One Arm Alan

 

Reach across with left hand, flip 'lever' and pull.

Forty years ago, give or take a few, my friend Dennis and I used to go out drinking almost every night of the week. I don’t think we were alcoholics so much as two guys who enjoyed the atmosphere of a drinking establishment. The fact that I was living above a bar didn’t help. Besides that bar, Dennis and I would often bar hop to different bars up and down Clark Street with dive bars being our favorite. One thing about this pattern was that we would have many bar acquaintances, and to make things easy we would have shortcut names for some of them. This is because we knew multiple guys named Bill, Bob, etc. It wasn’t to be mean, but we had one guy we called ‘Fat’ Bob so that we wouldn’t confuse him with other guys named Bob. Another guy, nice guy, his name was Bill, we called him ‘One Arm’ Billy. Yes, he only had one arm. The only rule was that we never called people these shortcut names to their faces. It was only for the convenience in conversation between Dennis and myself. I suppose my neighbors might have a name they use when they’re referring to me when see me in the neighborhood. “Old guy with the two scruffy dogs. Old guy with the old car. Old guy with hair.” I’m sure they’re all complimentary names.

I was thinking about all this because for the last few weeks I have been ‘One Arm’ Alan. I had shoulder surgery and I am not supposed to use my right arm other than the fingers. For two weeks after surgery I slept in my recliner chair, which was a challenge. It’s a right hand mechanical recliner, so I had to devise a Rube Goldberg sort of way to get it to go down and up. I’ve only been stuck in it a couple of times, and the only way to remove myself from the chair was to slither out. Then there are the two scruffy dogs. For the first week I just opened the back door and encouraged them to poop in the yard. No walkies for them. Second week my neighbor upstairs helped me out by walking Scout while I walked little Daisy. That worked out okay, but I didn’t want to take advantage. The last three days I walked them both, with one arm. It isn’t easy, especially picking up the poop. Which brings up another subject, the bathroom. Doing things in the bathroom that I have always done with my right hand, like shaving, showering, and… umm… ‘cleanup’. I don’t mean cleaning the bathroom, I mean cleaning me. A right handed job I’ve done since I was a freshly potty trained child. It has resulted in some creative moves. I’m no contortionist so it has not been easy. Anyway, the moral of this story is I now have new respect for One Arm Billy. 

Please, Pees Me

 

I’ve had three or more foster dogs over the years. The last one was Daisy. Of all the fosters I had, I decided to keep the most problematic of them. Daisy. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a sweet little dog and she seems to love and trust me. Her only flaw was that she was not completely house broken when I got her. Already ten years old, she had most of it down. She knew that outside was where you pooped and peed. What she didn’t stand for was me not taking her out exactly when the urge hit her, so she’d leave me a reminder on the floor. One day I decided that I would put one of the leftover puppy pee pads from previous foster dogs, on the floor. Sure enough, Daisy used it. She left a little wet circle in the middle of the pad. I praised her for her good aim and gave her a baby carrot as an reward. Bad move, because Daisy is a very smart little dog. She immediately realized that for every pee spot on the pad, she got a carrot as a reward. So now I’ll be sitting in my chair and a very excited Daisy will come prancing into the living room, all proud, expecting that carrot. Instead of excitedly trying to get me to take her out, she just pees on the pad as if it’s an ATM for carrots.

Lately Daisy has added another dimension to peeing on the puppy pee pad. Poop, she poops on the pad. The worst thing about that is, Daisy eats poop. Daisy eats dog poop, Daisy eats bird poop, Daisy eats whatever poop critters leave behind. The only reason I know she poops on the puppy pee pads are the poop stains left behind.  Anyway, it does make it easier on me in the winter or if it’s raining. Let her do her thing on the pad, and give her a carrot.

One more thing. Daisy does not pee, nor poop on the pad if I leave the house. I can be gone for eight hours and when I get home Daisy will not have done it on the puppy pee pad. I’m sure her reasoning is, why waste a good pee if I’m not immediately going to get a carrot reward.

I Eat My Own Face

 

(First of all let me say how happy I am that I figured out how to get back into my blog. During a long period where I was otherwise distracted I did neglect it, but I am back. I don’t write all my passwords down which can be good, and can be bad. This time a good guess fixed things. I still don’t know the password because I didn’t write it down again. I simply won’t ever sign out.)

About two or more weeks ago I bought a nice steak at the Jewel. It had the fifty percent markdown tag on it because it was about to go past its sell date. It’s the only way I ever buy meat, marked down. Seriously, it tasted just as good or better than if I paid the twenty dollars, extremely tender and flavorful. Unfortunately, while I was gnawing down on a mouthful, my mouth got confused. In all the mass of chewed up cow meat, I bit down hard on my inner lip. There was a shot of pain and a loud scream that sent the begging dogs running. They came back quickly though when I spit the meat out and blotted blood from my lip. My dogs don’t care, used meat tastes just great to them. I was looking forward to that meal, planning for it all day. I had mashed potatoes, and corn along with the steak, and a nice wine to wash it down. The pain was so bad I just couldn’t finish dinner. Anyway, after that painful meal I have re-bit the same spot at least fifty times. No matter how slowly I chew, no matter how carefully I chew, I still keep biting my inner lip. I’ve bit it for breakfast while eating my Cheerios. I’ve bit it again while eating a Wolfy’s hotdog. I bit the lip when chewing my melatonin gummy before bed, while eating Jell-o, I even bit it while sucking a smoothie up through a straw. The only thing I can see that will cure my sore lip would possibly be a week long liquid diet, but I’d probably still find a way to injure myself.

