It’s All in the Wrist

I’ve heard it said that growing old is a privilege because it’s something that is denied to many. Yeah, that’s probably true, so I don’t have an issue with that.

But it probably isn’t true about being old. Being old appears to be more of a pain than it is a privilege. And I mean that in the most literal sense that I can.

* * * *

I think it was last week that I finally realized that my blog has become an on-line diary of my incredibly bucolic and mostly boring life. I’m not a smart man, but even I know that. It mostly surprises me that it took me so long to figure it out.

I’m starting to remind myself of our 1997 Chevy S-10 Blazer. We had it for 11 years, and it’s my favorite vehicle of all time. It was a deep metallic maroon color. It had running boards and heated seats. And it had four-wheel drive. Because of the length of time we had it, and possibly because of the way we utilized it — we took it down the most spurious roads we could find on the North Shore of Lake Superior– the Blazer required far more serious maintenance than all of the other cars we’ve had in the last 33 years combined.

I’m pretty sure I ended up replacing every mechanical apparatus on it except the engine and the transmission. And I upgraded the sound system at least once. Lea eventually got tired of all the upkeep on it and more or less demanded that I get rid of it.

* * * *

It’s all in the wrist is a phrase typically used to indicate a certain level of skill or mastery at something where the hands are involved somehow. It’s a reference to the deft skill required to successfully perform certain activities. It’s mostly a sports reference.

Toss a ball in the hoop with nothing but net. Sink a long putt in golf. Throw a Frisbee. Throwing a perfect spiral with a football. Casting a line or better yet — fly fishing — you got it. It is all in the wrist. That’s the latest part of my body that has been malfunctioning for the last month. And I’ll apologize in advance for putting you through this yet again

* * * *

The weird part is I couldn’t think of anything I had done to injure my wrist. The only thing I did on the day it started hurting was wait in line for my first COVID-19 vaccine injection. It took ten and one-half hours. You wouldn’t think that any mishap could befall you by doing essentially nothing except play on your phone while you wait seemingly forever for the process to run its course, but that’s what I was doing on St. Patrick’s Day this year. And that’s the only reason why I remember that date.

* * * *

Why am I here? That’s a question I have asked myself countless times in my lifetime. Not necessarily in any spiritual or existential sense. It’s more like unto Why did I come into the kitchen? I was in the bedroom, and I know I came in here for a reason… I just can’t remember why anymore…

I can’t even say that this is something new. I did it thirty years ago, too. The only difference is the number of stairs I have to climb before I forget why went up them in the first place. Here, it’s only one. In Minnesota, it was a flight of stairs that led up from the basement. And it usually took three trips up and down the stairs before I could remember what I was trying to accomplish.

_{If anything, you’d think that my ability to concentrate would actually improve…}

* * * *

If you’ve read any of my previous posts about my adventures with the aging process, you know that the first thing I do when something like unto this happens to me is diagnosis my ailment. I have described this as the process of ruling shit out until you can’t rule something out anymore. Because I am both a guy and a nurse, I tend to pick the worst outcome I can think of, then work my way back to sanity from there.

So, yes, we can eliminate getting stabbed by knives and being attacked by wolverines. Some of you might possibly be thinking, You know, a much more common wrist malady is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome… And that’s what I’ve come to believe it is, too.

* * * *

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is a condition that causes numbness, tingling, or weakness in your hand, or a combination of any/all of the above. And a ridiculous amount of pain in your wrist. It’s my right wrist, and I am right-handed. It has changed almost everything about my life, so much so that I’ve contemplated coming out as Left-handed and trying out that lifestyle for awhile. I’ve even stopped playing golf because I don’t want to have start wearing Depends®.

CTS is caused by too much pressure on your median nerve. It runs the length of your arm, goes through a passage in your wrist called the carpal tunnel, hence the name, and ends in your hand. The median nerve controls the movement and feeling of your thumb and the movement of all your fingers, except your little pinky.

The main cause of CTS is chronic, repetitive motion — like typing, or any wrist movements that you do over and over when your hands are lower than your wrists, like, playing with your mobile device while you wait in line for ten and a half hours straight without a break.

Studies have shown that the incidence of CTS exploded with the emergence of the Computer Age for one simple reason. Not everyone used a typewriter before the age of computerization. Then, pretty much just like that! Everyone was using a keyboard to conduct business, for personal use, and entertainment. Up to five percent pf the world population is currently effected by CTS with varying levels of severity.

I have broken bones, sprained both of my ankles, pulled muscles, damaged my right knee three times, and partially separated my left shoulder. Those things hurt. But there is nothing that compares to the sheer motherfucking agony of putting too much pressure on one little nerve for an extended period of time.

It takes your breath away. It consumes all of your attention, so don’t get any stupid ideas about going into another room for anything. You could get lost for hours. You might end up as a Silver Alert, and that would just be embarrassing when the search party finds you in the bedroom staring at the ceiling…

* * * *

Being a nurse probably caused my CTS. At the very least, it played a significant part in my developing it. I’ve had CTS symptoms on and off for the last twenty years. My decision to try to become a rich and famous author certainly didn’t help any. And writing my blog is probably the stupidest thing I could do right now.

See? I told you I wasn’t smart.

I have a wrist splint that I have sometimes worn when I go to bed ever since the late 1990’s. I only use them whenever my right wrist greatly pains me. Historically, it has happened in streaks, then has disappeared for sometimes extended periods of time. I wouldn’t have described my symptoms as severe, until this last flareup. At least, that’s how I remember it.

I don’t think my CTS was progressively getting worse. This was more of an unanticipated blitzkrieg of pain. From hell. This was, hands down, the worst recurrence of it ever for me, and I’m hoping that it will go away again and go bother someone else for awhile. That’s probably how that phenomenon works, too.

The treatment of CTS is simple. Rest — stop doing the stuff that caused the flare up, Wrist splinting. A splint that holds your wrist still while you sleep can help relieve nighttime symptoms of tingling and numbness. And NSAIDS, drugs like Motrin® and Aleve®. And if those don’t work, you’ll probably need surgery.

* * * *

I’m not a huge fan of surgical interventions for anything, especially when there are so many non-surgical options available, so I’ve been doing all of the preventative measures mentioned above, plus, stretching exercises to try to pop my wrist into non-pain producing positions My caddy taught me how to do them. And I bought a new splint because I figured splint technology has probably changed a little in the last two decades.

My right wrist is mostly better now. Except for the low-grade ache that never really goes away, and sometimes hurts like unto two hells whenever I try to do something manly, like, open a jar of pickles. And the tingly sensation that sometimes extends from my elbow to my fingertips. And the fact that my fine motor skills are sometimes greatly diminished. My only fear is this flare up has lasted longer than any of the others. I’m not sure it’s going to bounce back all the way this time.

All of these things are more annoying than they are anything else most of the time, and I am more than accustomed to dealing with stuff like unto that on a daily basis. There are several parts of my body that are working at 80% of the capacity they had only ten years ago. As much as it sucks sometimes, getting older still beats the hell out of the alternative. It just seems to be the price most of us have to pay for staying alive.

* * * *

I want to jump back to the ten and a half hour wait that Lea, my lovely supermodel wife, Phyllis, my golf wife, and I had to endure for our first COVID-19 vaccine. It’s probably the most exciting thing I’ve done all year.

