home improvement

Rage, Rage, at the Dying of the Light, and Please Let Me Go Suddenly…

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baby cradle

I wonder- sleeping? dead? doll?

There is something just not right, something incomplete and unfair, in an untimely death.

A good friend of ours, who claimed at one point to be an atheist, died Saturday night.  It was not a pretty death (if there is such a thing) nor was it a quick or painless death.  The poor man had dealt with cancer for the past four years- a bout of colon cancer that almost killed him back in 2010, and the stage 4 lung cancer he was diagnosed with back in April that finally spread throughout his body and slowly, painfully and agonizingly did him in.  To greatly summarize the gory story, this guy spent the past month jacked up on every narcotic known to man, and was almost always straight out of his mind due to the cancer spreading to his brain.  Nothing could quiet the unimaginable pain associated with cancer spreading like wildfire, not even the Tramadol and morphine and whatever other heavy duty drugs that the hospice people have at their disposal.   Cancer is a pretty shitty way to die by all accounts.  I don’t say that to trivialize his pain or the pain that his widow is still going through and reliving all those horrors, but words just can’t paint an accurate enough picture.  I pray to God that I don’t die that way, and that I would be spared the awful reality of being a primary caretaker of a loved one dying that way, because I don’t have that kind of courage or strength.

Since everyone has to die, I could only ask to go the way my maternal grandmother did- suddenly, via a massive stroke that took her from walking, talking and being completely normal to being pretty much dead as a doornail in an instant.  It really sucked for the rest of the family, but it actually gives me some peace knowing that she didn’t linger around and suffer for months or years, slowly and painfully deteriorating until she was unrecognizable.

Stephen King said it in his book Pet Sematary: Sometimes dead is better.

pet sematary

I am not in any hurry to take the Dirt Nap- nor am I in any hurry for anyone else I care about to bite the big one either- but I still have a really hard time with suffering, and watching people sort of fade and melt away before my eyes.

Maybe that’s what that whole “mid-life crisis” thing is- understanding that personal mortality is about more than just the Dirt Nap- it’s the little bites of decay and loss and downhill slide of entropy that we endure every day.  Things like the realization that my eyes don’t adjust to close vision when I have my glasses on, or that the people I went to high school with look like my Dad’s friends- and that a good number of my Dad’s friends are dead.

The places are either gone or drastically changed, and that’s not even been from the distant past.  I usually don’t have too many reasons to go downtown- save for the paper nightie appointment once a year- because I go to a different primary care Dr. and his office isn’t downtown.  Yesterday I decided to take my granddaughter to the art museum (which I must recommend, as they have lots of fun stuff for kids) and I was amazed on the way down High St. to take her back home at observing the OSU campus.  At least temporarily, campus has been de-skankified and yuppiefied almost beyond recognition.   I think they’re trying to overcome their reputation of being the Midwest’s #1 school to get robbed and raped.  Good luck with that.  Especially on the night of the Michigan game.  Leave your car- and yourself- at home.  Watch the game, if you must, on TV.

Of course, campus gets a makeover about once every 20 years.  It will take about a year or so for the current renovations to get trashed, and when you think it can’t get any nastier, some builders come in with bulldozers, raze most of it, and start again.

Maybe that’s what’s going on with me.  I could use a renovation.

renovation

Home improvement is nowhere to be found in my box of talents.  Believe that.

I would like to expand my education- not necessarily in a formal way, because, sadly, most so-called institutions of learning are all about the almighty dollar and/or all about filling young people’s heads with socialist/globalist garbage.  Even poor Steve-o had to take two courses that I believed were total politically correct garbage- one course in “cultural sensitivity” and another on “our global economy.”  The first course mostly informed him that as a white male he is/was responsible for all of the evils in the world today, from inequality in the workplace to global warming (both concepts are crocks of crap, IMO.)  The second was supposed to be on economics but it ended up being a formalized diatribe on how industrialized nations are victimizing tribal peoples in third world holes, and how we should bury our cars and wipe with reusable cloths.  That would have been sort of funny, except that his major was automotive science. 