Skin

 

When I was a kid, back in the 1950s and 1960s, we were sent out into the summer sun without a care. At the beach or pool you could almost hear the sizzle of skin frying and smell the aroma of coconut fried chicken. We were the fried chicken. No such thing as sun-block back then. In fact what my mom put on us, and what was sold at the drug store, were products that enhanced the sun rays. In a highly segregated society where people born with dark skin were treated as second class citizens, white people smeared Coppertone suntan lotion all over themselves. Coppertone, so we could make our pasty skin a rich dark brown. I do remember getting sunburned on a few occasions, but mostly I tanned. I tanned really well, and people would make jokes about me possibly not being of Northern European heritage.

This summer I’m trying to stay out of the sun. Usually I get dry skin during the winter, but by springtime my skin would bounce right back. Not this year. It might be from the chemo, but this summer my skin looks like crepe paper. I have finally acquired the look of somebody my age. Full on gray hair, the wrinkly skin, and bruises. Yes, bruises like you might have seen on your grandmother if she lived a long life. Nobody has beat me up, but my arms look like a pear that has been sitting in the bowl of fruit too long. I don’t even have to bump into anything. Simply a gentle breeze wafting across my arm and a bruise appears. As for the dry, wrinkly skin, maybe I should have stayed in Florida. The ninety percent humidity does wonders for your skin. Plumps it right up, like a raisin in a bran muffin.

Grandpa on a Ladder

1961                      Today

For those who wonder what happened with my chemo treatments, I finished them almost three weeks ago. I’m still a bit weak, but life goes on. In fact the doctor encouraged me to keep doing the things I’ve always done while on the chemo. So that’s why I kept bowling every Friday and did other things that literally took my breath away, like walking my dogs. You’d be amazed at how much energy it takes to bend over and pick up dog poop.

On Friday of this past week I noticed a sag in the roof of my garage. So I went inside the garage and took a look at the rafters. Sure enough, one of them was split and that split was right over the front end of my ‘classic’ Mercedes. Either the heavy, wet snow we had in January had cracked it, or the squirrel that lives in my garage put on too much weight. I pondered the problem. Should I have a new garage built? No, that would blow up my budget. Find a handyman to fix the rafter? No, that would also blow up my budget. Then I remembered my grandfather, Bill Webb. He helped my dad jack up the roof of our house in Tinley Park to build a dormer. They borrowed old fashioned automobile bumper jacks to do the job and lifted the roof. Hell, I have a jack and it’s much better than those old bumper jacks. Then I thought about how I would do the job. Marry two boards to the old rafter with some bolts was the best way. That was what I would do despite the fact that I’m a doddering seventy five year old man. But hell, Grandpa was seventy five years old when he was crawling around on the roof building that dormer with my dad.

I got the job done, despite not having any help. It only took me two days, a lot of cursing, and some very sore muscles. Remember, I just got over chemo treatments and my body is still pretty weak. Luckily, I didn’t fall nor did the roof cave in and kill me. The real test will come in about seven or eight months when the snow starts blowing and the squirrels scamper across the roof of the garage looking for a way to get in.

Alien Port

 

Have you ever gone through something in your life, something that you hope you’ll never have to go through again because it was so unpleasant? Well, shit happens. Again.

Thirty seven years ago I had a cancer and had to do twelve weeks of intense chemotherapy. It was unpleasant.  A week from today I start another twelve chemotherapy treatments for transitional cell carcinoma in my kidney. I think it’s stage three, but it might be stage two. I’m not sure because I tend to space out and my eyes glaze over when the doctors are talking to me. It gets to be too much information, too fast.

Last week they put what they call a ‘chemo port’ in my chest. Some kind of tube that they’ll use to administer the chemo. Which is fine with me. The last time I did chemo, I opted for no port and had to go through a poke in the vein every week. It turned out that I opted for the wrong thing because it hurt more and more with each treatment. Anyway, this time I got the port and it is creepy. A lump of plastic under my skin with a giant purple bruise that spreads out past my nipple. I can’t help thinking of the movie ‘Alien’ every time I touch it. Like maybe it’s going to pop out from under my skin and skiddle across the room. Oh well, I’ll just have to pull up my big boy pants, grit my teeth, and deal with it because it will all be over at some point. One way or another.

Fried Kidney

 

I turned seventy five years old about two weeks ago. I don’t think I’m old, but since I turned seventy things around me have got weird. For instance I feel some doctors think they’re wasting time healing a guy who’s going to die soon anyway. So I have to keep reminding them that my grandfather lived almost to one hundred and two, and Mom lived ninety nine years. Also, young people don’t seem to see me. I’m just an impediment between them and the cute, hot people on the other side of the room. So I get out of the way. Worst thing about living past seventy is your body starts breaking bits and pieces before the things that broke the month before can heal. If you read my earlier blog posts, you know of my problems. Now that they yanked one of my kidneys out of me, it turned out that the kidney had a cancerous tumor. Well, son of a bitch. I now have twelve weeks of chemo-therapy ahead. All I ask it that my hair doesn’t all fall out again. I went through that thirty seven years ago, and clumps of hair washing down the shower drain creeped me out.