Obviously, it wasn’t well-organized. If it was publicly advertised, I didn’t see or hear about it. Almost everyone we talked to while we waited, and waited, and waited some more — had heard about from word of mouth — like us. Or they read about it on Facebook.

It was held in the little village of Ajijic — in the park down by the malecón, and it was a first come-first serve administration of all the vials that happened to make it into town on that particular day. It was sponsored by the Mexican government, and was free of charge to anyone in the country. All you had to do was produce three pieces of mandatory paperwork at the time the vaccine was being dispensed.

One of these pieces of paper was a form you actually had to fill out on-line to register for the program, then print out that form and bring to the administration site. Yes, you’re absolutely correct. You would think that once you registered on-line that would’ve done the trick. It probably would’ve worked in any other country on the planet. The other two pieces of paper contained essentially the same information as the on-line form. Failure to have the three correct pieces of paper meant that you could not receive the shot, no matter how long you had waited.

Lea said she filled out her online in form about ten minutes. It took me more than half an hour to even sign into the goddamn website. Phyllis was easily as challenged as I was by the process, and at the end she couldn’t get the form to print. Phyllis emailed all her information to Lea, and even she couldn’t get it to print. Fortunately, Phyllis had brought along almost every piece of legal paper she has collected in her time here. A government official somewhere in the vicinity of the park okayed a different piece of paper as an acceptable alternative, and she was allowed to receive the vaccine.

I’m going to guess that Phyllis wasn’t the only one who wasn’t able to print the registration form.

* * * *

It is a well-known fact of modern life that all bureaucracies run on paperwork. But the Mexican bureaucracy appears to worship paperwork. Getting a legal document down here can be one of the most frustrating processes you will ever experience. Every document has to drawn up by a notario. They’re like unto attorneys down here, only more important. All legal documents are written in a highly specialized form of Mexican-Spanish that is so stylized it’s almost incomprehensible, and the entire thing must be correct down to the punctuation. If there are any errors, the entire document must be completely re-written and that process can take months. And months…

That’s why notarios are so important. They make sure every i is dotted, every t is crossed, and every comma and period are all in the right places at the right times.

And there isn’t much logic when it comes to what is deemed to be the correct pieces of paper to have in any given situation. There are a few forms you always seem to need, but after that it is anyone’s guess.

You have to fill out reams of paperwork to get a Mexican driver’s license — which has your name, your address, a picture of you — and a shitload of other information that the Mexican government generates — but it cannot be used to prove who you are, where you live, or any of the other numbers and codes that the government provided to you, and only you.

A driver’s license is just that. Something that allows you to get behind the wheel of a motorized vehicle and do pretty much whatever you want when you’re on the roads down here. And that is all.

A rental agreement, something that is written in that very specific Mexican-Spanish jargon of inestimable profundity, cannot be used to provide proof of residency. You need something much more vital. A utility bill for telephone or internet service. Or you need a bank statement.

Evidently, commercial billing is far more of a reliable source of information to the government than anything the government actually produces.

* * * *

At the end of our ten hour wait to get our injection, there was another half-hour process where dozens of high school volunteers filled out one more piece of paper that verified all of the information we had already provided to get the shot, and they also wrote down telephone numbers and email addresses. I asked if anyone was actually going to contact me so I could get my second shot of the vaccine. Everyone that heard my question laughed. Even the people taking down all of our information.

* * * *

Yes. Three weeks later we had to go back down into the little village of Ajijic, in the park by the malecón again and wait in line once more, but this time for only two and a half hours. We had to have the three all-important pieces of paperwork with essentially all the same information again so we could to receive the piece of paper that had been filled out for us, but not given to us, after we received our first shot. You know, the one with all of the same information on it one more time, plus our telephone numbers and email addresses that no one needed because no one contacted us. We heard we had to go get this piece of paper by word of mouth, again.

This is just a guess, but I figure we’re going to need four pieces of paper to qualify to get the second COVID -19 vaccination, whenever that might be. Phyllis will probably hear about first, and then she’ll let us know once more.

* * * *

I have serious doubts about how effective this global vaccination program is going to be in the long run. I’ve read reports about people who have received the vaccine coming down with COVID. I even saw one report about a woman that survived the illness, got the vaccine, then came down with the ‘Rona again. I guess the good news is she’s still alive, but this disease doesn’t seem to play by the rules, and that’s a serious cause for concern.

The Mexican government bought all their vaccines from China. By all accounts I’ve seen, this vaccine is the least effective of all the vaccines that are currently being employed against the pandemic. I may have wasted half a day of my life for a vaccine that might not do anything against the disease it’s supposed to prevent. I had lab work done about two weeks after I received the vaccine. One of tests I had done was a COVID antibody titer test.

It came back negative.

I have no idea if I have any COVID antibodies in my system even though I may have had COVID when we went to Mexico City in December of 2019, and I most definitely received the vaccine in March of this year. The world has changed. There isn’t as much certainty as there was before the pandemic. There aren’t as many answers as there used to be. And many of the answers we have right now are I don’t know. We’ll have to see. Maybe…

* * * *

The world has been in the closest thing to a total shutdown that it could achieve for the last year. People have quarantined, worn PPE, and social distanced during that entire time. Pandemic fatigue started occurring about ten minutes after the lockdowns started, and it has continued to fester away ever since. It has been boiling over for awhile, but now it’s starting to reach a fever pitch almost everywhere on the planet

I watched a news story this morning about revenge travel. It’s a visceral reaction to not being able to travel anywhere. With the gradual relaxation of travel restrictions, people are starting to hit the road and airways to any place they can. They don’t even care where they’re going. It just has to a be a destination that isn’t the fuckin’ couch in the fucking living room.

It’s possible that this is going to be the most dangerous stage of the pandemic. Only time will tell. We’ll know soon whether or not all of the things we have done as a global society will be enough to stop the spread and continuation of the Coronavirus pandemic.

The Big Question is, have we done enough?

* * * *

I remember the first time I had to administer an injection as a nursing student. My patient was an elderly nun. If I screwed this up, I’d probably get kicked out of nursing school, and I would surely go straight to Hell for torturing Mother Teresa. I’m pretty sure my hands were shaking as I drew up the medication. I told my instructor how nervous I was, and she reassured me that I was going to be fine.

“Take a deep breath. Relax. Giving a shot is easy. Pretend you’re throwing a dart. It’s all in the wrist.”

I did all of those things, except the imaginary dart I threw probably would have traveled halfway to the moon. I felt the tip of the need hit the periosteum of her femur. That had to hurt like unto three hells. It was the worst shot I would ever administer in my life. And it was probably the worst injection Mother Teresa ever received in hers.

And she didn’t say a word.

My next injection went much better. By the time I gave my third injection it was like I had done it hundreds of times. It no longer produced the adrenaline rush that it did the first time. And I had gotten past the idea that I was intentionally inflicting pain on another human, even if I was doing it for a good cause.

* * * *

There comes a time in everyone’s life when you cease to be a highly-skilled participant and transition into being a once-great-but-now-mostly-forgotten spectator. For me, that transition started on the day that I retired. Four and a half years later, I had assumed that almost everyone I used to work with had forgotten all about me.

Yesterday, something I wasn’t expecting happened. I received a message from a nurse had I worked with at the last hospital I worked. She had just started a new job a new hospital — the second hospital I worked at in Phoenix. I worked on a Gero/Psych Unit there. All of the nurses on the unit knew how to handle the myriad of medical issues their patients brought to the hospital with them, but they had no idea how to address the psychiatric issues their patients had been admitted for. I taught my Med/Surg nurses how to think like Psych nurses.

