May 22, 2013 by Jim

Recovery is in Color

Recovery is in Color.

Recovery is in Color

A few weeks ago I was talking with one of my sons. Our conversations are often bizarre and their esoteric nature is borne by our strange subject choices and the contexts that we put them in, this one was no exception. I’m not sure how we started talking about what we did, but it was interesting. The focus was on things we thought that were true when we were young that turned out to not be true. And, as usual, I had no idea that it would end where it did. A subtle reminder to me that recovery is in color.

I opened with a story my Mom used to tell me. She said that when I was about four years old she took me to Boston for one of my many doctor’s appointments. While we were walking in to the Children’s Hospital we walked past an African/American as we passed I looked up at my Mom and said “Mom look, that man is green.” She says she turned red and forced me to quickly move along. She said she was very embarrassed. I never remembered it happening.

Continue reading →

April 2, 2013 by Jim

Anger, It’s What’s For Dinner

Preparing my dinner tonight I suddenly found myself slamming the cabinets and fridge and doing the same with my plates and utensils. It wasn’t hard enough to break or hurt anything, but it was hard enough to stand out as abnormal and slightly abhorrent behavior. There was anger brewing and I didn’t know why. Once I ate I stopped to think about it for a while.

I was home alone all day. Left behind by my parents and siblings just before Christmas….. oh wait that was a movie. I was left home alone all day and I talked to no one, not even on the phone. I actually had no interaction with any beings, human or otherwise, so what was with my little hissy fit. Or, simply, where the hell did that come from?

Confused About Anger or Angered By Confusion?

I couldn’t come up with an easy answer so I decided to learn a little about what anger actually is. Turning to the Merriam-Webster’s student dictionary I found this simple definition: A strong feeling of displeasure and usually of opposition toward someone or something. Which clarified absolutely nothing for me.

I mean my own personal experience is that often, I don’t even need someone or something to become angry, such as tonight. There definitely is more than that to my anger, but what? In something identified as Webster’s 1913, which I don’t know if that’s the year of the dictionary or the amount of times they tried to define anger, it says anger is a strong passion or emotion of displeasure or antagonism, excited by a real or supposed injury or insult to one’s self or others, or by the intent to do such injury. Continue reading →

March 17, 2013 by Jim

Blog and Roll

Writers Block?

I have put off making a new blog post. I have waited until I felt I had something good to write or say, something that others would find interesting, and what I have found is if I continue waiting until I have something intelligent to share I may never write again. So I have decided it is time to blog and roll.

What do I mean by blog and roll? I mean I am going to start writing and hope that even though I may not think what I am writing is worthy of posting, someone may find it interesting. It’s not like anyone is paying to read this stuff. Matter of fact I am making a money back guarantee, if you read any of my blog entries and aren’t completely satisfied in any way I will give you back double what you paid blogfreemaine.com to read it.

Medical Update

If you have read some of my earlier posts you know that I deal with several health concerns. You can read a basic outline about me here. Two months ago I started on Lyrica to help calm the neuropathic pain that makes my feet feel like burning pin cushions filled with broken bones. My heart condition limits how much pain medication I can take so the hope was Lyrica would help.

Lyrica is an anti convulsant medication also used to help with neuropathic pain. You can learn more about it here. As the Wikipedia article says pregabalin, Lyrica’s generic name, is a more potent successor to gabapentin. I have already tried gabapentin and another medicine from that family, that I don’t remember the name of, to help with the pain. Both medicines beat the hell out of me and left me crumpled and crying in a corner, which I didn’t feel was an improvement. Continue reading →

February 27, 2013 by Jim

Ouch! I Cut My Thumb, Part II, The whole story, Heart Attack and All

I am not sure how to do this. Two days ago during a beautiful stormy winter day here in Maine I kept busy through the day doing my normal chores as prescribed by my lovely wife Lela. I was nearing the end of my day, winding down, and I started out to prepare dinner. The first thing I attempted was to cut up some potatoes and before I was half way through the first spud I sliced into my thumb. I wasn’t having a heart attack, just bleeding.

