LJ Compression
September 29, 2014 Thumb Enchanted Evening
I like my new doctor. When I went in for the injection she had been covering for two other missing doctors on her floor. I was ten minutes late, but she wasn’t able to get around to me for about an hour anyway. I sat in my exam room for the longest, blankest time after having had my BP and temperature taken. After this long, slow passage of time in the smaller catacombs of this newish building (that is already being added onto…it’s air conditioning perhaps too efficient for me…) I was almost on the verge of shivering. I felt like a trapped insect in suspended animation awaiting the spider’s return at its more leisure pace. I caught a bit of her barking orders in the corridor from two different nurses at the same time when I’d ventured out to go to the bathroom. My resurgent bladder aided by the ultra powerful diuretic broke the spell for me.
She seems a little loud in regular voice. In our short amount of conversation I found out that she has three boys and likes to ski Breckenridge. The appointment card given to me earlier said, “D.O.”, which by the number of pregnant women walking in the same time as me I took to mean Doctor of Osteopathy. No matter. She still did the injection just fine, but it still felt like I was having my left thumb hydraulically separated from my hand until the local part of the shot kicked in. Then I got a new fiberglass and Velcro splint, and yet another prescription. She said I could get two injections per year for this and briefed me that only her older patients get three.
The next three days were a challenge to rest and not use it. I drew sculpture on computer and dreamed of ways to make them. It was depressing. I think the technical term is “decrepitus”. I finally made it into town late and uploaded an export of what I drew. No time to get on Facebook, and so I just said forget about it to myself, giving cause to examine what a waste of time that can be. I went to Lowe’s and bought some electrical stuff to finish the studio lighting, ate at Popeye’s and then went to the studio. I prepped and painted some more of the brick wall underneath the window through dizzy spells caused by as much as turning ninety degrees. I listen to some music that seemed to stop time for a while and rested in the recliner. I started to feel good again. Then I got groceries and went home. I got there just as a couple adult foxes were running by my place. They scattered when I pulled into the driveway in a gruff. Kitty came right in. It was as if he were glad I got there when I did.
Now it’s Monday. A week after I’ve adjusted to the alpha-blocker somewhat; feel run-down. When I first started taking it it gave me flu-like side-effects. It’s hard to get going without doing something like writing or drawing. I say this having not had coffee yet by 10:29AM. I re-do the east elevation on my house finding the portico off center along with all the windows. I go through the process of figuring out how arched trusses are made from straight timbers. I decide that I need more curves in my building.
September 30, 2014
Awakened to Tuvan throat whistling music, I must’ve drawn until 4:00AM with strange BBC Radio stories to accompany me. So…doing the math…um(*sip of coffee*)…five hours of sleep. (Vickie’s show begins at 9:00AM) I piped the concentrator into the mask at 1.5 liters/min. Feel okay. Dry eyes, but okay. There was a windstorm yesterday evening and at this time of year it’s caused the older rear pine needles to molt off their branches. Everything is covered in a fresh blanket of russet straw. Aside from the wonderful color this is enervating! I start by sweeping it off the porch in my PJs. The road grader is finally making the rounds after the damaging rains two weeks ago. I decide to go out there and level his edge out at my driveway T-in. He has a new thing attached to the back that has eight wheels on his Volvo grader to compact his work out. This turns into a quick harvest of pine needles to get it off my mind. They lose their color quickly after they drop to the ground and solidify into the grass if I don’t rake them. I make a token effort now. [- - -One year I collected what I estimated to be 1,200 gallons of pine needles in plastic 55 gallon bags which sat along the driveway until I could take them to the burn pit run by the local Fire Department. They made me de-bag them and take the plastic home. I’ve needed family help in this, but they haven’t been up here since 2008. I thought it would be an annual fall thing they’d look forward to, especially with the nice weather. I try not to think about it. It’s disappointing….Moving on. People care about what they are interested in. There’s no faulting them. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. (…You would think one could do something to make them thirsty though, lo, these many years I’ve left out bowls of theater popcorn (***always fresh bowls!!!*** and beer nuts.) - - -]
<3 my __( X )__ people…(i.e. fambly & sucky friends.)
There was also a power outage during the storm. The darkness did higher math on my depression. Mere addition and multiplication are old memories now. I lit my plain white candle in the tall glass tumbler and continued to read in bed with Jamaal’s May’s most recent book of poetry, Hum. Somehow that seemed to ameliorate it. It enriched the seemingly lost day into the “Not Over Yet” column with long-division and subtraction.
Time to clean up after writing. Three-day beard suddenly went to eight somehow. “Groove is in the Heart” on the radio. Yeah that was the funky giddy-up that I needed. It’s sunny and nice again.
October 2, 2014
It is Thursday evening at home. I spent all day rounding up documents to present to Department of Social Services to re-qualify for Medicaid. I seem to be running somewhere right at the edge of the income threshold. I went in Tuesday and sat in the waiting room as a walk-in to talk to someone. The lady I got to talk to said that she doesn’t usually deal with people who work. Being self-employed was something new to them. I qualified pretty easily last year. Then again, Colorado was - I hope in the best faith - trying to prove something to the opponents to Medicare Expansion as it related to the Affordable Care Act, after “Obamacare”, or health insurance reform. I was one of the almost indigent working poor who helped swelled the rolls. Some supervisor came in and got all huffy and argumentative, and expressed a concern over her time constraints to deal with this, or by remote extention, me. And so I worked on presenting Gross Receipts for this year, Business Expenses against them to show a profit/loss statement and Personal Expenses, that is, household expenses, like electric bills a percentage of square footage of my house for my office, verification of my home owner’s insurance and auto insurance, and my mortgage statement. It took me a long time and I’m not sure that I’ve actually done it right.
October 3, 2014
I spent all day, Thursday working on a presentation and half the night cleaning up my office. I guess the depression and its length were worse than I thought. Didn’t even leave the house except to call the cat in for food. And so when I looked into my mailbox this morning I got a notice from DSS that I am ineligible for benefits…because I make too much. And so it becomes an appeal process. I’m fighting the paradox of having good enough heath to make just a little bit more money this year. I hope I don’t now bounce back and forth from where I am now back into poverty, and ill health. Maybe that’s more an irony at my income bracket. They can’t do anything more for me until I am completely worthless and disabled. Hmm. Let’s go subsidize an profitable oil company though.