Lynn said the staff there still talked about me all the time, and what a great mentor I had been to them. She ended her message saying, Thank you for the difference you have made in all our lives!!!

No. Thank you, Lynn. And Julia. And Al. And Liligene. And all of the rest of the staff on the SAGE Unit at Del E. Webb Medical Center.

You see? Being a psych nurse is easy. All you have to do relax. And find a way to make your patients laugh. It’s the most important therapy you will give them.

It’s all in the wrist.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Almost fifty years ago, I started writing my first novel. I was living in an apartment in Little Falls, MN at the time. I don’t think it had a title. I had no idea what I wanted to write about. I didn’t even own a typewriter. My novel consisted of a bunch of notes I had scribbled down on a yellow legal pad. Probably when I was drunk.

I don’t think any of the notes I had scribbled down actually looked like a novel. It was mostly ideas I was contemplating trying to turn into a novel. I had a few of the chapter titles written down in my notes. You know, like, I had an outline or something. The only thing I’m sure of is the title of this post was the title of one of the chapters of one of the books I never wrote.

* * * *

In one of my previous posts I mentioned that I suffer from Involuntary Musical Imagery, otherwise known as an earworm. Usually, it’s just annoying. But for the last month or so it has been almost intolerable because the song that was stuck in my head was Coward of the County by Kenny Rogers.

I know, right!

The song was bad enough when it was released in 1979, having to hear it 20 times a day or more on the radio. There are no words for the torture that it was having to hear it for all of your waking hours for 30 days in a row. or more. I’m just relieved that it somehow got kicked out of my mental playlist. Finally.

* * * *

Hey. How’s it going? I hope you’re all surviving the seemingly never-ending saga of the Coronavirus pandemic. I don’t think it’s even been one whole year since this thing started. And yet, it somehow feels like it’s been going on for most of my life. And I am old.

I don’t think I know anyone that has died to death from COVID-19. Several of my friends have had it, and they have all survived. However, several of my friends have lost friends or family members to the Coronavirus. I’ve been extremely fortunate so far. I hope my luck holds out for a very long time to come.

Up in the States, most of my friends have received one of several types of vaccines that are now available. Most of them have posted pictures on social media with their official documentation, which is something we’re all going to need in the future if we ever want to travel to another country, or possibly, even leave the house.

I don’t think any of the vaccines are available here in the Lakeside Area. My doctor thinks they might arrive here by June or July. Or maybe next year. This is Mexico. Time is very relative here. And there’s this: Many of the people that live here are gringos from different countries. Canadia. The US. England. New Zealand. South Dakota…

I’m not sure we’re a huge priority to the Mexican Government.

Up until he contracted COVID-19, the Mexican President didn’t believe the pandemic was real. I’m not sure how much his experience has changed him. Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been a bit a of an enigma while he’s been in office. He’s turned out to be a disappointment to almost everyone that voted for him.

Much like unto the former President of the United States, AMLO didn’t do much of anything to stop the spread of the Coronavirus in Mexico. He left that up to the governors of the 31 states. The governor of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro Ramírez, has been very proactive in trying to keep the people he represents safe and healthy. and alive. And that hasn’t been an easy accomplishment.

Not because the people of Mexico haven’t complied with most of the preventative measures that we’ve all experienced. No one down here has protested about alleged infringements on their rights or freedoms. It’s the whole family thing.

Family ties are huge down here. Ask any Hispanic person you happen to see and they will tell you that family means everything to them. Families here get together as often as they can to celebrate anything and everything. Or nothing.

Hey, man. The ‘Rona might kill me, but if I don’t go to my abuela’s birthday party– She’s gonna be 95 this weekend! — I’m a fuckin’ dead man for sure! At the very least she’ll slap me silly with her chanclas.

And that’s not an exaggeration. Not going to a family gathering can have serious repercussions. So now you have a better idea of the situation down here.

Governor Alfaro has ordered at least three major lockdowns in the last year, and I don’t know how many minor shutdowns. His latest directive will remain in effect until December 15th — pretty much the rest of the year. I think he just got tired of having to re-issue statements every other week.

* * * *

Despite the fact that there isn’t much to do here because there just aren’t many things to do not only here, but pretty much everywhere right now — we’ve been keeping busy here at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa. Retirement has turned out to be a helluvalot more work than I ever imagined. That probably wouldn’t be true if we weren’t the Stewards of the Realm at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa.

We’ve spent a lots of time and money improving a place that doesn’t belong to us, and more than likely, never will. Those things weren’t part of our rental agreement — we aren’t obligated to do any of them. I’ve written about all of them in previous posts, so I don’t think I’m going to list them all again. But the longest and most expensive endeavor we’ve taken on has been renovating the yard and all of the gardens.

* * * *

Every living thing goes through various stages of development in its lifetime. According to a guy named Erik Erikson, humans have eight distinct stages. I know I had to memorize them when I was in nursing school. And then I forgot almost everything about them because once you get out of nursing school, no one is ever going to ask you about them again.

The one thing I do remember about them is they all had kooky-sounding names — like, your biggest challenge in each stage was not to kill yourself, or everyone else you meet. Trust vs. Mistrust. Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt. Initiative vs. Guilt.

See? I told you.

According to Mr. Erikson, the stage of development I’m currently in is Integrity vs. Despair. Whatever. I see it more as a setting in of the Three G’s. In alphabetical order: Gardening, Getting Older, and Golf.

* * * *

Lea and I both prefer things to look neat and orderly. And so does Todd for that matter. Todd is our roommate. He moved here from Idaho about a year and a half ago, and took up residence in one of our guest rooms. He’s Lea’s oldest friend, and he’s become my closest male friend and golf partner.

That whole neat and orderly thing: that was probably the greatest impetus in our decision to improve the appearance of pretty much everything in the yards. That’s why we decided to have the pool repainted. And to annihilate the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow, and all of the other vines and vegetation that hadn’t been trimmed or manicured in the last forty years. All of those things started way back in the middle of last October.

I’m sure the lockdowns and shutdowns and restrictions from the Coronavirus had something to do with our decision There wasn’t much of anything else to do, and we had been here long enough that looking at the overgrown hedges and shit really started bothering us.

Lea and I have improved every house that we’ve lived in for an extended period of time, whether we owned them or not. It’s become kind of a habit for us.

* * * *

The pool had been bothering us for awhile. It wasn’t on good shape when we moved in. Additional time, and continued use, didn’t do anything to improve its appearance. So we made a deal with Lord Mark, our landlord. He would pay for the prep work, paint, and any miscellaneous supplies. And we would hire a painter to paint the pool.

We drained the pool and let it dry out for three months. In January we had all of the pool surfaces prepped by Tacho, and Lea and I pressured washed every inch to get it ready for paint. Francisco Flores Bernini, my friend, caddy, and the guy who has painted almost the entire inside of our house, painted the pool a deep, dark blue. Jaime Mendoza, our property manager, had 40,000 gallons of water delivered in two huge trucks.

I have to say it turned out better than I thought it would. If we ever have any visitors here, I think they’ll love it, too. It’s the jewel in the crown of the resort once more. Or it will be once we get the solar heating system working again.

The solar heater is on the roof of the master bedroom, and it is a Mexican technological wonder. It’s so complicated even other Mexicans haven’t been able to understand it. We’ve had a few guys come over to look at it to repair it, and they all say it just needs to be replaced.

