Getting Old Again . . . Still

Hey, did I tell you . . . I am getting old(er). Yeah, seems like every day I get/feel a little bit older. Part of it is this back sciatic nerve thingie. Yeah, I thought maybe it was going away, cuz it seemed to ease for a couple of days. But then it came back again   . . . maybe not with the same fierceness, but a lingering pain nonetheless.  But even beyond that daily pain, there is a lingering thing about being old. Somehow I just feel differently about my life, each day. And yes, there is this thing about reading the paper or listening to a radio report about some dude or dudette who just passed on. And they often say, conclusively, He/she was 85, as though that is the explanation. And I’m sitting there thinking, “Hell, he was younger than me”.

And then I find myself thinking about an old friend, maybe someone I knew in India. Yeah, of the 8 people who served there with me during the mid-60’s, four are still alive, one has passed on and two are just lost—I have no idea about them.  And that was nearly 60 years ago. So, yeah, I think about them often.  Part of this lingering thought pattern is that I no longer work for a living. So, I don’t have this preoccupation with a job. Now, I awaken, and my next job, after showering is to turn on the computers, and then go make a nice cappuccino for me and my bride.  And then, hey, it’s almost noon, time for an espresso and a small piece of chocolate.

And then, hey it’s time to Wine On and Dine On.

And so life goes on. Now Carol still makes quilts for little sick kids at the Jeff Gordon Children’s Hospital. She and her crew of women, still create quilted, knitted and crocheted blankets for the kids. The hospital loves them, because they make sick kids feel a little bit better.  And so Carol goes on.  Oh, and she is also responsible for keeping me alive by creating wondrous meals every day. Amazing really. Almost 68 years together and she continues to amaze me with her cooking creativity.

While me? Well, I occasionally do what I’m doing here, and write some drivel just to demonstrate that I haven’t yet croaked.  Now, until a little while ago, I also used to pretend I was an artist. Yeah, I created something called Digital Art. What’s that you say? Well, I have this camera thingie and I use it to take pictures. Then I fool with the resulting images until I have something that folks might call “ART”. And what is “ART” you might ask? Well, “ART” is what I call a picture, after I get finished fooling around with it.  See, here’s a picture I converted into “ART”, after I snapped it inside my camera, and then played with it.

So, “ART” literally is in the eye of the creator, not to mention the Beholder.  But, in any case, I don’t do such things any longer. No, our local Arts Council used to sponsor these things they called Art Walks. They would find a nice empty indoor space right downtown (mostly an empty Bank office space) and make that space available for local artists. We would pay them $25 and gain access to a space and a modest table on which to display our art. But then the empty office spaces were lost to new ventures and so the Arts Council was reduced to offering a space outside on the street. And so I at least decided that Art Walk days were now over, and so my artsy phase ceased.

So, now my days are reduced to wondering who is still alive in my little world.  Now I still take pictures of naturey things, and “publish” them on Facebook, but art it ain’t.  See, in part, Art is a creation of a somebody that might be sold to another somebody. The exchange of money makes the object “ART” officially.

And so my aging life continues day by day. And each day, I am aware that my life continues through sheer luck. Each day is a new gift to me , I guess from my mom, no longer with us. She passed on these genes that comprise my body. So, thanks Mom. As usual, you did good.

Continue you LIFE thingie. Each day might be boring for some, but it opens the possibility of something new and vastly more interesting.  You never know, do you? Age on Richard, Age on. 100 is out there somewhere. So go get it.

Passwords & Life

 I finally just completed two days of struggling to regain my access to my e-mail system under Spectrum and Outlook.  Something happened to my ability to “send” e-mails from Outlook, and then it all went downhill from there. I got onto Chat with Spectrum and as we were beginning to conclude, suddenly the chat session ended, but not before a message flashed onto the screen, something about how some Spectrum technical change had caused a problem with e-mail that seemed to reflect what happened to mine. But then, I continued to have no access to my e-mail. It kept asking for my password, which I was unable to provide, because the Tekkie had changed it just before we lost contact.  When I tried to change it via their system, it kept asking me for both the new password, and my MAC ID. I looked on the Spectrum modem for the MAC ID, thought I recorded it, but that failed to work. So, then I was stuck without a valid password. Therefore, I also had no access to my e-mail.

