I started it up and after about 1 minute of usage, it made a funny noise that immediately said to me "I've died," shut down and it won't restart.

Fortunately, we have an older laptop that still works, though slowly.

Now I just need to figure out how to get the stuff off the harddrive of the dead machine without paying someone hundreds of dollars to do so.

The Honey Do List

The weekend I've been craving is here. Yay!

This weekend, I'm hoping to knock a number of items off the "honey do" list. I've got the list prepared with the things that have been rolling around in my brain. Skip has pen and paper in hand as I write this to add a few items of her own (it is, after all, a honey do list). Her hands are bad and her writing has gotten fairly indecipherable, but we'll go through the items and I'll add them to my already long list of things to do. I've set some priorities and dependencies as well (can you tell I was a project manager through a large part of my professional career?). I can spackle the ceiling in the bathroom, but I can't paint it until I make a run to Home Depot for a new can of mildew-resistant paint.

I'm a procrastinator by nature ("really?," say my friends reading this blog, in mock surprise), so I'm slow to get around to the weekend stuff. I keep up with the basic things like laundry and dishes, but tend to put other stuff off.

This weekend, though, the list gets addressed so I crossed some items off. We have some friends coming for the weekend in 3 weeks, and I'm using that as a motivator. Basically, I have to have a good reason to get things done. "Just because" is never enough.

So, as soon as I post this, I'm going to start knocking that stuff off. Wish me luck!

Is it Friday Yet?

By all rights, from my brain's perspective, it should be Friday today. I've already had a more than full week, with plenty of crankiness to boot, and the brain is ready for the weekend.

I think it's due to two things: crappy sleep and my brain is "full."

It's been difficult this week to sleep well once into bed for the night. Falling asleep on the couch for an hour or two before going to bed has worked just fine. But, once in bed, I haven't been sleeping easily or staying asleep for long. I think this is due to my shoulders making me uncomfortable and sleeping a bit on the couch before bedtime. So, we're looking at buying a more comfortable mattress and I'm thinking about making an MD appointment to have the shoulders looked at again (this is a big step for me). I'm going to try and not go to sleep until we go to bed so I am more tired when my head actually hits the pillow.

On the brain being "full" ... I have had just about enough for my brain to handle this week so I don't have much capacity to handle anything new. New stuff, then, isn't absorbed easily, which is what helps to prompt cranky reactions. This can be as simple as a schedule change for one of our aides. Or, as major as trying to cram one more thing into an already jam-packed morning with tight deadlines looming. Just looking for a chance to "chill" so I can feel less at capacity. I suspect a weekend of mindless stuff - knocking off items on the to do list - will help me regain some capacity and get me feeling more organized, to boot.

On a slightly different subject, it's been a lovely, cool day here. With the work day almost over, I'll be heading out with the pups to give the 3 of us a short walk before dinner. Can't wait!

Well ... Not Quite Opening Day

We've got a good steady rain going here, in the greater Boston area. So, the Red Sox have postponed opening day's game until tomorrow at 4pm. Guess I'll just have to be patient until then.

Opening Day

At last, today is opening day for the Red Sox (and most of baseball, for that matter). For the next six months, hardly a day will go by without a baseball game on.

I know this has nothing to do with being a caregiver, but I have been waiting since last October for today, so thought it worth a mention.

I'm not quite sure why I'm an avid baseball fan (also very interested in professional football). As a kid, we didn't participate much in organized sports in school nor watch/attend sporting events of any kind. Family activities usually centered around all the work outside that needed doing, such as working my father's huge garden or planting Christmas trees or forest maintenance (you get the picture).

Like all of New England (I suspect), I did pay attention to the Red Sox in the post-season of 1967 when they lost the World Series in 7. I can remember us stopping class (I was in the 7th grade) to listen to parts of the game on the transistor radio one of the boys in class had brought in. So, I learned early how much the Red Sox can crush your spirit! :-)

The next time I really paid any attention to professional sports was in 1981 when the Celtics ended up winning the championship. Somehow, I came upon the epic series against the 76ers that preceded the finals (as I recall) and I got hooked. Watched the Celtics religiously all through the Bird/McHale/Parish/Johnson/Ainge era. Especially loved the seasons where Bill Walton played with them. Guess I was a fair-weather fan as I stopped watching them when the team really started to stink.

Had always been aware of the Red Sox. Went to my first game at Fenway in 1967. Went to college a few blocks from Fenway Park but only went to one game during my college years and didn't watch the World Series in 1975 that occurred during that time. Got back into them in 1986 in the run up to the World Series, so suffered enormously with all other Red Sox fans when the ball rolled between Bill Buckner's feet and they gave away the Series. I blame that game not on him though. Instead, I blame Roger Clemens, Calvin Schiraldi and the manager (what was Buckner doing in the game at that point? They needed some defense).

In 2004, we decided to try out some of the handicapped-accessible seating at Fenway and discovered the pleasures of sunny Sunday afternoons at the ball park. We try to go a few times a year, though tickets are very expensive. And, due to the heat, we only go early or late in the season. There is a lot of seating around the park for wheelchair users, some of it great. In 2004, we sat in the monster seats (sub-optimal for wheelchairs, oh well), in the front row on the first base side next to the ball boy (these are the ultimate wheelchair seats IMO), and some terrible seats down by the Pesky pole where visbility is continuously obscured by those walking to and fro and whenever folks stand up. Since then, we've also tried the right field roof box, where you can get a table that seats 5 with waitress service, and also high up in the grandstand along the first base side, where you can buy more than only the wheelchair + companion tickets. For opening day 2005, when they gave out the World Series rings, we had seats in the front row of the bleachers, just behind the two bullpens. The great thing about all these seats is that, except for Yankees games, you pretty much have availability all throughout the season.

All in all, I am really looking forward to this year's baseball season. At 2pm today, we get underway.

Play Ball!