We’re going to start that process this week, according to Jaime. We’ll see how that goes. There’s more than one person involved in finding a solution to this problem. It might take awhile to get them all together over here. Personally, I think we’ll end up with a new heating system eventually, simply because that’s what everyone has been saying we’re going to need. But this is Mexico. When it comes to stuff like unto this, nothing is ever as straightforward as it seems.

* * * *

When I was a kid, I spent almost every summer working in the fields on my grandparent’s farm by day, and was preyed upon by my pedophile uncle by night. As a result, I had no interest in becoming a farmer when I grew up. And yet, as an adult, I have done far more gardening than I ever thought I would. And that is all because of my lovely supermodel wife.

Lea loves gardens, but she doesn’t want to do any gardening. That’s where I come in. And the Five Languages of Love. I’m a guy. So you can believe me when I say I had no idea there were any love languages.

* * * *

This couple gets married. On their honeymoon night the guy looks at his beautiful bride and says, “Hey Mrs. Stevenson, you wanna retire into the bedroom and let me fuck your brains out?”

“That is just so rude!” his wife snaps. “I knew I wasn’t marrying a Casanova or anything, but couldn’t you at least try to be polite about it?” The guy thinks about for a minute, runs his hand through his hair and decides to try again.

“You’re right, honey. I apologize, and I’m really sorry I said that. Now, could you please pass the pussy?”

* * * *

Lea’s favorite love language is Acts of Service. In my case, that ended up translating into Build me a garden. Or in Lea’s case, a lots of gardens. I constructed at least three gardens for her in Minnesota. In Arizona I transformed our backyard into a desert oasis. Okay, I didn’t do anything except sign the check in that instance. But the results were worth it.

Here at the resort, the gardens had been completely swallowed by the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow and all of the untrimmed vines that covered the fence in the backyard. All Todd and I had to do was find them again. And I should add that Lea played her part in hedgerow annihilation, too.

Lea doesn’t like digging in the dirt because it ruins her manicures. If I spent any money on taking care of my fingernails, I probably wouldn’t want to do anything to fuck them up either. Oddly enough, Lea actually enjoys trimming shrubs and vines. It’s that whole neat and orderly thing again.

* * * *

All of the things I’ve already mentioned are true, but there’s one more reason why I decided to tackle the daunting project of hedge demolition and yard improvement. I really suck at sitting on my ass all day listening to the TV. Yeah, it kind of surprised me to discover this, too.

Lea says she’s not surprised. She apparently understands me better than I do. We have been married to each other for over three decades, so her comprehension of me isn’t all that surprising. I’m pretty sure I understand her better than she understands herself, too.

Speaking of TV, I’ve been able to get our streaming devices to actually work on a consistently reliable basis. So we’ve actually been watching a couple of series: The Crown, and The Mandalorian.

I’ve found that I actually like the young Queen Elizabeth II. And I detest pretty much everyone else in her family, the fucking royal sissifated sniffle-snaffles that they are.

The Mandalorian guy reminds me of The Rifleman. It was a TV western way back when I was kid. They were big back then, and there were a lots of them to choose from. I really liked The Rifleman when I was a kid. I watched a rerun of it a few years ago on a quiet Saturday morning, and I changed the channel after five minutes. I thought The Rifleman was just about the stupidest fuckin’ show I had ever seen.

That’s pretty much what I think of The Mandalorian too. It’s very predictable. The dialog is mostly boring and repetitive — except Baby Yoda is so damn cute I put up with all the stupididity just for him. I’ve watched five or six episodes. I’m still waiting for the Baby Yoda kid to say something. I don’t know if he ever speaks, but I’m hoping like hell that he does. And soon.

* * * *

Earlier in this post I said that restoring the gardens was expensive, and you night think that I spent a bunch of money buying plants to put in the gardens. That would be incorrect. I’ve probably spent less than two hundred bucks on new plants.

The expense was hiring someone to haul off all the shit we chopped down.

A guy named Guillermo was driving by the resort in his beat-up pickup when he saw Todd dragging a bunch of branches out to the curb to be picked up by the local garbagemen. He asked if we would be willing to pay him to do it.

Our garbage guys can haul off only a very limited amount of branches and stuff at one time, and everyone in our development always has a bunch of yard debris that they need to get rid of. If we had waited for them to perform this task for us, we would still have a mountain of debris to get rid of, and we started almost five months ago. For the very reasonable fee of $25 bucks a truckload, Guillermo hauled away about 20 truckloads of branches and vines and shit whenever we needed him.

It ended up being a good deal for all of us. Guillermo couldn’t find any work because of COVID-19, so we were an absolute godsend to him when he was desperately looking for a way to make some money. And we were able to demolish stuff at a much faster rate because we weren’t limited by the local garbage collection limitations.

* * * *

With the debris removed, we could focus on making the yard and gardens all pretty and cutey once more. We took the hedgerow out in sections, therefore, we also reconstructed the gardens in sections. With that in mind, we now have gardens that are very well established on one hand, to gardens that are just beginning to sprout flowers. If that pattern continues to repeat itself, there will always be one part of the gardens in bloom, no matter what time of the year it is. There isn’t really a winter season here. It’s more like unto varying degrees of summer all the time.

Now you understand why I think this place is a paradise.

We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the flowers that started growing once they could see the light of day once more, and that was what convinced us that our resort used to have gardens at one time, long ago in the past.

Morning glories, brown-eyed susans, amaryllis, dahlias, and lantana have sprung to life, adding pops of color along the south side of the house. Lilies and geraniums started growing around the bougainvillea and the monster poinsettia tree. At least seven varieties of vines are climbing the stone walls and fences that enclose our grounds. And we uncovered a mango tree, a papaya tree, and an avocado tree.

Unfortunately, flowers aren’t the only things that have sprouted up in the once-forsaken gardens. We also have a very impressive crop of weeds growing, too. This is where the helluvalot of work started coming into play for me. And Todd. And it involves the two W’s of the first G of my version of this stage of my development in life.

Watering and Weeding.

* * * *

To the best of my knowledge, there’s no such thing as a garden that doesn’t require any maintenance. If there is, I sure as hell didn’t plant it here. We used to have a gardener — well, he was more of a yard maintenance guy than he was a gardener — and that was our main reason for letting him go. He was one big reason the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow had grown to such outrageous proportions.

Miguel is no longer our gardener, but we did hire him to maintain the pool. He’s probably the only person on the planet that knows how the enigmatic plumbing for the pool works. Just in cases you were wondering, he likes what we’ve done with the gardens.

According to a reliable source that I can no longer remember, the one thing that all plants need to live is water. That makes sense to me, so I’m not going to research it any further. It’s the Dry Season down here right now. It won’t rain in any appreciable amounts until the middle of June. The gardens we decided to uncover need to be watered on pretty much a daily basis. At the very least, every two days.

Yep, I’m going to be busy for awhile.

Todd tends to set up sprinklers to water any part of the yard or gardens that he takes care of. I’m a bit more hands-on. I bought a shitload of hoses and wands and nozzles with a variety of settings and strengths, and I more or less water everything by hand. It takes me a few hours every day to make the rounds to all of the gardens. It’s one of the reasons why it’s taken me so long to write this post. I think I’ve been working on it for at least a month. Maybe two… I honestly can’t remember.