No big deal, but since I take a blood thinner I couldn’t get it to stop bleeding. I suddenly found myself one-handed and in no mood to cook supper so I sat down and started this post. As happens with many of my posts once I began writing the story developed a life of its own and before I concluded it I ran out of steam, for two nights running now, and it’s getting late tonight.

I’m going to blame my inability to climax the story on my blood loss, which is embarrassing. Now that I’ve replenished my supplies of iron and am once again clear-headed I am ready to go all the way.

Thanks to a comment from my friend Mike, whom I haven’t seen for way too long a time, I realized that I had published my uncompleted story. While I was writing it I thought I was saving my draft and would be able to complete it today without anyone knowing the difference, unfortunately at some point I hit publish instead of save. I type bad enough with two hands so I’m not surprised that happened while I was typing with one, especially with the short arms I have. Mike will understand what I mean. Continue reading →

February 24, 2013 by Jim

Ouch! I Cut My Thumb, %^&*(^%()

I wasn’t even thinking of posting today, but sometimes plans change. It seems I have some free time on my hands due to a simple kitchen mishap with my favorite chefs knife. While cutting up some potatoes for a bit of delicious oven baked home fries I slipped and sliced a little into my thumb.

No big deal, a small cut. Unfortunately I take rat poison as prescribed by my doctor. Rat poison you think? How preposterous? Not so fast my medically disinclined friends. I like several million others who deal with hearts that just can’t get their rhythm right are prescribed warfarin sodium, the generic name of Coumadine. It’s the same ingredient used in many rat poisons that work on the premise that if you get a rat to eat enough his blood will get so thin it will bleed to death. Now you can feel bad for that particular rat, but there are few enemies of humans that have killed as many as rats have. Continue reading →

February 23, 2013 by Jim

No Flushing Please

Flushless toilet with the old flush button locked up for safe keeping at a local hospital.

I had a doctor’s appointment last Thursday at a local hospital. I recently started swelling up like a beached whale due to fluid retention. It’s amazing that if I eat too much salt, drink too much water, and exercise too much my heart failure almost immediately starts becoming congestive heart failure, just like they told me it would. Who would ‘a’ thought?

So I went in for this appointment that was actually with a nurse practitioner that specializes in heart failure. On my way to the office I stopped in one of the hospitals bathrooms to try to shed as much fluid and ounces as I could before they evaluated me. It amused me that they had done an environmentally and financially intelligent thing by installing a flushless toilet and then didn’t know what to do with the old toilet’s flush button. So they locked it up. Beuracricies come up with some of the coolest fixes.

More silly thoughts. When I got home I had some medical surveys to do and a pharmacy survey that could win me $100.00. I was dismayed filling both in when I had to enter my birth year. I started right at the top and now I have to scroll down to find my year. My year doesn’t even show up on the page without scrolling. On the pharmacy survey I am much closer to the bottom than the top. Do they put it in that order because as you get older you’re getting closer to being put in the ground? Continue reading →

February 22, 2013 by Jim

Oh Brother, There Art Thou

Growing up my brother and I struggled to stay in the same room together without World War III breaking out. When I was younger I never understood the struggles we had with each other. We grew up in a nice middle class neighborhood and never wanted for anything or maybe I should say all our needs were met, I still had the wants real bad.

One benefit of my ungraceful aging is that over time I have gained some comprehension into the dynamics that were at work as my brother and I grew up. This insight is from my perspective only and my brother may run from my babblings like Pac-Man runs from his non blinking multi colored ghosts. Growing up my brother and I didn’t just fight each other, we both fought birth defects. His are his own business and if you are curious you can ask him yourself by calling 1-800-get-a-life.