( - A Brief Family Visit Chronology...
written on my bathroom sheetrock...
which someday will be sheetrocked over and finished. - )
It must’ve been sent out Wednesday, the day I went in to my accountant for help. It was contrary to what I’ve been told, about getting to bringing in a more concise presentation on Friday, today. And so I called their office got put on hold, all the while looking for the technician’s card to call more directly. In the process I cleaned out my truck with one hand on the phone.
It’s cooler now. My neighbor stopped in and so I went across to get five gallons of water to be able to clean up. I’m boiling water now and drinking some de-caf. I feel good about the office now. I’m making progress. I feel good about my bookshelf that the one the retiring attorney in the Historic Federal Building gave to me a while back. I also took out books I had in storage boxes and put them on it. The cat looking on, as if to say “What the hell is wrong with you! Can’t you settle down so I can get some sleep?” He resigned to the space underneath the chest of drawers after too much commotion. Since the library was my second home while growing up it feels like an elder brother or something watching over me; it feels like a security blanket. Does one imagine what ever became of the Peanuts character, Linus if he ever grew up finally stripped of that symbol of inanimate assistance? He probably struggled a few decades and then stumbled upon dark, imitation mahogany bookshelves. Maybe Linus became a lawyer, or a writer. That would be me with a side of Charlie Brown still wanting to kick that football. Kind of curious that I have a couple of friends in Massachusetts who seem like Lucy and Schroeder ( Stephanie and Mark ). But I digress…
I watched all but one episode of “True Detective” Wednesday night; watched the finale Thursday morning. I really enjoyed it. I really like how it played with one’s imagination of what the south is like, and especially Louisiana without a pandering musical score. The setting became one of the main characters of the show! I like how it was done on film, and how artistic the opening montage was. A lot of those surreal images stick with you. They’d make incredible paintings if they were intended as such. I remember some of the spooky, swampy qualities of Brenham, Texas, and often wondered how the surroundings affected my wife’s development; how it seeped ineffably into her and her folks; how people’s attitudes were because of it and how it affected them. It often takes an outsider to represent them in art in a green observation, like Robbie Robertson - a Canadian. “It was too hot to sleep.” I remember her telling me of being forced to sleep somewhere on the run, in the back of a truck with her son while her second husband slept inside the cabin with the windows rolled up; the mosquitoes eating them up all night. It hurt just to hear tell of it.
It’s a nice October day. On Oct 2nd, 1999 Louise and I got married. We divorced in April 2003. I wonder why she chose October, and why I so easily agreed. How important was season and symbolism then? I got the impression that if she didn’t marry me then she would have changed her mind the next Spring. She would have spared us both a lot of grief. Fifteen years have passed. Have I come to understand the end? Yes. I just don’t understand how we ever got together! It wasn’t as simple as compatibility issues. Both were willing to try a different kind of adaptations; she three other times, I, the one. There was my twenty-year high school re-union going on about that time earlier in the summer. I had to drive my future step-daughter to some ACT test or something at South High. It was weird being there among the memories. I had written a memoir for the re-union in lieu of attending and sent it to one of the organizers. It revealed how much of a crush I had on a beautiful girl that I shyly adored the year we were both freshman. She called up our number in Rye and left a message. I had been staying at home overseeing our electrical re-model and water pump project. I wanted to keep the voice message somehow. It was one of those small cassette tapes then. She said basically thank you for sharing the memoir, and how it was “a real kick”.
She died March 12th, 2007 of cancer that stemmed from breast cancer. I wanted to go to the funeral, but I was too broken up about it. Fellow friends might have been upset that I did not go to the re-union, or that I had not come to see her before she died. They surely would have been privy to the memoir too over the years, the way clique-ish cheerleaders are. I wonder where she is buried, or if she was cremated. I want to honor her memory somehow, have the yellowed newspaper clipping somewhere still. I have yet to grieve about it. I have little right to grieve about what was misbegotten anyway. I feel like that goddamn Rustin Cohle character in that. It’ll take damn near getting killed to soften me up.
It’s terrible to speculate over what might have been. Things are what they are. Louise did - out loud - when we were breaking up. I don’t know if she was trying to console me or herself. She was unpredictably generous, and more often mean and taciturn. She said, “Maybe we’d have made it if we had gotten together when we were in out twenties”. If such things were possible…No, I seriously doubt it. I would have been Laurie’s widower living in Pueblo on the south-side instead within walking distance of Holy Family Parish…with only the company of a black cat, some kind of minimal regular job, messing around in my shop more in trying to get some artwork into the State Fair’s Show; perhaps fatter from years of steady, conservative Italian food, maybe a couple of kids either bothering me too much or living an a state thousands of miles away, grandkids visiting only once a year to fish San Isabel lake by canoe, or maybe the farther reaches to fly-fish Forbes Trinchera; still limping around with gout and anxiety, wanting to die of my sleep apnea just to be with her once more.
Oct 8, 2014
This is a Wednesday where things come on muy rapido. Client One calls wondering if I can finish off the south wall before some big wig comes to visit from Dallas. I will have to improvise a scaffold over this weird-ass open shed they use to put pallet jacks, its roof angles toward the building right where I’d put a ladder. They never use it for anything. It could probably be dragged with his father’s back-hoe, where to, I don’t care. Monday I was asked what could be done about a huge dent the put in a door frame with a forklift. It was about knee high. That sort of metal doesn’t pull out like auto-body metal. It leads me to wonder what the fuck they are doing in there so as to jam a forklift into the building. I’m guessing it has something to do with being in a hurry and trying to steer around each other; trying to get by. I talk to C.O.’s father who has a shop in back of the building. He’s a retired welder. He says just replace the whole door. The son is trying to save a buck. He doesn’t know yet when to just do the simplest thing, though costly, is actually the least costly overall.
I’m sipping on coffee trying to wake up. Seemed like I got eight. I must be groggy from the medications. I’m guessing the Amlodipine is the worst of them all, having doubled up. Maybe I should take it first thing in the morning.