I like to see how my plants are doing. Are they looking okay? Do they need more water? Less water? More sunlight? What’s that fucking thing? Is that a new weed I’ve never seen before? Is it a flower? Maybe I’ll leave it there for awhile and see what it grows into… That’s kind of how I roll when I’m watering the gardens.

* * * *

Gardening is a fairly mindless enterprise for most people. There is nothing mindless for me. My mind is always running, and it hasn’t been my buddy for quite some time. I have to seriously counter the natural tendency of my mind to make me feel as bad about myself as it possibly can. It’s become more or less a full-time job lately.

Age has given me some perspective on my life. This is the second G of my version of this stage of my development in life. Being sober has given me an extended period of time of reasonably sane behavior. But the more I seem willing to embrace myself, warts and all, the more my mind seems to think it needs to step in and do something about that.

It’s probably still mad at me for quitting drinking…

We’ll work this out sooner or later. I’m smarter than my brain thinks I am, and I am way more patient than it is. One of these days it will realize that and leave me alone.

* * * *

A weed, by definition, is any plant that you don’t want growing in your yard or garden. And they are pretty much the bane of my existence right now. Mostly because weeds don’t come to you. You have to get down to their level to get rid of them. My back is no longer built for that kind of movement. And I’m sure this is true for more people than just me, but for every weed I remove, ten weeds seem appear out of the ground to take its place.

And I don’t know what is in the soil here, but it took a toll on my hands. After one week of weeding, the skin on my hands took on the texture of 90 grit sandpaper. Then my skin started to crack around the beds my fingernails. It surprises me how something so tiny and seemingly insignificant can hurt so goddamn much. I couldn’t have typed anything even if I had wanted to. I could barely hold a golf club without breaking into tears.

I’ve started wearing work gloves out of sheer self-preservation. And I’m applying lotion on a daily basis now. I think my hands will recover and return to their previous state of feeling like I’ve never done an honest days’ work with them.

* * * *

Most of the garden restoration was accomplished simply by relocating the plants we already had to different locations, which was another back-breaking exercise for me, and seeds. I love seeds because they’re inexpensive and I don’t have to bend over to get them onto the ground. I more or less throw them in the general direction of where I want them to grow, and add water.

I’ve kind of become the Marky Flower Seed of Mexico.

My helter-skelter approach to gardening drives Todd crazy. He’s much more scientific and methodical in his approach to. He tests the soil and makes his own compost. He grows a lots of plants in small pots, then replants them exactly where he wants them to be, in more or less specific numbers.

Last year I sowed a few hundred seeds and almost nothing grew. This year I sowed a few hundred thousand seeds, and almost all of them germinated. Yeah, I don’t get it either. It’s one of the mysteries of Life in Mexico. I may not understand why it happened, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. And I really don’t care what Todd thinks when it comes to my gardening techniques. I have created the gardens of ten thousand dreams here, and I am well pleased.

Marigolds, zinnias, sweet alyssum, and cosmos. Lavender, lupines, bachelor’s buttons, and daisies. Calendaria, dianthus, and carnations. Salvia, asters, delphiniums, and mums. Sunflowers, snapdragons. scarlet pimpernel, and foxglove. Ageratum, hollyhocks, nasturtiums, and sweet william.

We have a lots of garden space, therefore, we have ended up with a boatload of flowers to try to fill them all. Most of these I’ve grown from seeds or cuttings from monster-sized plants. And almost all of these plants produce more seeds. I may never have to buy another packet seeds for as long as I live, even if I live for another two decades. There’s no such thing as too many flowers. Or too many types of flowers.

The end result of our labors has been so dramatic that it’s hard to adequately describe. It’s like unto a caveman/hippie/beatnik guy that decided to cut his hair and join the human race. It opened up the outdoors and let the sun shine in. Now all we have to do is keep it trimmed and manicured until we die, and then it will become someone else’s problem.

For now, there are three of us on the job so it hasn’t become a major ordeal for anyone. But we all can see that it’s something we’re going to have to be very proactive about or we’ll end up another Hedgerow from Hell in no time flat.

* * * *

And that brings me to the third and final G of my version of this stage of my development in life. Golf. Prior to the onset of all the COVID-19 lockdowns and precautions and stuff, I was consistently scoring in the mid-80’s. I fixin’ to get ready to start to begin to break 80, and go onto the Professional Senior’s Tour.

And then one day, for no particular reason, pretty much almost everything about my golf game just fell apart, and it stayed there. I was scoring in the mid-90’s and golf became a whole lots less fun than it had ever been.

I’ve tried to remain philosophical and positive about sucking at golf once more. Everyone goes through a slump. You’ve just got to play through it until it gets bored and goes away to ruin someone else’s game. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.

That’s how dieting works. For example, if you lose several pounds, they float around through the atmosphere until they run into someone else, and that person suddenly gains several pounds. I’ve lost 15 pounds since I retired. And I’d bet at least one person reading this has gained 15 pounds in the last four and half years.

I rest my case.

* * * *

And that’s about it from the Chula Vista Resort and Spa for now. We’re still accepting reservations, and we now offer special Friends and Family Rates that will be available for a limited time — like unto those TV ads for Dr. Ho’s Circulation Promoter and Pain Relief System.

Y’all take care of yourselves and stay safe out there. I’ve come to the conclusion that gardening is an apt metaphor for life. Plant a lots of seeds. Keep the weeds away. And water as needed.

When you look at that way, life isn’t away where near as complicated.

Time Passages

Remember when we were going to do that two week thing to flatten the curve? Whatever happened to that? Are we still doing that? Does anyone know which phase of COVID-19 we’re in now? Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?

There is some good news. We’ve made it to October. In quick succession Halloween, Thanksgiving, then Christmas will be upon us, And then we can say, Adios, motherfucker to 2020.

And hope that 2021 isn’t one of those years that says, Here, hold my beer…

* * * *

Time Passages is a song by the Scottish singer/songwriter Al Stewart. The song is story about a guy who starts daydreaming on a cold winter morning before he goes to his dead-end, boring-ass desk job or something.

I research a lots of things that end up in my blog posts. Seeing how I know next to nothing about Mr. Stewart, I decided to look him up. He apparently has quite an esteemed status among those in the music industry, which is something I never would have thought possible.

I have at least one of his CD’s. I consider his songs to be musically intricate, but mostly corny. And Time Passages is one of his corniest. But here’s the ironic part: Al agrees with me. Even he thinks this song is crap.

* * * *

Time, being relative — it has seemed to drag by at times this year. But not even COVID-19 can make time stop. Life has gone on, which is what it always does. One of my virtual friends in Canadia had a baby. It’s a girl! Thank God. She didn’t think she could handle a fourth boy.

A couple of my virtual female friends in the States are unexpectedly in relationships — something neither of them thought would ever happen again. I hope it works out well for them.

We’ve all gotten older this year, those of us that didn’t get dead. Three of my real friends have lost family members this year. My best friend from high school lost one of his sisters to suicide. My best friend from the Minneapolis VAMC lost his oldest son to an accidental drug overdose. My best friend who chronologically fell in between my other two best friends — his dad just died.

Those deaths are immense tragedies to my friends, and they’ve hit me hard as well. My heart rejoices, and breaks, just like it always has. Even in this very strange year, there are some things that haven’t changed.

* * * *

I find it hard to believe that we’ve been living in Mexico for only four years. It’s even more unreal when you consider that this is the year I had planned to retire. I originally thought I’d work until I was 65, but then I had to change my plans and retire at the age of 61.