I think I will embark upon a self-directed expansion of knowledge, even though I know that my biases will play into that.  It’s no worse than a tech school requiring my son to take courses in BS to graduate.

When Is Panic the Appropriate Response?, Views of the Macabre, and Wake-Up Songs

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Perhaps as a person who has dealt with PTSD, major depression, and panic attacks, it would be helpful for me to know when panic is the appropriate response.  I have been known to vascillate from near catatonia and total apathy to going postal over a popcorn fart.  One thing that I have noticed after being on Prozac for the past six years, is that my reactions seem to be a lot more “middle of the road.”  I don’t freak out easily and for no apparent reason like I used to when I had panic attacks on a regular basis, but I don’t go into total apathy mode either.  I do notice and still care about all the things that are screwed up in my particular dystopia, but not to the point of losing sleep or climbing the walls.  This is a good thing, I think, unless I should be freaking out and just don’t realize it.

Jerry freaks out about the grass.  I don’t know if all middle-aged to elderly men have a thing about having a perfect lawn and freaking out if you don’t, but Jerry sure as hell has a lawn fetish.   He always thinks the grass needs mowed, especially if he can see any dandelions.  Personally, I like dandelions.  They are nature’s way of giving lawn freaks like Jerry the finger.  There are limits to what you can do with grass.  Our lawn is not a golf course.  There’s a bus stop in front of our house, so a lot of the time, as they wait on the bus, the freakazoids from the drunk and domestic apartments behind the body shop are tossing their cig packs, drinkie cups and various other detritus in the front yard.  I swear I picked up- with the shovel- a trucker bomb in the front yard the other day.  So as long as the height of the plant life in the front yard is compliant with city ordinances, I wouldn’t be too paranoid about it.  The back yard is the dogs’ shitter.  Do they care if they shit in dandelions?  Probably not.  George Carlin once asked (in reference to cats, but same principle) how many gourmets lick their asses.  How many dogs really care about the quality of the greenery they’re dropping a deuce in?

Thankfully, yesterday, when he finally moved out of Tipsy McNumbnuts mode, Jerry decided to call his half-brother Ray Earl (oh, the joy of redneck names!) who repairs lawn mowers, to see if he would take a look at the one he trashed.  In the meanwhile, he managed to start one of the beat up old mowers he buys at yard sales to sell on Craig’s List, and he did quite fine last night mowing the grass with it.   Since he was sober and acting like he actually had half a brain for once, I decided to be nice and pick up all the visible dog shit in the back yard for him.  That was partially for my own benefit, because he always seems to either step in it (and then, of course, he will traipse it through the house so I get to clean it up off his shoes and the floors) or it gets mulched in the mower, so you step out the door and it smells like shit.  Neither alternative is pleasant, but  I was overjoyed to be spared a field trip through the seventh circle of hell with him in Sears or Home Depot.  Scooping up shit is not nearly as bad as following Jerry around in Home Depot.

I am not much of a shopper, especially for a woman.  I dislike crowds, and generally avoid stores altogether if I can buy what I want online.  But home improvement stores are Jerry’s equivalent of DSW (Designer Shoe Warehouse- one of the hugest shoe stores in the Midwest-with locations all over beautiful Central Ohio.)  Jerry can spend hours looking at building supplies and tools and chain saws and trimmers and mowers and all the various crud available at home improvement stores for hours on end.  I find gawking at that stuff insanely boring unless I need a particular item to do a particular job, then I get what I need and get out.  It usually smells like fertilizer or paint in those places, and I really don’t want to linger. I don’t think I could spend as long in DSW as Jerry spends on his forays to Home Depot.   Ideally he would go to the home improvement store with Bob- they both know what they are after, they both like to gawk at things like varnish and caulk, and I don’t have a freaking clue.