Went to my brother’s house last night. Which one? The one with only one kid who is easy to get along with; isn’t testy about everything I say; doesn’t give my phone number out to people I haven’t seen in eight years for reasons I didn’t feel like having to explain. Ostensibly I was going to ask for money, but I borrowed it from my roofing money instead. I needed food. I bought a pumpkin caught up in the idea of taking some more pictures with Whinnie in front of it, ten years after I took some when he was a kitten and I thought he was a female. He was maybe four months old and I took them both to the vet to get snipped pretty close to then. I had a pink breakaway collar on him, the first of many. Then I gave up. Oh yeah, I’m cooking…and writing. The grog is fading away.
Last night was the second lunar eclipse this year. I woke up for a while when it seemed that kitty wanted out. He was just hungry. I tried to go back to sleep. I ate some of the Honey Nut Cheerios my brother gave me to take home, but they gave me heartburn. (Isn’t the Ranitidene supposed to make that stop? Can’t eat processed foods anymore.)
I sent out some postcards to Mark and Steph; art show postcards. I am happy with myself at being able to go to three consecutive First Friday Art Walks, except I used the truck. Last Friday I went to Kadoya. It was open but there was something else going on at Memorial Hall. Bob was there holding court over his own show. There was only six people there, all friends or acquaintances; none of the gigantic crowd talking loud and…crowding. A space next to Kadoya was opened up and the Pueblo Weaver’s Guild was in there. What a cool old bunch of hippies! All were talking about Marijuana, Colorado and most generally laughing about getting old and trading jokes until they ran out of them. I felt right at home if only ten years behind. Rural Democrats just like me. Who knew? I was asking about breeds of goat or sheep I could start with. One lady had this thing called a “Wooly Winder” which turns un-spun dyed wool into thread with a treadle. It looked pretty sharp, although the big wheel is gone. I wanted one. Their stuff seemed pretty well together. I left dying to tell somebody about it. The space was lit with awful fluorescents, but it sufficed. Took a few cards (to send to Mark and Steph). Couldn’t think of anybody else whose address I have, or would want me to have it. One was a striking black and white photograph of a black sheep in a stall; very well-composed, artistic.
The same brother is up here surveying or something. They are overlaying a couple roads with asphalt, probably the more travelled ones. I asked him if October wasn’t pushing it for paving. He said yeah, but they screwed up somewhere on their schedules. Then again if they didn’t do it this year, they might lose something in their budget next year. Yep. Gotta love bureaucracy. Fucking Wednesday already!
Max and Gena are on the road about now I would guess. Would have been nice if they could have come through here but he’s taking the weather wimp’s route. It’s getting really pretty about now with that fragile sort of beauty of a ripened D’anjou pear on a plate of Cognac sauce. Still there are some deep, rich greens. Some wind will come crushing through here as strong and forward as you please and put the whole state back into a suicidal depression with greys and browns, the color of orderly’s pants and Dr. Tweedy’ jacket. Another week or two and back to bland shitty beige withered by the sun. Thanks to legal recreational MJ it might not be so bad this year. Maybe I’ll be able to do something in the studio by then. It’s almost done. Need another heater though.
Oct 13, 2014
A wet couple of days here. Sun finally comes out. Today’s agenda:…carve pumpkin! Photograph Whinnie ten years after the first ones I took of him as a kitten; eat. Take meds. Geez, it’s a lot of them. One for each doctor, I guess. Latest additons, Meclizine for dizziness and Sulindac from the Osteopath. I have yet to take the latter, and have backed off the Tamsulosin when my accountant told me he’s been taking it for fifteen years with no shrinkage of his BPH. I manage a few pics of him with the lure of cat food, but he will not hold still very long. Best pics were in the evening light anyway. I don’t know why I haven’t done this more often. Perhaps it really was anxiety or depression taking its toll. Clean up, get into town. Finish 2013 income taxes for end of filing extension.
Oct 15, 2014
Randy (artist friend that I sometimes prepare panel forand just share ideas in general) just gave me a tablet. You know, one of those elctronic gizmos that you touch and it does stuff. Have to check out a book just ot learn how to use it. Expect more photos and stuff, maybe movies by me if I do. It sez it's got wireless and stuff for it. Never been wireless. Been cordless, that is, with a drill. I'm blown away. Just gave it to me. Went to the Doctor again today. Still dizzy. Switching from Paxil to Prozac after a taper down.
October 16, 2014
New doc (MD, a PA, actually); a tall blonde lady with a baby face. Must be six-foot plus tall. Longish detailed visit to re-establish after my regular doc moved away. Maybe twenty minutes is long at PCH. She said that I could stop taking the Sulindac. Gave me a Rx for Fluticasone nasal spray. I still don’t understand how that will clear up the dizziness, except it may work its way into the inner ear. It’s not the blood pressure meds or whatever. I’m transitioning from Paxil to Prozac, cutting those little yellow 10mgs in a half for four days, and she advised me to call if I have any suicidal thoughts. Thoughts are different from fantasies, which have provided a kind of unique entertainment for me for about, oh, ten years now. I think falling off a cliff was the most natural of them all. Yep, slipped and fell. Swoop! Scwhiiiiiieeeeeeerrrrr…………………………………….bonk! Max inherits 250k of a still fantasy insurance policy with AIG for only $14 a month.
Randy gave me a knock off Android tablet out of the blue. Been getting used to it; learning how to use it. No connection up here. Still kind of leery about Google needing to know my location nearly twenty-four seven. Anyway, it was neat to get a new challenge. People give him a lot of stuff. He said it would just sit in the bottom of his drawer at the studio collecting dust. What a cool guy. He scared the crap out of me when he said hello. I was washing a brush in the mop sink. I think I may have done the same at some other time. Nobody comes down in the basement that often, and it’s kind of nice that way. It seems like life in the basement that way is half Brothers Karamazov, half Phantom of the Opera. I mentioned how Jackson Pollock said that he insisted that the canvas do half the work. I didn’t know Pollock was one of his favorites. At this he seemed to liven up.
