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April 12, 2017 · 3:03 pm

Triple Down Bummers Now Come in Grape Flavor

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You heard me right. Grape flavor. Specifically sour grape flavor.

I put my family on an airplane today to go be with my oldest son while he has surgery.

I get to stay home with the family dog because my back is hurting so fiercely from weather and arthritis that I can’t possibly spend hours on a plane.

So, sour grapes.

You know the Aesop’s Fable about the fox and the grapes?

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The fox, seeing the luscious grapes, tries to leap and get the grapes. He is hungry for the grapes. Ravenous for the grapes. But no matter how hard he tries, he cannot reach the grapes with his snapping jaws.

He buys a trampoline from Acme. But it sproings him over the tree and into the river on the other side… where there are alligators. (Yeah, I exaggerate here… but in my life there always seem to be alligators.) He still can’t get the grapes.

So then he goes to Home Depot and buys a chainsaw to cut down the tree. But when he tries to rev up the chainsaw he realizes… he’s a fox. He doesn’t have hands. He has paws. He can’t work the chainsaw. And on top of that, his credit card is denied because he’s a fox and his job only pays in dead mice and rabbits, and chainsaws cost money, not mice. So Home Depot sent a Sheriff’s Deputy to arrest him for stealing the chainsaw. And it turns out that in spite of consumer complaints, Home Depot has signed a huge chainsaw deal with Acme, so the chainsaw explodes because he tried to start it with fox paws. And as he is flying through the air from the explosion towards the river with alligators… he realizes… grapes don’t grow on trees. There has to be something wrong with those grapes. They must be sour.

Now, this is exactly the way Aesop told the story. Believe me. It really, really sucks to be a fox and not be able to get what you want in life.

This surgery is a big thing. But it is not life threatening. My son will be fine. My family will be able to go places and do stuff while they visit and entertain him. It is like an extra family vacation. His grandmother (my mother) and his aunt (my sister) have both had the same surgery for the same reason. They both came through it and came out cured. But the problem is most likely genetic. So, not only do I not get to go and be with my family on this trip, the bummer reason for the trip is genetically probably my fault. Yep, there are alligators in that danged old river.

I get these benefits only from the sour grapes; I get a lonely week to recover from alligator bites for myself, and I definitely have something to write about for today.

More Powerful than a Locomotive

There is an old saying… “What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger.”

I have an addendum to add… “If what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, then I must be Superman!”

Lying here now in pain after having surgery this morning, that is exactly what I have been telling myself. No more Kryptonite today, thank you.

I may have mentioned before on this blog that I have six incurable diseases and am a cancer survivor since 1983. (If I haven’t mentioned it before, then it was only because I mistook complaining loudly and relentlessly about it for mentioning.) I have arthritis, diabetes, COPD, hypertension, psoriasis, and benign prostatic hyperplasia. Two of those diseases ganged up on me recently. I had a sebaceous cyst on my lower back that had gotten infected because psoriasis had flaked skin off the top of it until there was an ulcerated infected hole there and it caused me enough pain to prevent sleeping. (I know you didn’t really want to know about that… but. then, neither did I).

I got the thing surgically excised (whacked off with scalpel and scissors) and had the hole sewn back together with a few butterfly Band Aids slapped on the top. I had been given a topical anesthetic that deadened the nerves while I was being carved up, but wears off shortly after and then all the pain that has been saved up comes rushing back to fill the void. The doctor said I could take aspirin, but I have a big bottle of Aleve next to the bed for arthritis, and my body is so used to the medicine that I might just as easily have taken a sugar pill for the same effect. (Of course then my diabetes would come knocking on my brain.) So, I am in pain.

But less than an hour after surgery, I had to go in to the counselor’s office at school and discuss for 45 minutes the life-and-death future consequences of the schooling of one of three kids. It is no kind of chicken barbecue or country fair to have to explain to a school official everything you have been doing to solve the life-or-death problem for the kiddo while pain medication is wearing off and anesthetic is wearing off and patience is wearing off and mental acuity is disappearing faster than a rabbit-man can teach irony to middle-schoolers…. wait, what? Perhaps I should rest now and let the medicine do its work.

Naw, can’t do that. I’m Superman.