Let’s raise the bar some.

The past few entries here read like a soap opera. All is well, the semi-annual check up with the medics this week shows I am disgustingly healthy so we’ll forget the tick attack and other pleas for sympathy, I guess, and talk about the book.

The title will be Powers Trace III, a foregone conclusion,  but I haven’t decided on the subtitle. As with the last book, I’ll probably wait to see what the major theme is before picking something to hint at the story line. Decisions, decisions. The title is a big deal. Kinda like naming your first born. Cute doesn’t impress people forty years down the road, it has to be right forever.

The writing is slow now. It seems to flow with the weather. The heat is one reason but that is to be expected here in the South. We had a very unusual week as July moved in. The temperature and the humidity dropped significantly, and it felt like September. Low 80’s during the day dropping into the 50’s at night. Sleeping with the windows open and no hum from the air conditioner was great. It wont last, the temps are rising again, the humidity is on the upswing and weather from the gulf is bringing rain, which we need.

Keep signing on here for general updates and check twitter for daily nonsense.

Tough little bugger!

We have two dogs who own the backyard. Luey is a 14 year old Schnauzer and Cookie is a Jack Russell terrier, 8 years old (as far as we know). Both spend hours everyday roaming around their turf, Luey putting his nose to ever leaf in the yard, and Cookie chasing squirrels back up into their trees. For daily diversions they have toys. Three Frisbees, two soccer balls, and an undersized basketball, half flat, leaking air. The back part of the yard is a jungle with a lot of underbrush. The growth is controlled by weed-whacker once a year which was accomplished less that a month ago so the growth was minimal and revealed another ball that had been missing for some time. This is all background for the real story.

Luey was the first to spot the long-lost ball and was about to descend to inspect it. There is a pronounced slope, a drop-off maybe ten feet before you reach the fence, and I knew he had no way to retrieve his ball and carry it back up the hill. To the rescue. I slipped and slid to the ball, picked it up and tossed it back up into the yard. I was now Luey’s best friend again. While I scuffled through the weeds I apparently picked up a tick. At least that’s what I assumed it was later that night, in bed, when my arm brushed across it. I felt it, turned on the light and looked at it, then, not thinking, picked at it with a finger nail. I placed in on the night stand and saw the wiggling legs.

Back up a couple of hours. While watching TV I was feeling a bit off. Joints ached, stomach not feeling well. These are not unusual for us old folks but, now as I watched this small many-legged thing under the light, I knew something was amiss. I now had a fever, my head ached, and my hands were cold. I looked at them and could see swelling, enough that I could not make a fist. The stomach was getting “that feeling” and I headed for the bathroom. I waited, the tension was building, and I sat on the floor awaiting the inevitable. I sat. After about a half hour the body started to feel better. I waited another half hour before I got up and went back to bed. The headache had subsided some and the fever was going away. The hands were still puffy but not as swollen as before. As I lay there going over the symptoms it didn’t make much sense. It came on in a hurry but now seemed to be going away just as fast. The white blood cells must be beating back the attack. It was five o’clock in the morning when I finally ventured back for a couple of aspirins before finally falling a sleep.

When I awoke at 11:30 I felt fine. I wondered if it was all just a bad dream but I knew it really happened. I still had the bug on the night stand, still wiggling it’s legs, still alive I guess.  I had tried to smash it after I found it but it was hard shelled so it did not squash. Suffer whatever you are. I’ll place it in a small, airless tube, and let it die a slow, agonizing death.

Moral of all this: Let the dogs retrieve their own toys.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the colors in my world.

OK. I’ve been asked, so I’ll take a few minutes to get the story out of the way and we can get on with whatever it is we’re getting on with. Age has caught up with me as far as the eyes are concerned. Cataracts became part of the annual exam a few years back and each year the Doc would say “Still there but we’ll keep watching the progress for awhile and go from there.” Awhile arrived with the May exam. Where the Cataracts had been minimal before, they were now marginal. That’s Eye-Doc talk for slow, progressive deterioration. “Will it get any better?” I asked. “No, but it can wait.” he said. That’s not my game. If it’s broke, fix it and move on. A date was set, the preliminaries taken care of, and I found myself flat on my back, a hairnet on my hairless head, making small-talk with nurses in baggy green uniforms. I was somewhat apprehensive about the procedure. The “E” had her eyes worked on, by the same doctors, a couple of years ago, and one eye didn’t turn out too good. She spent a number of days traveling to see a “Specialist” in Macon, up the road, who could repair a problem caused by the implants. All’s well that ends well, she has had no further trouble, so here I was heading into the unknown.