October 18, 2014
Up early at about six. I’m listening to NPR weekend edition in the dark, which seems somehow gentler than on weekdays. I started developing a gout flare up a couple days ago and it was upsetting, it being nearly a year since my last one. I even a little superstitious about what it was that threw me over the edge when it comes to diet since I am on a maintenance medicine. It’s in these times that I look at food as poison, and yet stress alone can bring it on, as if kidneys could have a special little nervous breakdown of their own independent of anything going on in the brain.
But things to worry about gradually straighten themselves out: I lost my qualification for Medicaid when I initially presented how much I make to DSS in self-employment. Then I gave them a more detailed understanding towards how I came up with the numbers. A week later I get a call that says I will have Medicaid another year, and qualify for food stamps as well. In the meantime I’ve been drawing from my “cashed and stashed” hail damage check for my roof which I got in July. All these ailments have been keeping me from earning anything. The compounded anxiety drives me more towards comfort foods, which in my case runs more towards roasted chicken, or mashed potatoes and gravy that is marked down where I shop late in the evening because it did not sell around dinner time. The anxiety medicine which I’ve started out on didn’t seem to do much more than befuddle me and make me not want to persist at my boring-as-fuck job, painting outside around the perimeter of a giant warehouse in the basically non-color of beige. Now the new doctor - or PA - has promoted me from the Junior Varsity anti-anxiety drug, Paxil to the Varsity team in Prozac. Yesterday I read all the precautions which reads like a gauntlet to go through in order to get some kind of benefit. Will it be worth it? I don’t know. Medicine seems like so much scientifically proven magic. I’ve been through a lot lately for several ailments trying to figure out whether something is working or not. I seem to have a drug or two from each person I’ve seen. The worst thing I worry about is an old friend becoming incredibly distant. The worst thing I worry about is loneliness. The Paxil did help me get back into going to art openings, and there I meet new people with similar lives and pursuits. I can’t entirely blame it for having gained about twenty or thirty extra pounds lately.
Naps and dizziness until 11. I boil some potatoes in a new pot in order to make Colcannon with some kale and green onions. I might draw on the house I’ve been working on, a dream house for my place. I’ve been drawing on it a while with the primary improvement of facing the entryway to the southeast where the sun comes up at winter solstice. Similarly it also faces southwest for sunset where the dinning room is located. This causes for some weird angular challenges internally as well as planning the roof. In previous drafts I had multiple gables, but in the end I picked an imaginary center in the distance to the south and swung a radius that began and ended perpendicular to both ends.
October 19, 2014
I didn’t make Colcannon. I ate the boiled potatoes with no improvement and then basically stayed in bed following the Indocin schedule. I read from my drama book two chapters, Oedipus Rex, and Lysystrata. It would be horribly depressing around here if it weren’t for my cat who sleeps beside me most of the while after having his adventures outside. I think I have finally found a moist pouch food that he consistently likes instead of the Friskies he’s had all his life, which he doesn’t like much anymore, except for the fish kind that says “healthy diet” on it. This morning he did eat some “Mixed Grill even after ten minutes alone with dry Iams mature cat mix. This is a relief. He has a slow healing wound near his hip bone that I am concerned about. I want to get him to the vet about it. I wonder if it is some kind of buried cat claw or foreign object. I did swab it with H2O2 at some point. I don’t know if it was the Indocin which gave me the weird dreams of tapering off Paxil, but that happened; weird dreams where everybody was transforming through different universes and having their physical appearance go fucking crazy, as in completely covered in reptilian bumps or carbuncles. There was a feeling about it as if to transform one had to die, like a vampire, but there was no going back to the previous incarnation. I went through about three of these. I had bumped up my oxygen concentrator incase my mask lost complete seal. Not much good waking up to that at 6AM not fully rested, went back to sleep without the CPAP until 10AM with no dreams. Then I awoke pretty groggy, but determined to get out and do something, anything. It’s now 11:36AM and I’m trying to make Colcannon again before the Kale goes bad. Everything I buy fresh and health goes bad pretty quickly. I should pretty much just eat my red lettuce on the way home and forget the business of refrigerating it. I should just quit comfort food, i.e., roasted chicken.
So, maybe into town today to get water. I explored the basement main panel trying to find out which circuit controlled the light. I couldn’t find it; feared flipping the ones with recent pencil on them for upstairs stuff. I did narrow it to being one of those by plugging into the light fixture with a CD player that I could hear over the circulating pumps after walking a little bit towards my studio. I did find the circuit to the plugs on a sub-panel down the entry hall. So, maybe I can tap into that without begging Client One to call the electrician. It’s the last thing on his giant to-do list. I may get into my well pump renovation, which sits in the studio now. My brother - the one who has some time to help - kind of pushes me on to getting it repaired. I suggested that even if I get it working I need to set the whole pumphouse into the ground to keep it from freezing. I sent him an email with a link to the company which makes a solar-powered DC submersible pump that goes for $1,700. That would allow me to bypass having to pay for another meter with the local co-op, whose access fee alone has jumped from $7.00/month to $20/month. This is all on account of the stupid previous owner putting the well 250 feet away from the house…or vice versa. Anyway, I’m still dizzy, which means Meclizine. Prozac says it may cause weird dreams in starting it, so…maybe I’ll be used to them by then. I don’t know. Only when there are art objects in them are they worthwhile. One dream I had without all the medicines seemed like a boiling vat of colors and shapes for what seemed like hours. I wonder what caused that. I kept telling myself wake up to put an end to it.
Must’ve been some food combination, but maybe it was just hypoxia. I never have any of those on the CPAP anymore.
12:32
Colcannon made with some kind of organic kale, dark green bubbly thextured. I added oat milk to it, then 1%, a tbs. of Tahini, a dribble of olive oil, two tbs. of plain yogurt. I wonder how it will turn out. I kind deleted a lot of the hard stem part of the kale. I forgot: green onions about a half bunch or a cup, chopped up, Chia seed about a tsp. Been snacking along the way, cheddar and almonds. Shouldn’ta. Anyway, appetite back; walking around without a cane. Gout seems headed off with the Indocin, tons of water and rest. Feels like a miracle.
