The point where the top of my right front thigh joins my upper torso, hurts. The spot where my lower neck joins my right shoulder, aches. I have no idea why these things are happening, and I feel it spreading to my left side.
I wonder wtf is going on, and I know that if it worsens, I'm in trouble. In the meantime I observe in pain and wait for it to happen.
I ran out of the primary Parkinsons med I've been taking for years, a few months ago, and nobody has renewed the prescription. Maybe my body is pissed off, and it's sending my mind South.
I remember when our mom dropped dead in an Orinda, CA extended living home. My sister offered me all of her stuff, and a U-Haul rental to take it back up to Seattle, after the funeral.
I had just started a $4.50 an hour bellboy job up in a Kent, WA hotel. I was barely staying alive and had no room for her stuff. It all went to the Salvation Army and I went back up home on the Amtrak train.
I've got a Will now, but I'm wondering if that's a mistake. Most of my stuff goes to son Riley back in Washington, and grand-daughter Shelby down in Tampa. Attending my funeral and processing my shit, would be disruptive and non-productive for both.
Why doesn't a service exist that could take care of all this stuff. Swoop in, separate family and physical things into a local storage area. Allow family to fly in and gather anything of sentimental value, sell the rest to a second-hand place, then organize the cremation and funeral with the proceeds.
I don't want my passing to be a burden, and I want folks to look back on it with a smile. Too much to ask?
This big Southern Tennessee Winter snow event is over and it should be in the sixties by the end of next week. It's fucking fine with me if I never see another snow drop fall for the rest of my life.
I woke up this morning to an email from my longtime Liberal West Coast friend. We've been on the outs for a while and she wanted me to call her. My apologies old friend, if you read this, I can't.
My daughter, mother to fourteen grandkids and some great-grandkids, was three years old when I met this friend fifty seven years ago. We have a long history, and now there is none.
I only have a couple of friends left here, and they're both guys. Somehow I have allowed women and kids to fade from my life, and it's left a huge emptiness in my heart...
I've invited a buddy over tonight to play poker with Daniel and me, and I haven't seen either all day. I have everything needed for a fun Saturday evening of cards and all I need now is players.
It's 1735, I have painted fingernails, I'm a crushed lonely old man, and I feel on the verge of doing something stupid. Some times we have friends around to correct that stupidity, most times we have not.
Daniel just called and said he was picking up some House Fried Rice, so I'll set up the poker chips...
I'm beginning to recognize the expression on total strangers faces that I do business with. I call it the What do we have here? look.
What they get back in return is a toothless unshaven old man who really doesn't give a flying fuck. In fact, I'm not even going to cut them until the pattern grows out, get those nails long and gnarly.
I went into town this morning, almost had eighteen wheels roaring up the hill put my misery to rest, as I slid partially through the Hwy 43 stop sign.
This snow silly southern town has been mostly shut down for days, but it's slowly coming back. I moved here after a decade plus spent high in the Rockies, and this ain't nothing.
In fact, Teton Valley was at the base of a Wyoming ski resort, and thrived on many feet of winter snow. We lived and worked with it, here they just shut down at a few inches.
We were surrounded by love, beauty, money, volcanos and world class trout streams. None of that is no longer around me. I thought I was going to continue to be part of Steph and her families lives here, but I was wrong.
Something's wrong. My brain has gone South on me and I have no idea why. I can't remember how to do things on my computer and I had a real hard time getting this Post out.
I have two food dishes in the refrigerator that I don't remember making yesterday. One is a large pot of some red stuff, and I really don't know what it is.
I do remember getting to the cheap grocery store yesterday but I ended up with two receipts, paid for both of them, and one had items I think I never bought.
I don't know what the fuck I'm doing anymore, not sure if I really care...
It's Tuesday, midway through January 16, and there's still too much snow and ice on the roads to venture out to the Hwy, much less the Places in town.
I had an amazing Transit career operating up in the High Idaho Teton Valley mountains, for more than a decade. My work partner and I each drove brand new sixteen wheeled passenger busses along Hwy 33, we served the town, the kids and the Seniors.
The busses were made for the snow, with four rear wheels moving us between small towns, with the best tires money could drive at the time. On the last New Years afternoons we were there, Karen dropped by our log home to give me and Steph a bottle of expensive vodka, and I turned it down. I quit for almost a year there, and our friendship was never the same.
Summer came, I trained a guy to replace me, with Karen's and my friendship fading way.
Steph was the woman of my life when we moved here. I loved and lost her when we did.
Daniel is getting his big service truck ready for an icy snowy trip into town here, and I'm going along...
Well, we're getting hammered with snow, and Daniel said he's never seen this much here. It's real cold, seven inches on the ground, and more heading this way all week.
It's 23° and snowing in Lawrenceburg, TN. This is my fifth winter here and I've seen some interesting weather, including snow, but this one could dump a bit.
I remember Steph's and my first big snow in the Grand Tetons. I made a snowman out by the mailbox, on our little subdivision street, off Ski Hill Road. We were the new couple on this very spread out block, and were the first house you came to as you entered.
Just for the fun of it, I stuck a stick, facing upward, into the snowman's lower belly and packed a snow sculpture around it, in the shape of something very hard and erect. The Horny Snowman was born!
I wish I could give a rational reason for that, I do know, as that first Winter sunk in, we hadn't made any friends in the subdivision. I think I was just giving the place a friendly fuck you.
Ahhh, Sunday evening in the South, in January. The snow totals are projected to be seven inches or more tonight.
Back where I come from, we talked in feet, not inches. I know what driving a public bus in the dead of a high mountain Idaho winter is like. I did it for a decade.
That experience now tells me to just stay off the road and let it thaw. Put that strip club down in Huntsville visit off for a bit.
I have determined that I have an addictive disposition. Right now I'm suffering through a bout of Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter munchies. The kitchen knife lays poised to dive into the jar, on a paper towel, in my kitchen.
In fact, that's been my main exercise, back and forth for another scoop, each time swearing it was my last.
And I have not communicated with anyone all day. No calls, no text, no email, no human interaction. I have power and heat, I'm secure, and I'm thankful for what I have left in life. Let it snow...
I'm using this old hammer for breaking up ice in the bag in my freezer compartment. It's been in my life for quite a while now, with no memory of how it arrived.
It's not like my grand-fathers hammers, which are probably at least a hundred years old, this one is different.
It's heavy, with a big solid white hammer head of unknown material, designed to deliver a softer, spread out blow. Handmade holes at the bottom, with wrapped braided threads at the tip.
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