I do try not to be one of those old geezers who bitch about really stupid things.  I don’t want to end up like the old bitty that lived across from Mom and Dad who complained about kids “stealing her snow.”  She was dead for four months before anyone realized it.  Her kids never bothered to visit her, and everyone who lived in the neighborhood avoided her because she was constantly calling the cops on everyone.  I don’t want to become so petty that I end up calling the cops over dogs barking or loud exhausts.  Usually I only bother law enforcement if there’s something dangerous going on, like people shooting off shotguns, or there’s a drunk guy passed out in the drunk and domestic apartments’ parking lot when it’s 20 degrees out, and he’ll freeze to death if nobody retrieves him.

I figure cops have better things to do than to hassle people about dogs barking or to give the young punks fits about the ass-nasty rap music they like to blare through their sub-woofers.  I’m not saying I like it when people let their dogs bark incessantly or when anyone plays rap music, but I’m sure I do things to annoy people too.   

Jerry got an interesting piece of junk mail yesterday- from a cemetery up in Lewis Center (a small town about 25 miles out) extolling the beauty (and quoting pricing and payment plans) of having your very own pre-paid grave plot! 

I hate to say it but I find such a thing a bit macabre.  It’s one thing to realize you eventually might need one, and go trolling for grave plots on your own, but it seems just a bit morbid for a cemetery to be sending out flyers with the ValPak coupons. 

I am planning on being cremated if for no other reasons than to save money and space.  I should consider buying my urn ahead of time. 

If I leave it up to Steve-o I’ll end up spending eternity either flushed down the toilet, or in an old Folger’s can that Steve-o will eventually mistake for an ashtray.

I am going to have to compile my CD of  “Songs to Wake Jerry Up” for use when he’s hungover because he was partying like a rockstar the night before.

Here’s a preliminary list:

“Stars and Stripes Forever” – John Philip Sousa (this is a wake-up classic!)

Ren and Stimpy’s “Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy” song

“Shiny Happy People”- REM (it can be a just plain annoying song)

“Dixie Highway”- Journey

“Rock and Roll”- Led Zeppelin

“Crazy Train”- Black Sabbath

“Bastille Day”- Rush

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”- Nirvana

“For Whom the Bell Tolls”- Metallica

I could have fun with this collection.  I will have to troll my MP3 collection tonight and see what I can find. 

Something tells me I really don’t want to know.  After Steve-o did the 7/8″ earrings in his earlobes, I didn’t have the courage to ask him what else he has pierced.  Some things are TMI, even for me.

How Not to Get My Attention, aka: (Drunken) Aggressive-Aggressive Revenge

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Ok, so I will remove the kid gloves and vent like I mean it.  And I do. 

Last night I had to take the HK Yaris over to the local Toyota dealer for a minor warranty issue.  The right headlight was getting some condensation between the layers of plastic in the lens and housing- a common concern here in Central Ohio Swampland, especially evident during Monsoon season.  I saw more than enough of these when I worked in dealerships, so when I saw the condensation building up in that lamp I figured I’d best address it right away, since it is a warranty issue.  It’s hard for any vehicle manufacturer to construct a lamp assembly of any type that can remain water-tight in a place that gets the rainfall we do here.  It wasn’t a major deal, but that’s one of the reasons why cars have warranties.  While their techie is milking the gravy train (.7 of an hour to R&R a headlight assembly isn’t bad, when an experienced tech can do it in 5-10 minutes, or about .2 hours) changing out my headlight, I sat and chilled out and played a few solitaire games on the DS. 

Hanging out in the waiting room (or “customer lounge” as they call it) was tolerable except for the TV was on the same lame-ass news loop the whole time I was there, and there was some foreign dude who looked like he was from a terrorist harboring country yapping on his cell phone in some unintelligible gibberish.  I’m sure it was a real language, but I have no clue what it was.  German, French or Spanish, I know enough to get slapped- and can understand a word or phrase here and there.  This was some language I had no clue what it was but it reminded me of the noises cats make when they mate.  It might make sense to cats, who knows?