I like my new doctor. When I went in for the injection she had been covering for two other missing doctors on her floor. I was ten minutes late, but she wasn’t able to get around to me for about an hour anyway. I sat in my exam room for the longest, blankest time after having had my BP and temperature taken. After this long, slow passage of time in the smaller catacombs of this newish building (that is already being added onto…it’s air conditioning perhaps too efficient for me…) I was almost on the verge of shivering. I felt like a trapped insect in suspended animation awaiting the spider’s return at its more leisure pace. I caught a bit of her barking orders in the corridor from two different nurses at the same time when I’d ventured out to go to the bathroom. My resurgent bladder aided by the ultra powerful diuretic broke the spell for me.
She seems a little loud in regular voice. In our short amount of conversation I found out that she has three boys and likes to ski Breckenridge. The appointment card given to me earlier said, “D.O.”, which by the number of pregnant women walking in the same time as me I took to mean Doctor of Osteopathy. No matter. She still did the injection just fine, but it still felt like I was having my left thumb hydraulically separated from my hand until the local part of the shot kicked in. Then I got a new fiberglass and Velcro splint, and yet another prescription. She said I could get two injections per year for this and briefed me that only her older patients get three.
The next three days were a challenge to rest and not use it. I drew sculpture on computer and dreamed of ways to make them. It was depressing. I think the technical term is “decrepitus”. I finally made it into town late and uploaded an export of what I drew. No time to get on Facebook, and so I just said forget about it to myself, giving cause to examine what a waste of time that can be. I went to Lowe’s and bought some electrical stuff to finish the studio lighting, ate at Popeye’s and then went to the studio. I prepped and painted some more of the brick wall underneath the window through dizzy spells caused by as much as turning ninety degrees. I listen to some music that seemed to stop time for a while and rested in the recliner. I started to feel good again. Then I got groceries and went home. I got there just as a couple adult foxes were running by my place. They scattered when I pulled into the driveway in a gruff. Kitty came right in. It was as if he were glad I got there when I did.
Now it’s Monday. A week after I’ve adjusted to the alpha-blocker somewhat; feel run-down. When I first started taking it it gave me flu-like side-effects. It’s hard to get going without doing something like writing or drawing. I say this having not had coffee yet by 10:29AM. I re-do the east elevation on my house finding the portico off center along with all the windows. I go through the process of figuring out how arched trusses are made from straight timbers. I decide that I need more curves in my building.
September 30, 2014
Click to viewAwakened to Tuvan throat whistling music, I must’ve drawn until 4:00AM with strange BBC Radio stories to accompany me. So…doing the math…um(*sip of coffee*)…five hours of sleep. (Vickie’s show begins at 9:00AM) I piped the concentrator into the mask at 1.5 liters/min. Feel okay. Dry eyes, but okay. There was a windstorm yesterday evening and at this time of year it’s caused the older rear pine needles to molt off their branches. Everything is covered in a fresh blanket of russet straw. Aside from the wonderful color this is enervating! I start by sweeping it off the porch in my PJs. The road grader is finally making the rounds after the damaging rains two weeks ago. I decide to go out there and level his edge out at my driveway T-in. He has a new thing attached to the back that has eight wheels on his Volvo grader to compact his work out. This turns into a quick harvest of pine needles to get it off my mind. They lose their color quickly after they drop to the ground and solidify into the grass if I don’t rake them. I make a token effort now. [- - -One year I collected what I estimated to be 1,200 gallons of pine needles in plastic 55 gallon bags which sat along the driveway until I could take them to the burn pit run by the local Fire Department. They made me de-bag them and take the plastic home. I’ve needed family help in this, but they haven’t been up here since 2008. I thought it would be an annual fall thing they’d look forward to, especially with the nice weather. I try not to think about it. It’s disappointing….Moving on. People care about what they are interested in. There’s no faulting them. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. (…You would think one could do something to make them thirsty though, lo, these many years I’ve left out bowls of theater popcorn (***always fresh bowls!!!*** and beer nuts.) - - -]
<3 my __( X )__ people…(i.e. fambly & sucky friends.)
There was also a power outage during the storm. The darkness did higher math on my depression. Mere addition and multiplication are old memories now. I lit my plain white candle in the tall glass tumbler and continued to read in bed with Jamaal’s May’s most recent book of poetry, Hum. Somehow that seemed to ameliorate it. It enriched the seemingly lost day into the “Not Over Yet” column with long-division and subtraction.
Time to clean up after writing. Three-day beard suddenly went to eight somehow. “Groove is in the Heart” on the radio. Yeah that was the funky giddy-up that I needed. It’s sunny and nice again.
October 2, 2014
It is Thursday evening at home. I spent all day rounding up documents to present to Department of Social Services to re-qualify for Medicaid. I seem to be running somewhere right at the edge of the income threshold. I went in Tuesday and sat in the waiting room as a walk-in to talk to someone. The lady I got to talk to said that she doesn’t usually deal with people who work. Being self-employed was something new to them. I qualified pretty easily last year. Then again, Colorado was - I hope in the best faith - trying to prove something to the opponents to Medicare Expansion as it related to the Affordable Care Act, after “Obamacare”, or health insurance reform. I was one of the almost indigent working poor who helped swelled the rolls. Some supervisor came in and got all huffy and argumentative, and expressed a concern over her time constraints to deal with this, or by remote extention, me. And so I worked on presenting Gross Receipts for this year, Business Expenses against them to show a profit/loss statement and Personal Expenses, that is, household expenses, like electric bills a percentage of square footage of my house for my office, verification of my home owner’s insurance and auto insurance, and my mortgage statement. It took me a long time and I’m not sure that I’ve actually done it right.
October 3, 2014
I spent all day, Thursday working on a presentation and half the night cleaning up my office. I guess the depression and its length were worse than I thought. Didn’t even leave the house except to call the cat in for food. And so when I looked into my mailbox this morning I got a notice from DSS that I am ineligible for benefits…because I make too much. And so it becomes an appeal process. I’m fighting the paradox of having good enough heath to make just a little bit more money this year. I hope I don’t now bounce back and forth from where I am now back into poverty, and ill health. Maybe that’s more an irony at my income bracket. They can’t do anything more for me until I am completely worthless and disabled. Hmm. Let’s go subsidize an profitable oil company though.