Yeah, that was a real bummer…

Our time here somehow seems like it’s been much longer, almost like we’ve been here most of our lives. Maybe it’s because Einstein’s concept of SpaceTime is four dimensional… I’d expound on that further, except I have no idea what it means, and I’m not interested in doing that much research.

Likewise with our darlingpreshadorbs purebred Mexican street kit-tens.

Mika and Mollie. See? I told you they were cute

My lovely supermodel wife and I rescued them a little over two years ago, and we cannot imagine our lives without them now. They keep us entertained, and shower us with a lots of love and affection.

We adopted them just before we moved into the Chula Vista Resort and Spa, the spacious gringo mansion in which we currently reside. And it seems like we’ve been here longer than two years, too.

Our lease is coming up for renewal soon. We know we’re going to be able to renew our rental agreement, we just don’t know for how long. We know our landlord likes us because Lord Mark just upgraded the washer and dryer, bringing the laundry room into the 21st Century.

We’re also going to collaborate with him on getting the swimming pool repainted. I think Lord Mark had it done on the cheap just before we moved in, and it shows. We’re planning on doing a much more lasting fix this time around, one that will stand the test of time.

* * * *

Time. The country of my birth is obsessed with time. Everything must run like clockwork. Time is of the essence, and time is money. Life runs at a hurried pace. In fact, it’s a rat race, and races are always won by the person with the fastest time.

It’s possible that time is also important in Mexico, but I haven’t seen much evidence of it here in the Lakeside Area. We don’t live in a sophisticated urban area. We live in a little rural village up in the mountains. Here, time is much more of a whatever/whenever kind of a thing.

It’s been a bit of a readjustment for us, but all in all, it’s been a good reminder. There are actually very few things in life that are so urgent that they need to be done NOW.

* * * *

Time. Nothing escapes the passage of time. Everything is changed by it. I was young once. I had hair. I’m going to be 65 in December, and I can’t remember the last time I actually had to comb my hair.

With the passage of time, some pains are lessened. And others are only made worse. In terms of aging and growing older, the emotional pains I’ve carried around forever are starting to fade away, apparently so they can be replaced by the physical pains of no longer being young.

Waking up in the morning is usually a painful experience for me. Thanks to years of risk-taking behavior, I have two bad ankles, one bad shoulder, two hips that take turns having bad days, a bum knee, and a totally fucked up back.

I’m relieved that no one has videotaped my first steps in the morning. It’s an unattractive combination of an ambulating penguin and the rusty Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz.

_{See? I told you. And it’s my right knee, too}

In my opinion, it’s the worst part of getting old. I don’t know how this works for the rest of you who experience chronic pain, but when my pain level rises beyond more than usual, I am overwhelmed with nausea, which makes everything feel just a little bit worse.

I’ve lost at least 15 pounds since we moved here, and I wasn’t on a weight loss diet for any of that time. People tell me I look good for my age. I’m sure they mean it as a compliment, but from my point of view, I’m more of a pig that has learned how to apply lipstick.

* * * *

Time. I remember the days when time was a precious resource that had to be carefully monitored and managed. I used to be a registered nurse. There was never enough time to do all of the things you wanted to do in an eight hour shift.

Time is now a more or less mundane resource that I possess in abundance. My view of that might change as I grow closer to death. I spent the first third of my life trying to kill myself, the second third of my life wondering how I managed to survive, and now I’m finally learning how to live in peace with myself.

I’m going to guess that much like unto Socrates, I’ve spent a goodly amount of time examining my life. And after all of that introspection, I’ve come to two conclusions: One, I may have done a lots of things in my life, but one thing I didn’t do very well was take the time to actually enjoy it. And two, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to stop examining my life.

Seriously.

There are times when reviewing the videotape is a good thing. You can dissect your words and actions, analyze the outcome, and figure out what you can do differently to make improvements.

There are other times when reviewing the videotape will only highlight what a fucking idiot you were, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. All you can do is accept it, and be grateful that you are no longer that person.

I’m learning how to become that person. I haven’t been doing so great at it so far… I’ll probably get better at it as I becoming more practiced doing it. After all, it’s not golf.

* * * *

Time. It’s something you tend to have either too much of, or not enough of. It rarely seems to be measured out in perfect doses. The hardest part about writing this post has been knowing that I wasted so much time being wasted.

One of these days, probably right after I make peace with myself and my past, I’ll probably want to have some it back.

My Right Foot

For those of you who read my last post, I have an update. For those of you that didn’t, I had purchased a defective component for my stereo system and had been trying to get some sort of resolution of my problem through the Customer Support team at Best Buy®.

I had talked to a couple of the support people on the phone early in March, and while they were polite and friendly, they weren’t able to do anything to rectify my problem. So I sent several emails to the executive members of the Customer Support team. And nothing happened until March 10th when I received an email from one member of the Executive Resolution Team assuring me that I was a revered and extremely valuable customer. And then nothing happened. Again.

Yesterday, I sent another email to Best Buy®, and I finally contacted the one person I had initially resisted contacting.

Mr. Herbert Joly, the CEO.

I outlined all of my conversations with the Customer Support team, verbal and written, and asked Mr. Joly if he’d be kind enough to, you know, kind of light a small to medium sized fire under a few asses and get someone to do something to resolve my problem in a bit more timely manner, like, this year.

I told Mr. Joly that I had been a nurse, so I had a very basic understanding of customer service. I likened my experience with his company to having one of my patients ask me for a couple of Tylenol for pain, then me responding, “I’m sorry, revered and extremely valuable customer. If you could check back with me in six to eight months, I might be able to help you.”

This morning, I received a telephone call from Mr. Eleazar Kovalov, the guy who had assured me that I was revered and extremely valuable. He said that he was going to send me a refund check in the amount of $81.96. In his mind, it was the easiest, quickest resolution, and this thing had clearly been stretched out too long already. And he informed me that I would receive my check in ten days.

But wait, there’s more. My lovely supermodel wife’s boyfriend is coming here to visit at the end of April, and he’s going to bring me a new wireless rear speaker unit.

You can breathe easily once more, Jane. Balance has been restored to The Force, at least as far as this situation goes.

And one last thing. I sent another email to Mr. Joly thanking him for his assistance.

However, there always has to be something else that gets messed up, creating a different imbalance, otherwise my life would be perfect. It would appear there’s a plan in place to make sure that never happens.

* * * *

I’ve mentioned my affection for movies and music in previous posts. Little Known Fact About My Blog: many of the titles of the posts I write are also song or movie titles. Or at the very least, a play on words that reflects a song or movie title.

Coming up with a catchy title is the most critical part of the writing process. Well, it is for me. Suppose that Erich Maria Remarque wanted to write a sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front. He’d need another catchy title to grab his readers’ attention.

I’d suggest this: Still Pretty Quiet on the Western Front. 

Mr. Remarque will have to figure out the rest…

* * * *

Perhaps you’ve seen the movie, My Left Foot, 1989, Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s the story of Christy Brown. He was an Irishman born with cerebral palsy, and the only part of his body he could control was his left foot. About a week ago, my right foot started bothering me and it steadily got worse until it became the only part of my body that I couldn’t control.

I’m fairly used to having at least one part of my body bother me on a daily basis, so I wasn’t too concerned about my newest pain issue. It wasn’t too bad. Most of the time. Unless I was golfing.

