The Simple Stuff

Working until midnight and crashing in one of the production studios to sleep, I was barely asleep before it was time to get up to be on-air by 6 a.m. My workday ended at 12:15 p.m. but the wife had me run a chore for her; wash the car.

Simple little task.

Don’t bet on it! That turned into a real fiasco.

The wash I normally use used to allow customers to buy gas and a car wash at the pump. They stopped that practice and I ended up going to the bank to get cash.

At the first bank the ATM was out of money. I’ve never heard of such a thing!

It’s a money-operation and there’s no cash in the machine! Give me a friggin’ break.

So it’s off to the next closest bank.

The route is right through the stupidest drivers in the world. People with their left blinker lights on, moving right and cutting me off. Stuff like that.

But I got the money, I got the car washed and I got home in time. It is time for bed, I’m thinking.

NOT!

My bed has been pulled apart and the sheets are being washed. Bless my son’s God-mother, but I wish she would have had better timing.

The sheets are tumbling dry now and soon I’ll lay down. Sleep which seemed so far away is now so close.

Tomorrow morning when I roll out of bed at 3:30, I’ll probably not even remember all this.

It’ll be later in the morning that I think about how my day got twisted by a car wash request and an ATM and I’ll laugh at it.

No Fly Zone

My appointment at the VAMC went well. That is to say I didn’t have to stand around or sit around all that long to see my doctor. Nor did I get a ‘script change as I thought I was going to get, so no long wait at the pharmacy either.

Instead, I had to try and explain to my MD why I refuse to take commercial flights since September 2001. He thought it was out of some sort of phobia or something.

Not at all!

It took me nearly all of an hour to get him to understand that the decision to not fly in a purposeful choice. I based this choice on the actions of the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Safety Administration, as I have researched and learned of those two agencies screw ups over the years.

First, neither one target the correct people when it comes to searches. Grandma isn’t the threat and neither is the big busted blonde.

The profile is a younger male of dark complexion, well groomed and intelligent. I’m the whitest guy I know and I had to undergo a physical search.

Next are the things they call weapons or potential weapons. In my book my ball-point pen is more of a threat than the unbagged three-once bottle of shampoo.

They’ll take the shampoo and leave the pen. And have you ever seen how a woman’s high heel can pierce the skin?

Now they have the express system, where a person can undergo a background check and if they pass, they can jus’ by-pass the security lines. What a bunch of crap!

The background check is done by the FBI.

This is the same agency that allowed a woman to work for them in a classified position for nearly five years even though she a had fake marriage license and fake documentation to be in the U.S.  Boy, do I trust them to do the background check properly…not!

Yeah, I can go through the security check points and get on a passenger jet. It’s not a phobic reaction to the possibility of dying.

Instead I jus’ don’t want to go through a stupid procedure that only “creates” a “feeling” of public safety. This is MY choice and I don’t need any meds to help me with it.

My doctor still doesn’t fully understand what I am saying about all this. Instead, I ended up walking away — thinking of myself as obsessed with my need to be correct.

For the Want of Sleep

This has been a rough day.

The telephone kept ring and people kept knocking at the front door. Simply put, it was too busy around the house to sleep.

It started at 8:30 a.m. and the last call came in at 4 p.m. The last visitor at the front door was somewhere around 2 o’clock.

Thank goodness, but still too late to nap.

All I wanted was to lie down and sleep for a little longer; too take a nap before I had to put in my shift until midnight. Such is the life of a radio jock around Christmas time.

And I still want to lie down and sleep. Hopefully, things will be better come tomorrow—nope, wait, I have a friggin’ doctors appointment at the VAMC in the early morning.

I like to see my MD’s before they’ve had to deal with the onslaught of patients throughout the day.

It doesn’t help my exhaustion one bit now. That appointment was made over a month ago.

And as I think about it, I’ll probably get a change in my meds and that means waiting at the pharmacy for another hour. Oh, crap—the though leaves me even more exhausted.

At least I can laugh at myself and at the situation. I really thought I was helping myself by getting an early morning appointment.

Wrong. I will be back home by 1 a.m. and possibly asleep an hour later.

It’s the best I can do. With that, I am looking forward to whatever amount of sleep I can get.

Right now though, I have to refocus my energy and attention to the job at hand; re-writing and re-gurgitating the local news every hour. It’s all part of my life as a disc jockey.

Jus’ Snappin Broncs

Tossed wide my ol’ loop for that pony to wear.
And knew from his eye that I too must beware.
We dance back and forth as the dust flies thick.
And I know’d that he’s angry with each snort and each kick.

And jus’ when I figger I’m in for one helluva fight,
That’s when my wife chimes, “Honey, Good night!”
Well, I open my eyes with this wild looking stare.
I’m jus’ snappin’ broncs from my old easy chair!

Seperate and Independent

Today I was thinking about how much I miss going to church on Sunday and as things go, one thought rolled into the next and so forth, until I got to thinking about the first time I realized I was an independent person; separate from my parents and siblings. It’s a thought that had never before occurred to me.

It was my birthday 1975, early morning as I recall. I was laying on my right side, facing the wall, on the top bunk of the bed set I shared with my younger brother.

As I struggled to wake up, I looked at my left hand. As I looked at it, I noticed my little finger.

There was nothing wrong with the hand or my finger. Instead it looked more or less the same as it had the night before, so what made me notice it and why was it suddenly so interesting?

It was simply the fact that it had turned 15 years old, jus’ like me.

I was marveling at the idea that it had been with me all these years and I had never paid it much attention.

That led me to take notice of myself; my personality and my private thoughts. All the years before I had taken what others, such as my parents, teachers and friends thought and believed and made them a part of my own.

On that day, my fifteenth birthday, I came to realize I was as complete a person as God had designed me. Of everything that day–this is all I can remember about turning 15.

So this morning, as I thought about this and remembering how I felt, it occurred to me that God doesn’t need a church to teach us a lesson about ourselves. He’s a gentle preacher and I really enjoyed our sunrise chat.

It’s Not Cancer

The good news is that it ISN’T cancer!

For the last three weeks I’ve been sweating out this news and biting the bullet. I think I’ll get a pretty good night sleep from here on.

The blood in my stool, pain while urinating, and having to get up to pee several times a night and an elevated PSA test lead to the thought that it may have been prostate cancer.

And like all health issues there is a “but” involved.

Yet my doctors think I can overcome these issued with a little exercise and better eating habits. My blood pressure was higher than it has been in the last four years.

This is especially concerning for me since my father died of a stroke in July 1995. Jus’ after his death I underwent a lot of stress and saw my blood pressure rise dangerously high.

In essence my doctor back than said I was a walking stroke jus’ waiting to happen.

It was that scary message that caused me to get on the ball. I started eating more fruits and veggies.

I knocked off the salt and much of my coffee drinking, limiting myself to no more than two cups a day.

At the time I had four jobs that I worked at and two of them I could walk too as I only lived a couple of miles from either. And thats what I did—walked as much as I could, losing around 20 pounds in around three months.

Now, I’m planning to do the same thing. My doctors tell me that I’m at 33-percent body mass index, meaning I’m grossly overweight.

Yes–50 pounds is grossly overweight. My cholesterol is 40 points too high and my triglycerides are nearly 120 points over my target.

My plan is to walk 20-30 minutes everyday. Cut out the coffee, salt and snacks. And drink eight-plus glasses of water daily.

I am looking at a goal of losing 25 pounds by March 1st or roughly two pounds a week.