( - A Brief Family Visit Chronology...
written on my bathroom sheetrock...
which someday will be sheetrocked over and finished. - )
It must’ve been sent out Wednesday, the day I went in to my accountant for help. It was contrary to what I’ve been told, about getting to bringing in a more concise presentation on Friday, today. And so I called their office got put on hold, all the while looking for the technician’s card to call more directly. In the process I cleaned out my truck with one hand on the phone.
It’s cooler now. My neighbor stopped in and so I went across to get five gallons of water to be able to clean up. I’m boiling water now and drinking some de-caf. I feel good about the office now. I’m making progress. I feel good about my bookshelf that the one the retiring attorney in the Historic Federal Building gave to me a while back. I also took out books I had in storage boxes and put them on it. The cat looking on, as if to say “What the hell is wrong with you! Can’t you settle down so I can get some sleep?” He resigned to the space underneath the chest of drawers after too much commotion. Since the library was my second home while growing up it feels like an elder brother or something watching over me; it feels like a security blanket. Does one imagine what ever became of the Peanuts character, Linus if he ever grew up finally stripped of that symbol of inanimate assistance? He probably struggled a few decades and then stumbled upon dark, imitation mahogany bookshelves. Maybe Linus became a lawyer, or a writer. That would be me with a side of Charlie Brown still wanting to kick that football. Kind of curious that I have a couple of friends in Massachusetts who seem like Lucy and Schroeder ( Stephanie and Mark ). But I digress…
I watched all but one episode of “True Detective” Wednesday night; watched the finale Thursday morning. I really enjoyed it. I really like how it played with one’s imagination of what the south is like, and especially Louisiana without a pandering musical score. The setting became one of the main characters of the show! I like how it was done on film, and how artistic the opening montage was. A lot of those surreal images stick with you. They’d make incredible paintings if they were intended as such. I remember some of the spooky, swampy qualities of Brenham, Texas, and often wondered how the surroundings affected my wife’s development; how it seeped ineffably into her and her folks; how people’s attitudes were because of it and how it affected them. It often takes an outsider to represent them in art in a green observation, like Robbie Robertson - a Canadian. “It was too hot to sleep.” I remember her telling me of being forced to sleep somewhere on the run, in the back of a truck with her son while her second husband slept inside the cabin with the windows rolled up; the mosquitoes eating them up all night. It hurt just to hear tell of it.
It’s a nice October day. On Oct 2nd, 1999 Louise and I got married. We divorced in April 2003. I wonder why she chose October, and why I so easily agreed. How important was season and symbolism then? I got the impression that if she didn’t marry me then she would have changed her mind the next Spring. She would have spared us both a lot of grief. Fifteen years have passed. Have I come to understand the end? Yes. I just don’t understand how we ever got together! It wasn’t as simple as compatibility issues. Both were willing to try a different kind of adaptations; she three other times, I, the one. There was my twenty-year high school re-union going on about that time earlier in the summer. I had to drive my future step-daughter to some ACT test or something at South High. It was weird being there among the memories. I had written a memoir for the re-union in lieu of attending and sent it to one of the organizers. It revealed how much of a crush I had on a beautiful girl that I shyly adored the year we were both freshman. She called up our number in Rye and left a message. I had been staying at home overseeing our electrical re-model and water pump project. I wanted to keep the voice message somehow. It was one of those small cassette tapes then. She said basically thank you for sharing the memoir, and how it was “a real kick”.
She died March 12th, 2007 of cancer that stemmed from breast cancer. I wanted to go to the funeral, but I was too broken up about it. Fellow friends might have been upset that I did not go to the re-union, or that I had not come to see her before she died. They surely would have been privy to the memoir too over the years, the way clique-ish cheerleaders are. I wonder where she is buried, or if she was cremated. I want to honor her memory somehow, have the yellowed newspaper clipping somewhere still. I have yet to grieve about it. I have little right to grieve about what was misbegotten anyway. I feel like that goddamn Rustin Cohle character in that. It’ll take damn near getting killed to soften me up.
It’s terrible to speculate over what might have been. Things are what they are. Louise did - out loud - when we were breaking up. I don’t know if she was trying to console me or herself. She was unpredictably generous, and more often mean and taciturn. She said, “Maybe we’d have made it if we had gotten together when we were in out twenties”. If such things were possible…No, I seriously doubt it. I would have been Laurie’s widower living in Pueblo on the south-side instead within walking distance of Holy Family Parish…with only the company of a black cat, some kind of minimal regular job, messing around in my shop more in trying to get some artwork into the State Fair’s Show; perhaps fatter from years of steady, conservative Italian food, maybe a couple of kids either bothering me too much or living an a state thousands of miles away, grandkids visiting only once a year to fish San Isabel lake by canoe, or maybe the farther reaches to fly-fish Forbes Trinchera; still limping around with gout and anxiety, wanting to die of my sleep apnea just to be with her once more.
Oct 8, 2014
This is a Wednesday where things come on muy rapido. Client One calls wondering if I can finish off the south wall before some big wig comes to visit from Dallas. I will have to improvise a scaffold over this weird-ass open shed they use to put pallet jacks, its roof angles toward the building right where I’d put a ladder. They never use it for anything. It could probably be dragged with his father’s back-hoe, where to, I don’t care. Monday I was asked what could be done about a huge dent the put in a door frame with a forklift. It was about knee high. That sort of metal doesn’t pull out like auto-body metal. It leads me to wonder what the fuck they are doing in there so as to jam a forklift into the building. I’m guessing it has something to do with being in a hurry and trying to steer around each other; trying to get by. I talk to C.O.’s father who has a shop in back of the building. He’s a retired welder. He says just replace the whole door. The son is trying to save a buck. He doesn’t know yet when to just do the simplest thing, though costly, is actually the least costly overall.
I’m sipping on coffee trying to wake up. Seemed like I got eight. I must be groggy from the medications. I’m guessing the Amlodipine is the worst of them all, having doubled up. Maybe I should take it first thing in the morning.