The procedure itself was short, about 20 minutes of looking into a bright light as some sort of tool tooled around in the eye doing it’s thing. My head was “Duck Taped” to the gurney so I couldn’t move but, all in all, it was not an uncomfortable experience. After about 30 minutes of recovery time I was in the car, headed home. No pain, no complaints. Recovery begins.

I was aware that the eye would not respond immediately to the trauma of being penetrated and vacuumed out but later, that evening, I was concerned. All I could see was prominent shapes, no color, like looking through gray smoke. Relax, he says to himself as the Braves game came on TV, it will be better soon. The next day the vision started to return to normal, somewhat. The shapes became better defined. The gray veil disappeared, and as I sat down for the ballgame that evening, the first revelation of improvement hit like a line-drive. Testing, always testing new things, I would close the new eye and look around. Then I would close the old eye, look with the new eye. Wham. The Braves home uniforms are white. I always accepted the white as kind of off-white. With the new eye, the uniforms were glowing white. The blues and reds around the ballpark were vivid, bright, unlike anything I had seen before. Is this real life? I asked. I was immersed in Technicolor. A Munchkin in the Wizard of Oz.

I went into this fix-up to get rid of all the reading glasses I have stashed around the house. My distant vision was adequate, no problems, but the near stuff, like books and computer screens were a blur. I did not expect the new world of Disney color but if the reading improves it will be worth the apprehension and time.

Half of the adventure is over. It is now the third day of recovery and the new eye is fine, free of distortion, free of the blur, working well with the other eye. Reading the fine print is not back yet but I hope that when the second eye is repaired I will be able to read like a teen ager. We’ll see, as they say…

Now, FaceBook. Yuck.

I’ve been complaining about Twitter nudging it’s way into my day and now, another thingy, called FaceBook. I knew it was out there but had no intention of getting involved. Overnight I WAS involved. As I mentioned earlier, I think, my son is now in Afghanistan for another year-long tour. He has E-Mail, and a computer, plus telephone capability funded by his Mom’s constant sending of AT&T phone cards but the family, all of them, are now on FaceBook sending messages, most of which don’t mean much to us Old Folks.

Twitter is more my speed. You have something to say, you say it, and get off. FaceBook has all of these other side roads that can sidetrack me in a heart beat. Today I found out that my personality is akin to Snoopy, Charlie Browns dog. Could be worse I guess.

Am I against this stuff. Of course not. A year is a long time and I applaud all of the gang for keeping the flow going, so far. I only hope it doesn’t fade out a few months down the road when it will really be needed to keep the moral and spirits up.

Number next. “Balaam Gimbles Gumption” the book I mentioned. I finished it and it’s worth every minute of reading you put into it. Good story. Eccentric characters. Small town folks with a twist.

Diversion.

I’m at the point in the book where it doesn’t take much to divert my attention to something completely different from the story I’m struggling with. I made a pact with the writing Gods to not read other peoples books while writing one of my own because I am weak, and unable to put a good phrase or story line out of my mind, allowing the better stuff to seep into what I am about. While at the reunion I was told about a book that was referred to as “Something like my writing style”. I ordered the book and put it aside, a day passes, and I glance at the cover, reading the title page, and finally grabbing it with both hands, going full bore for a late-night read. It’s totally engrossing, based on a small town, with small town eccentrics that any weird person could identify with.I haven’t finished it yet but will before getting back to my chore.

The book?  It’s Balaam Gimble’s Gumption by Mike Nichols. Not the Hollywood Mike Nichols, but a true Texan with a down-home attitude and the vocabulary to match. It’s endorsed by Kinky Friedman, and if you know recent Texas history this should give you a clue. A fun book.

Survived another reunion.

It’s Thursday, this must be home. The Old Men’s reunion went very well. We still rode the bus to and from various events, saw the carrier Yorktown, ate good meals, but that was but a sidelight. The real purpose of these events is to renew old friendships, and I did that. I hadn’t seen some of the guys for 50 years, and that’s a long, long time. They didn’t look like the young, skinny kids anymore but a few words and a laugh brought back the memories. Every time I attend one of these annual events I swear I won’t go to the next one, but for some mystical reason I do, drawn by the possibility of another old partner showing up. I may or may not go again. I won’t say never because I don’t have the will-power to NOT attend. Cheers guys. Stay well.

I unloaded a couple of books, and received some encouraging comments from those who read the first and second Powers Trace books so guess I’ll finish the new one. Can’t let the fan base down can I?