How do I know if he was giving his terrorist buddies the latitude and longitude of the Toyota dealer so they could bomb the place?  Or, he could have been doing what Steve-o does when he converses with his German-speaking friends- mocking those around him.  I can picture that pretty easily.

“Dude, there is this old cougar, who looks sort of like a weird, ill-proportioned troll, sitting over here playing solitaire on a DS.  Man, this is lame!”

I continue to play solitaire and say to myself this guy is harmless and he’s just mocking me to his buddy over in where ever it is that they speak the cat mating language.  So I get my headlight changed out, free of terrorist incidents, to my relief, and I go home.

I knew I was in for an evening from hell when I came home and the dogs were in their crates.  That could only mean one thing- Jerry’s at the hell hole…after swearing up and down he wouldn’t renew his membership there, but of course, he did.  Nice. Not unexpected, though.  I was born at night, but not last night.  I knew he was lying out his ass when he said he was not going to renew.

Not more than three minutes after I get in the door, Tipsy McNumbnuts staggers in.  He insists that he has to mow the grass tonight.  At the same time he is insisting that he is going to need a new lawn mower because the old one probably won’t start.  I should have known at that point to do anything to keep him away from anything involving gasoline, machinery or sharp things.  Then he goes on and on how he needs me to help him mow the grass.

Excuse me?  How in the hell I am I supposed to “help” you mow the grass?  That’s the one thing I’m not doing.  If you want me to mow grass, then consider doing your own laundry, cooking your own meals, getting your own scripts, putting your own crap on E-bay, (wiping your own ass…) the list goes on and on. 

Apparently what he wanted me to do was follow him around while he mowed the grass.  I have absolutely no idea why.

I think he wanted a new lawn mower (and there wasn’t a thing wrong with the old one, until he trashed it.)  But I think he wanted to get my attention, get a new lawn mower,  AND be able to somehow blame me for the old one’s demise.

I stayed outside long enough for him to start the mower up- and it fired up and ran beautifully.  I figured my work outside was done, so I could go in and at least attempt to fix something for dinner.  Yeah.

About five minutes later he comes storming in the back door screaming that I broke the lawn mower.  Granted, he was pretty damned drunk, but I couldn’t see how I could have broke the mower if I was in the kitchen washing dishes. 

Apparently, because I wasn’t watching him, (???) he ran over the metal rod that has been in the yard forever and ever, that he knows about, and jammed the motor completely.  It is officially FUBARed.  Now, I am the first one to accept blame where it is due, but it seems to me that the drunken operator of the mower might have had a lot more to do with its final catastrophic failure.  I will also add that this is a self-propelled push mower, not a rider mower.  Ohio is so weird about DUI that the cops can bust you for drunken mowing– if you’re on a rider mower.  They can bust you on a motorized bar stool too.  This actually happened to some redneck in Newark.  So technically (as far as I know,) drunken mowing is legal- as long as it’s a push mower, and you’re not driving it.

Ingenious, yes, but still motorized, and you do ride it. 

If there is some sort of ordinance against drunken mowing with a push mower, I’d like to know about it for future reference.

Tonight I get to go with Cap’n Happy to procure another lawn mower- at his expense of course.  If he thinks I’m buying him a new lawn mower to reward his wanton trashing of a perfectly good one, he has another thing coming.  If I were to buy him a mower, which I won’t, I would buy him one of these little beauties:

I don’t see how he could destroy this one unless he ran over it with the truck or something.  I am not looking forward to clomping through Sears, Lowes or wherever he decides to go trolling for deals on mowers.  Not at all.

This little foray into home improvement hell with the biggest drama queen on the planet ought to be as much fun as a dental cleaning, a pelvic exam, and a full body wax- all at once.

I might buy him dinner if he behaves– at White Castle.  Mmmm, sliders….