Went to my brother’s house last night. Which one? The one with only one kid who is easy to get along with; isn’t testy about everything I say; doesn’t give my phone number out to people I haven’t seen in eight years for reasons I didn’t feel like having to explain. Ostensibly I was going to ask for money, but I borrowed it from my roofing money instead. I needed food. I bought a pumpkin caught up in the idea of taking some more pictures with Whinnie in front of it, ten years after I took some when he was a kitten and I thought he was a female. He was maybe four months old and I took them both to the vet to get snipped pretty close to then. I had a pink breakaway collar on him, the first of many. Then I gave up. Oh yeah, I’m cooking…and writing. The grog is fading away.
Last night was the second lunar eclipse this year. I woke up for a while when it seemed that kitty wanted out. He was just hungry. I tried to go back to sleep. I ate some of the Honey Nut Cheerios my brother gave me to take home, but they gave me heartburn. (Isn’t the Ranitidene supposed to make that stop? Can’t eat processed foods anymore.)
I sent out some postcards to Mark and Steph; art show postcards. I am happy with myself at being able to go to three consecutive First Friday Art Walks, except I used the truck. Last Friday I went to Kadoya. It was open but there was something else going on at Memorial Hall. Bob was there holding court over his own show. There was only six people there, all friends or acquaintances; none of the gigantic crowd talking loud and…crowding. A space next to Kadoya was opened up and the Pueblo Weaver’s Guild was in there. What a cool old bunch of hippies! All were talking about Marijuana, Colorado and most generally laughing about getting old and trading jokes until they ran out of them. I felt right at home if only ten years behind. Rural Democrats just like me. Who knew? I was asking about breeds of goat or sheep I could start with. One lady had this thing called a “Wooly Winder” which turns un-spun dyed wool into thread with a treadle. It looked pretty sharp, although the big wheel is gone. I wanted one. Their stuff seemed pretty well together. I left dying to tell somebody about it. The space was lit with awful fluorescents, but it sufficed. Took a few cards (to send to Mark and Steph). Couldn’t think of anybody else whose address I have, or would want me to have it. One was a striking black and white photograph of a black sheep in a stall; very well-composed, artistic.
The same brother is up here surveying or something. They are overlaying a couple roads with asphalt, probably the more travelled ones. I asked him if October wasn’t pushing it for paving. He said yeah, but they screwed up somewhere on their schedules. Then again if they didn’t do it this year, they might lose something in their budget next year. Yep. Gotta love bureaucracy. Fucking Wednesday already!
Max and Gena are on the road about now I would guess. Would have been nice if they could have come through here but he’s taking the weather wimp’s route. It’s getting really pretty about now with that fragile sort of beauty of a ripened D’anjou pear on a plate of Cognac sauce. Still there are some deep, rich greens. Some wind will come crushing through here as strong and forward as you please and put the whole state back into a suicidal depression with greys and browns, the color of orderly’s pants and Dr. Tweedy’ jacket. Another week or two and back to bland shitty beige withered by the sun. Thanks to legal recreational MJ it might not be so bad this year. Maybe I’ll be able to do something in the studio by then. It’s almost done. Need another heater though.
Oct 13, 2014
A wet couple of days here. Sun finally comes out. Today’s agenda:…carve pumpkin! Photograph Whinnie ten years after the first ones I took of him as a kitten; eat. Take meds. Geez, it’s a lot of them. One for each doctor, I guess. Latest additons, Meclizine for dizziness and Sulindac from the Osteopath. I have yet to take the latter, and have backed off the Tamsulosin when my accountant told me he’s been taking it for fifteen years with no shrinkage of his BPH. I manage a few pics of him with the lure of cat food, but he will not hold still very long. Best pics were in the evening light anyway. I don’t know why I haven’t done this more often. Perhaps it really was anxiety or depression taking its toll. Clean up, get into town. Finish 2013 income taxes for end of filing extension.
Oct 15, 2014
Randy (artist friend that I sometimes prepare panel forand just share ideas in general) just gave me a tablet. You know, one of those elctronic gizmos that you touch and it does stuff. Have to check out a book just ot learn how to use it. Expect more photos and stuff, maybe movies by me if I do. It sez it's got wireless and stuff for it. Never been wireless. Been cordless, that is, with a drill. I'm blown away. Just gave it to me. Went to the Doctor again today. Still dizzy. Switching from Paxil to Prozac after a taper down.
October 16, 2014
New doc (MD, a PA, actually); a tall blonde lady with a baby face. Must be six-foot plus tall. Longish detailed visit to re-establish after my regular doc moved away. Maybe twenty minutes is long at PCH. She said that I could stop taking the Sulindac. Gave me a Rx for Fluticasone nasal spray. I still don’t understand how that will clear up the dizziness, except it may work its way into the inner ear. It’s not the blood pressure meds or whatever. I’m transitioning from Paxil to Prozac, cutting those little yellow 10mgs in a half for four days, and she advised me to call if I have any suicidal thoughts. Thoughts are different from fantasies, which have provided a kind of unique entertainment for me for about, oh, ten years now. I think falling off a cliff was the most natural of them all. Yep, slipped and fell. Swoop! Scwhiiiiiieeeeeeerrrrr…………………………………….bonk! Max inherits 250k of a still fantasy insurance policy with AIG for only $14 a month.
Randy gave me a knock off Android tablet out of the blue. Been getting used to it; learning how to use it. No connection up here. Still kind of leery about Google needing to know my location nearly twenty-four seven. Anyway, it was neat to get a new challenge. People give him a lot of stuff. He said it would just sit in the bottom of his drawer at the studio collecting dust. What a cool guy. He scared the crap out of me when he said hello. I was washing a brush in the mop sink. I think I may have done the same at some other time. Nobody comes down in the basement that often, and it’s kind of nice that way. It seems like life in the basement that way is half Brothers Karamazov, half Phantom of the Opera. I mentioned how Jackson Pollock said that he insisted that the canvas do half the work. I didn’t know Pollock was one of his favorites. At this he seemed to liven up.