Until yesterday.

I went to my weekly golf lesson with my buddy, Tom. By the way, my golf coaches are reasonably satisfied with the mechanical improvement in my swing. I still have a bunch of stuff to figure out, but as they say, it’s job security for them.

My golf lesson is a group lesson. A bunch of old, white gringos gather on the driving range and hit golf balls while Romero and Cesar critique our swings and stuff. Yesterday, I hit golf balls for about an hour. And that’s all I did. I didn’t practice putting. I didn’t run laps around the golf course, or do any push ups. To be honest, none of us do any of those things. Most of the old gringos hit golf balls, then go drink beer in the club house afterwards.

My right foot was aching on a medium-ish scale when I arrived at the golf course, but by the time I got home I could hardly place any weight on my wildly throbbing foot. On a scale of one to ten, my pain was a nine. It climbed to thirteen if I tried to walk.

I’m not a doctor. I’ve never even played one on TV, but I once was a very good nurse. So I decided to diagnose myself.

Okay. I need to document a couple of disclaimers. First, and foremost, do not try this at home. I am a highly trained healthcare professional with decades of experience at speaking very complex medical terminology.

Second, and secondmost, do not, under any circumstances, ever ask me to diagnose you. I’ll tell you that you have cancer.

Okay. Let us begin.

* * * *

Little Known Fact About Nurses: whenever something goes wrong with our bodies, we automatically assume the worst. We know all of the terrible things that can go wrong. Therefore, I immediately came to the conclusion that I had somehow stepped on a landmine.

Little Known Fact About Medical Diagnoses: finding the correct diagnosis can be a very complicated and tricksy thing. It’s basically a process of ruling out shit until only one thing can be ruled in. Unless there’s more than one thing…  Seeing how I hadn’t actually stepped on a landmine, it was easy to rule this out. The only thing about this diagnosis that was remotely accurate was it conveyed the level of pain I was in.

So I moved on to the next most probable scenario. I had stepped in a bear trap. Again, fairly easy to rule out because there aren’t any wild bears in Mexico, and even if there are, there aren’t any living in the Lakeside area, so there aren’t any bear traps to accidentally step in.

Trauma would certainly be a good cause of the pain I’ve been experiencing. But I’m pretty sure I’d remember injuring myself, and I have no recollection of doing anything to fold, spindle or otherwise mutilate my right foot.

Back when I was drinking myself to death, I would wake up in the morning with multiple areas that ached with pain. And the first thing that popped into my head was, Did I jump out of a car on the highway again?

Once I got through the impossible possibilities it was on to the less improbable possibilities.

* * * *

Gout.

Gout is a complex form of arthritis that can affect anyone, but is more common in older males. Like, well, me. It’s characterized by sudden, severe attacks of pain, swelling, redness and tenderness in the joints, often the joint at the base of the big toe.

It is precisely that part of my right foot that has been screaming in something like unto agony.

Gout occurs when urate crystals accumulate in your joints, causing inflammation and intense pain. Urate crystals can form when you have high levels of uric acid in your blood.

Okay. I just had a bunch of labs done last week, and none of my lab values were abnormal. While gout isn’t as ridiculous of a diagnosis as landmines or bear traps, it still doesn’t appear to be very probable.

If you’re experiencing a gout flare up, urate crystals accumulate in all of your joints, not just your big toe. I have varying degrees of arthritis in my back, shoulders and knees. And also in my hips, ankles and hands. Yet none of those joints are screaming in pain. The only thing that is gout-ish about my symptoms is the point of origin of my pain.

I might not be able to completely rule out gout, but neither can I completely rule it in. There’s a couple of more possibilities.

* * * *

Bunions.

A bunion is a bony bump that forms on the joint at the base of your big toe. It forms when your big toe pushes against your next toe, forcing the joint of your big toe to get bigger and stick out. Bunions can also hurt like hell.

Little Known Fact About My Right Foot: it has a bunion. It’s not a big bunion, and as far as I know it has never caused me this much discomfort before. So whatever it is that has gone wrong with my foot, it probably isn’t the bunion’s fault.

My right foot hurts almost as bad as my first kidney stone did, which made me think that maybe I was passing another kidney stone, except this one is leaving my body via the big toe on my right foot. As intriguing as this idea is, I drink a lots of water now, mostly because I never want to have another kidney stone. Even in my foot.

I’m pretty sure I can rule out my bunion. And a pedal/plantar renal calculus.

See? I told you I knew a lots of fancy-sounding words. And then I remembered something that sounds uber-fancy.

* * * *

Plantar Fasciitis.

Plantar fasciitis is one of the most common causes of foot pain. It involves an inflammation of a thick band of tissue that runs across the bottom of your foot and connects your heel bone to your toes, the plantar fascia. Hence, the name. Plantar fasciitis typically causes a stabbing pain in the bottom of your foot near the heel.

However, my heel is the only part of my right foot that doesn’t hurt. The rest of it fucking hurts like unto two goddamn hells. It feels like I’m walking on razor blades while dropping a bowling ball on my foot.

I have a very high pain tolerance, but this has been beyond my ability to effectively cope with, so I did what any logical guy in my position would do. I begged my lovely supermodel wife to amputate my right foot with my power miter saw. She said no, which wasn’t all that surprising. She would probably tell you that she spends one-third of her time saying no to things I suggest.

Perhaps A Little Known Fact About Plantar Fasciitis And Nurses: nurses are at a high risk level of developing plantar fasciitis because they spend long hours on their feet walking on hard surfaces. Several nurses I know have had it. Their descriptions of their symptoms are what made me think PF was the root cause of my aching foot.

Like unto almost every disease process, there are multiple factors involved in contracting and/or developing PF, and I have almost none of them. I don’t exercise. I sure as hell don’t run. I’m not obese. I’m not working as a nurse anymore. Still, there’s one possible indication that applies to me.

Shoes.

Wearing ill-fitting shoes can cause PF. I recently bought a new pair of Skechers® golf shoes. I absolutely love Skechers®. I have five pairs of their shoes. They’re the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever worn. That said, I’m not sure why I bought new golf shoes. I didn’t need them. I already have two pairs of golf shoes. My new shoes are a bright neon green. You need sunglasses just to look at them. I never buy stuff like unto that.

My new golf shoes are the most expensive shoes I’ve ever purchased, but they’re just a bit too big for my feets. My feets slip and slide, just a little, inside my new shoes when I’m walking downhill. Otherwise, I don’t really notice any issues with my golf shoes. Maybe, just maybe, they might have some culpability in the current status of my right foot.

And then there’s this: the recommended treatments for PF have made my right foot feel better. Rest. Ice packs. Motrin. Stretching exercises. Elevation.

Something I found interesting is one of treatments for plantar fasciitis is ESWT.  Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy. It’s what my urologist did to break up two of my kidney stones.

I’ll probably spend the next few days doing those things, minus the ESWT, and not much else. My right foot actually feels pretty decent right now. I hope it works. I’m going golfing on Sunday.

If the shoe fits…  In my case, it’s the opposite. At this point, I’m not sure I’ll ever wear my amazing Technicolor golf shoes again.

Perhaps A Little Known Fact About Me And Shoes: I rarely wear shoes around the house. I prefer being barefoot. So this makes the case against my flamboyant golf shoes that much stronger. My feet have been seen associating with them more than any of my other shoes.