Passwords are becoming the bane of my existence. It seems I need to change a password every time I turn around.  I had settled on a nice new one a while ago, and suddenly I was unable to use that one—it was an oldie, don’t you know.

But why do we use passwords on everything?  Well, because there are crooks all around us. Apparently America is filled with con men. Well, maybe the whole world is filled with con men, following Donald Trump’s lead.  I mean, if it’s ok for the President of the United States to be a con man, then why not everybody?

And so, we use passwords for everything. And we periodically have to change our passwords, don’t you know?  I mean, wouldn’t do to keep that same old thing, cuz the con men of the world will soon discover our passwords, and then we’re screwed.

So, get out your table of random letters and numbers folks, and get on with this password juggling game.

And speaking of con men, what is our ex-president up to lately? Well, he was asserting that he was going to be arrested on Tuesday, and he was urging his MAGAHead violence crowd to repeat their January 6^th actions and protest peacefully, like they did on January 6^th. But nobody else seemed to know anything about this supposed arrest. He really is amazing. He continues this game of conning the American people, urging them to do evil things, and then pretending he had nothing to do with any of it.  And his gangbangers continue to love him. I keep wondering whether this is what happens when the head of some Italian Mafia crew gets into trouble.  Does he escape the same way? Do Mafia bosses ever go to jail, or only their underlings?  Well, No, some mob bosses, Al Capone, John Gotti, Lucky Luciano all served time in Federal prisons, mostly as a result of the RICO Act.  But Trump, maybe because he served as the World’s Greatest Mob boss (President of the US), has avoided prison. He does seem to be creeping closer and closer, however.  Makes me kind of wish Alcatraz was still open.  Or maybe we should send him down to Guantanamo.  Hey that would be nice, huh?  Then his MAGAHeads would have to go down there and face the US military to spread their hate.

OK, go for it dudes.

Life and Pain

So, I awakened on a Saturday morning 1 ½ weeks ago, to a seemingly normal day.  But then as I began the day, I noticed suddenly a new pain. My left back, down by my hip, in that sciatic nerve area, suddenly began throwing pain down my leg from the hip area. Odd, I thought. It’s almost as though someone just flipped a switch. “OK, turn on the pain. It’s his turn to hurt”.  I mean, I know I’m old. 88 years is old by anyone’s definition. But, c’mon folks, I was just as old on Friday when I went to bed. What the hell is going on? I mean, I didn’t fall. I know, Falling is really bad when you’re my age. But I didn’t do that. I just went to bed and woke up with this new pain thing. Now, to be fair, On Friday, I did go to work out at the gym, as usual on Fridays. Then we went shopping at Trader Joe’s. Then what? We came home, put away the groceries and got on with our usual Friday. So I hadn’t tried to lift 400 pounds, or run on the treadmill. Nope. The workout was my usual one—ya’know, boring but a classic old dude’s workout routine.  So, maybe this is Life?  You go along normally and then one day, suddenly life is no longer “normal”.  And then what? It ends? So, this is how it ends? No, that’s crap.

OK, so now I have to go get an MRI. I went for an X-Ray, but it showed nothing beyond the fact that, yeah I’m old.  So, we will have to see what, if anything this MRI thingie shows. They tried “prescribing” some exercises for me, but they seem about as useless as teats on a boar.  See, the central problem is that the docs really did not know what was causing the problem, so they were forced to guess at some ameliorative solution.  Hopefully, after the MRI, we will have actual diagnostic data—a picture of what is actually wrong.

So, we now await that picture.  But maybe I am getting a preliminary picture of life as an old dude. Ya know. Shit happens, and then . . . well then you try to make believe nothing happened. Happily, we have some pretty fine medical practitioners at work trying to help me deduce what happened. Still, I think maybe the Old Guy has begun beckoning. We’ll see.

And in the meantime, I remain hopeful that Tucker Carlson and that Gang of thieves at The Fox Republican Mafia will continue demonstrating to the American people that, deep down, they, directed by Rupert, are actually Anti-American. Well, technically, we know Rupert is. But now we know for sure that the Foxies and all their republican friends are also ANTI-AMERICAN.  So, welcome to our new world folks.

I will yell out and about whenever I discover what is actually wrong with me. Meanwhile, I will limp along as best I can.