October 18, 2014
Up early at about six. I’m listening to NPR weekend edition in the dark, which seems somehow gentler than on weekdays. I started developing a gout flare up a couple days ago and it was upsetting, it being nearly a year since my last one. I even a little superstitious about what it was that threw me over the edge when it comes to diet since I am on a maintenance medicine. It’s in these times that I look at food as poison, and yet stress alone can bring it on, as if kidneys could have a special little nervous breakdown of their own independent of anything going on in the brain.
But things to worry about gradually straighten themselves out: I lost my qualification for Medicaid when I initially presented how much I make to DSS in self-employment. Then I gave them a more detailed understanding towards how I came up with the numbers. A week later I get a call that says I will have Medicaid another year, and qualify for food stamps as well. In the meantime I’ve been drawing from my “cashed and stashed” hail damage check for my roof which I got in July. All these ailments have been keeping me from earning anything. The compounded anxiety drives me more towards comfort foods, which in my case runs more towards roasted chicken, or mashed potatoes and gravy that is marked down where I shop late in the evening because it did not sell around dinner time. The anxiety medicine which I’ve started out on didn’t seem to do much more than befuddle me and make me not want to persist at my boring-as-fuck job, painting outside around the perimeter of a giant warehouse in the basically non-color of beige. Now the new doctor - or PA - has promoted me from the Junior Varsity anti-anxiety drug, Paxil to the Varsity team in Prozac. Yesterday I read all the precautions which reads like a gauntlet to go through in order to get some kind of benefit. Will it be worth it? I don’t know. Medicine seems like so much scientifically proven magic. I’ve been through a lot lately for several ailments trying to figure out whether something is working or not. I seem to have a drug or two from each person I’ve seen. The worst thing I worry about is an old friend becoming incredibly distant. The worst thing I worry about is loneliness. The Paxil did help me get back into going to art openings, and there I meet new people with similar lives and pursuits. I can’t entirely blame it for having gained about twenty or thirty extra pounds lately.
Naps and dizziness until 11. I boil some potatoes in a new pot in order to make Colcannon with some kale and green onions. I might draw on the house I’ve been working on, a dream house for my place. I’ve been drawing on it a while with the primary improvement of facing the entryway to the southeast where the sun comes up at winter solstice. Similarly it also faces southwest for sunset where the dinning room is located. This causes for some weird angular challenges internally as well as planning the roof. In previous drafts I had multiple gables, but in the end I picked an imaginary center in the distance to the south and swung a radius that began and ended perpendicular to both ends.
October 19, 2014
I didn’t make Colcannon. I ate the boiled potatoes with no improvement and then basically stayed in bed following the Indocin schedule. I read from my drama book two chapters, Oedipus Rex, and Lysystrata. It would be horribly depressing around here if it weren’t for my cat who sleeps beside me most of the while after having his adventures outside. I think I have finally found a moist pouch food that he consistently likes instead of the Friskies he’s had all his life, which he doesn’t like much anymore, except for the fish kind that says “healthy diet” on it. This morning he did eat some “Mixed Grill even after ten minutes alone with dry Iams mature cat mix. This is a relief. He has a slow healing wound near his hip bone that I am concerned about. I want to get him to the vet about it. I wonder if it is some kind of buried cat claw or foreign object. I did swab it with H2O2 at some point. I don’t know if it was the Indocin which gave me the weird dreams of tapering off Paxil, but that happened; weird dreams where everybody was transforming through different universes and having their physical appearance go fucking crazy, as in completely covered in reptilian bumps or carbuncles. There was a feeling about it as if to transform one had to die, like a vampire, but there was no going back to the previous incarnation. I went through about three of these. I had bumped up my oxygen concentrator incase my mask lost complete seal. Not much good waking up to that at 6AM not fully rested, went back to sleep without the CPAP until 10AM with no dreams. Then I awoke pretty groggy, but determined to get out and do something, anything. It’s now 11:36AM and I’m trying to make Colcannon again before the Kale goes bad. Everything I buy fresh and health goes bad pretty quickly. I should pretty much just eat my red lettuce on the way home and forget the business of refrigerating it. I should just quit comfort food, i.e., roasted chicken.
So, maybe into town today to get water. I explored the basement main panel trying to find out which circuit controlled the light. I couldn’t find it; feared flipping the ones with recent pencil on them for upstairs stuff. I did narrow it to being one of those by plugging into the light fixture with a CD player that I could hear over the circulating pumps after walking a little bit towards my studio. I did find the circuit to the plugs on a sub-panel down the entry hall. So, maybe I can tap into that without begging Client One to call the electrician. It’s the last thing on his giant to-do list. I may get into my well pump renovation, which sits in the studio now. My brother - the one who has some time to help - kind of pushes me on to getting it repaired. I suggested that even if I get it working I need to set the whole pumphouse into the ground to keep it from freezing. I sent him an email with a link to the company which makes a solar-powered DC submersible pump that goes for $1,700. That would allow me to bypass having to pay for another meter with the local co-op, whose access fee alone has jumped from $7.00/month to $20/month. This is all on account of the stupid previous owner putting the well 250 feet away from the house…or vice versa. Anyway, I’m still dizzy, which means Meclizine. Prozac says it may cause weird dreams in starting it, so…maybe I’ll be used to them by then. I don’t know. Only when there are art objects in them are they worthwhile. One dream I had without all the medicines seemed like a boiling vat of colors and shapes for what seemed like hours. I wonder what caused that. I kept telling myself wake up to put an end to it.
Must’ve been some food combination, but maybe it was just hypoxia. I never have any of those on the CPAP anymore.
12:32
Colcannon made with some kind of organic kale, dark green bubbly thextured. I added oat milk to it, then 1%, a tbs. of Tahini, a dribble of olive oil, two tbs. of plain yogurt. I wonder how it will turn out. I kind deleted a lot of the hard stem part of the kale. I forgot: green onions about a half bunch or a cup, chopped up, Chia seed about a tsp. Been snacking along the way, cheddar and almonds. Shouldn’ta. Anyway, appetite back; walking around without a cane. Gout seems headed off with the Indocin, tons of water and rest. Feels like a miracle.