* * * *

And there you have it. We have explored several possibilities. Some of them even made sense. What we ended up with is Non-traumatic Non-traditional Delayed Onset Pseudo-Goutal Plantar-Facio Bunionitis with Possible Idiopathic Displaced Renal Calculus Syndrome.

Ta-da!!!

If I had gone to see my doctor back in the States, that diagnosis would probably have cost me a few hundred dollars. In Mexico, it would’ve been seiscientos pesos. Roughly thirty bucks.

I love Mexico.

Does anyone want a pair of Technicolor golf shoes? Sunglasses not included.

The Myth of Aging Gracefully

Remember when you were a kid, and all you wanted to be was old? You know, like, eighteen, or twenty? Twenty-one was even better.

Old people had it made, right? No one told them to eat their vegetables, or clean their room, or when to go to bed.

Eventually we all got older, and we discovered adulthood isn’t anywhere near as much fun as it looks on the weekend. Being an adult is all about responsibilities. Get an education. Get a job. Make money, so you can pay bills. A whole lots of bills.

Adulthood is a prison. No one tells you this when you’re a kid, and if someone does, you don’t believe them. Just about the only good thing about being an adult is you can eat chocolate cake for breakfast if you want to, and no one can stop you. Given that fact, it’s a miracle any of us age gracefully.

I’m not sure I’ve ever done anything gracefully, so I’m probably the worst person to try to tackle this subject.

Aging, if you don’t know what that means, is simply the process of growing older and maturing. It doesn’t take any special talent. All you really have to do to grow older is not die young.

Like most young people, I didn’t give any thought about getting old. That was the furthest thing from my mind. You don’t ponder this question much when you’re young, mostly because you’re too busy having fun, and there’s nothing fun about getting old.

Don’t believe me? Ask an old person, they’ll tell you.

My generation is the most influential group of people in recent history. We invented Rock and Roll, Frisbees, Woodstock, and the Summer of Love. I’m not sure if Baby Boomers are the product of modern advertising, or if modern advertising is a byproduct of us, but we are certainly joined at the hip.

We were a rebellious bunch of long haired guys and gals who burned draft cards, bras and flags. We didn’t trust the Establishment. We questioned everything, and changed societal norms. In the process, we changed the world. And we were a worldwide phenomena. It was fun at the time, but now I’m not sure if all that change was good.

I’m not the only one of my generation who thinks that.

To say I was somewhat wild in my youth would be an understatement. I had a lots of undisciplined energy, a veritable ocean of anger inside of me looking for an outlet, and a short attention span. I still have a short attention span, but I no longer have a whole lots of energy, and my anger has burnt itself out. In their place I now have pain.

As Mickey Mantle once said, “If I knew I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.”

I was recently asked how I spend my days now that I’m retired. When I wake up, I spend a few minutes figuring out which day of the week it is. Then I take my morning meds. I drink a couple cups of coffee, and watch the news from Toronto. And I spend a couple of hours trying to figure out how I got that bruise, or what could I possibly have done to my shoulder?

The next thing I know is it’s 10:00 AM. Or 2:00 PM. If it’s 2:00, I take more meds. Around 5:30 PM, I eat dinner, either at home or at one of the hundreds of great restaurants in the Lakeside area. I read, or write, or take a nap while watching TV. Around 8:00 PM, I take more meds, and I’m probably in bed by 10:00.

Time actually flies by relatively quickly.

* * * *

Aches and pains are a given when you get old, and in my case, they are mostly directly correlated to stupid stuff I did back when I was young. After all, I did jump out of a speeding car on the highway once.

If you ever get really pissed off at me, and want to drop me in my tracks, kick me in the right knee. I will hit the ground so fast you’d think I’d died to death. I originally hurt my knee in the late Seventies, maybe early Eighties. One case of beer, one moving motorcycle, and one stationary car. Yeah, not the best combination. I reinjured my knee in 2005. And again in 2013. I can walk on it without any problems, most of the time. But if I bump into anything with that knee, I just about soil my pants.

My right ankle is equally touchy. I’ve blown that sucker up at least five times. My left shoulder has good days and bad days. I’ve never been able to figure out just what I did to my back, but it occasionally lets me know I must’ve done something to piss it off.

Some of my current aches and pains are related to injuries I sustained while I was a psych nurse. My jaw, for sure. My hands and wrists, possibly. It’s hard to pinpoint what happened to them exactly, mostly because so much has happened to them. And I was usually drunk when I injured them.

* * * *

My lovely supermodel wife and I have recently been going through the process of getting health insurance. Our insurance agent is a darling woman named Ava. Almost all of her clients are retired ex-pats from the US and Canada, so she helps organize seminars on living in Mexico to make our lives easier. One of the things she’s involved with now is the concept of aging gracefully.

She mentioned it in a conversation we had today. Those two words, aging gracefully, had been in my mind, and they were the impetus for this post, even though I have no idea how to do that.

And then it occurred to me that no one does. If you go to your first seminar on aging gracefully when you’re already old, you’ve kind of missed the boat. And I’m sure if I were to ask my friends in the Lakeside area they’d agree.

Yeah, I wish I’d started doing that about twenty years ago!

When you’re twenty, you think people in their forties are old. People in their fifties are really old. But by the time you reach forty, you develop an entirely different attitude. Forty isn’t that old! And seeing how you’re not old, you don’t need to think about aging gracefully for Christ’s sake!

And the next thing you know, you’re sixty. And then there’s no denying it anymore. Goddamnit! I’m old! How the hell did that happen?!?

I suppose it’s possible for some people to look graceful when they’re surprised, but it’s not something most of us can pull off. Most of us open our mouths really wide and just about jump out of our clothes. Some of us even scream like a little girl.

And if you examine this situation logically, growing old should be the last thing that surprises any of us because we are all going to get old if we live long enough, and we know that in advance. If you know something ahead of time, it’s pretty fucking hard to be surprised by it.

Have you ever watched a movie twice and been caught off guard by what happened? If so, I’m not sure you should have been allowed to grow old…

We’ve seen what happened to our parents. They were young once. According to them. And our friends. Have you seen Mary lately? My God, she looks so old! We scratch our heads and wonder how such a thing could happen, especially when we still look so young.

And yet…  It seemingly happens to all of us when it comes to this subject.

Yes, it’s true. We all get old eventually. And if my generation has any questions about this, all it has to do is look at the advertising geared for us. That’s right, sister. Those sensitive bladder leak undergarments, they’re talking to you.

And Generations X, Y and Z, you fuckers are next, so just sit down and shut up. We trained you not to trust anything either, but you can trust this. Maybe you guys can learn something from our mistakes, and take this to heart.

Aging gracefully is more of an attitude than anything else. If attitude is a component of success in life, and it most definitely is, that continues into retirement. And retirement is a whole lots more than simply not working for a living anymore.

Just as you made plans for your life when you were young, make plans for your retirement. Before you retire. It’ll make the transition look graceful, even if it isn’t. And remember, winning and losing aren’t important. Looking cool is. Goals aren’t as important once you retire, but you’re not going to stop having goals simply because you retire. If you don’t have any goals, you are going to have a lots of problems.

The one thing I hated the most about working was all the politics and drama and angst at the workplace. So take this bit of unsolicited advice: if you find your life is still filled with all that bullshit after you retire, you have totally failed. You might as well keep working.

If there’s any cohesive theme to what I’ve been saying, it might possibly be this: be nicer to yourself when you’re young. You’ll thank yourself later.