Mine is my business and I don’t mind sharing them with you to help quench your thirst for useless knowledge. I was born with multiple holes in my heart along with other cardiac abnormalities that, during my fifty years, have disappeared, reappeared, or transformed into several differing diagnosis in a magical dance that probably will only be cleared up by a heart transplant or autopsy, and yes I have a preference for which method they use for this discovery. Continue reading →

February 8, 2013 by Jim

Shopping For Sobriety

In my last post, Twas The Night Before Super Bowl, I wrote how friendly all the people in the stores were the day before the Super Bowl. It’s the NFL’s version of a Black Friday shopping holiday and I expected nerves to be a little frayed. I was pleasantly surprised that everyone was cheerful and upbeat even after the Patriots crushed the dreams of us New Englander’s once again. 2004 seems so long ago, maybe they could have spread those three Super Bowl victories out a little. I know we aren’t the only fans disappointed when we don’t win the Super Bowl but if Brady and company want to keep setting those high expectations then we’ll keep resenting them every year they don’t win.

Yesterday I was back out in the grocery stores. This time it was the day before a predicted one foot or more snow storm. I didn’t go in with any expectations. I really didn’t put much thought in to it. So I was surprised at what a stressful experience it ended up being. I was continually cut off by fierce cart wielding patrons and people chatting in the aisles couldn’t be bothered to move. Little old ladies were driving their shopping carts like they were competing in the Daytona 500 and their Social Security check was dependent on their victory.

The people chatting weren’t sharing recipes and anecdotes about their grand kids, they were complaining about fuel oil prices, their kids wanting to move home even though they have kids of their own, and how impolite the deli clerk was because she kept serving people by number even though they had stood there way longer. By the time I left I was exhausted and my stress level probably set off a few Geiger counters. Continue reading →

February 2, 2013 by Jim

Twas The Night Before Super Bowl

Twas the night before the Super Bowl and all th Harbaugh Bowl rough the house this Patriots fan kept repeating Bah Harbaugh. On a personal note my name is Jim and I have a brother named John and I can’t even imagine what it would be like to coach against him in the Super Bowl. Mainly because my football knowledge comes from game announcers and some serious Madden games with my 10-year-old nephew.

I do enjoy the Super Bowl a lot more when the Patriots are in it. First because I’m a fan, but, more importantly, my wife and I own a sports pub in Maine. The extra revenue generated by Boston sports teams going deep into the post season is to be cherished and spent wisely. Sorry dear, I meant saved wisely.

Yesterday and today I spent much time in three different grocery stores, not because I needed anything, but because I wanted stuff. Not a frugal way to shop, but as I mentioned, tomorrow is the Super Bowl,….so there’s that.

I was surprised at the civility in the stores. Everyone was in a good mood. The cashiers were friendly and people in the isles were polite and didn’t take up whole aisles picking out the right salsa for their whole grain, organic, virgin tortilla chips. Continue reading →

January 31, 2013 by Jim

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition: A Stiff Read

Fond Mammories

Today I was reading the latest Time magazine. My favorite part is the column Joel Stein writes that is near the back of the magazine. He is the funniest magazine columnist I have read in a long time and this post has nothing to do with him.

What it has to do with is that when I turned the magazine over I was pleasantly surprised that there was a full paged picture of a female swimsuit model on it advertising this years Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Which will be on shelves some time in February. I’ll probably get one; just for the articles of course.

This made me think of how captivated I was by Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions when I was 13, 14, 15, 16…..well you get the idea. I spent a lot of quality time with those models and fixated on them from the time I first learned how to take off my own swimsuit. When we were kids it was the closest thing my buddies and I had to a Playboy or Penthouse.

This story really isn’t about a swimsuit magazine either. It has something to do with my lack of reaction to this picture of a beautiful woman. I didn’t have a sudden overwhelming want to be with her or a sudden wish to be home alone for at least three minutes and no longer than an hour so there’d be no blistering. I appreciated how pretty the girl was, but, with my aging, addled brain, my second first thought was why would a girl demean herself like that? My first third thought was where’d that thought come from? But my concern was she was using her overflowing beauty to make it in the world, when I can tell from the picture that she is a highly educated and intelligent person. Continue reading →

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