"...to cease upon the midnight with no pain." (Keats)

.....Robert Browning wrote, "...Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be." Well, I'm not too sure about that;in fact, if my current situation is "the best" then I am opposed to it. Shakespeare complains in 'The Comedy of Errors' "By misfortunes was my life prolonged to tell sad stories of my own mishaps." And this comment appears to contradict Mr.Browning. And considering my own current existence, I can offer a sad story of how I broke a hip for the second time in my life, and my own careless ineptitude is causing me unrelenting pain. Not just tickling pain; that is,Homeric pain. Now, so what can I do about this?  Not very much. I use the scooter to get around most places in this house. The renovation is very nearly complete--wooden floors everywhere except in the main bedroom. Makes it easier to scoot. Where the scooter can't get to, I resort to a walker, which I use with pain in the pelvis.  So, that's the situation. I plan to write Mr. Browning an email and if this is "...the best that's yet to be" and is already arrived it is a huge disappointment.


.....Since the arrival of old age along with accompanying medication is inexorable, let's get on with something else. Osama Bin Ladin, for example. Listening to some newscasters is becoming very confusing because they, themselves, are confused; they can't get the idea that 'Osama' is the terrorist and 'Obama' is the President. I am also confused by the fact that Navy Seals were employed for this mission to outsource this guy in an operation that was totally land based. And no one asked me where this guy could be hiding out. Took them nine years? Do these security men think that a millionaire would be hiding out in a cave!! Would you? No. Just like him, I'd build a beautiful hotel ringed with barbed wire, and I'd sleep with a different wife in a king sized bed every night while reading Playboy and all about Hugh Hefner and is baby wife.  Well, it's time for my oxycodone. 

Home? Give me a break. (I hate that word!)

Ah, So this is home? Everything here is maxed out complicated.  Tom, the genius constructionist; the man whose great, great grandfather,Michael Angelo must be the artist who supplied Tom's genes.  Tom is a true artist; he comes and goes as he sees fit--like a butterfly.  While Tom is flooring the apartment with wood, Rhoda is catering to my every need--and I do have a few of them.  Her genes certainly must come from Florence De Nightingale, so gifted is she as a caregiver.  She sees that my sox get on my feet, as needed; she lines up my medication from Sunday to Sunday, and I must have about 30 different pills of various shapes and colors.  When I take them at various times in the day, I haven't got a clue as to what they are supposed to cure in my aged body.  I am amazed that she knows which pill goes on which day and at which time.  I am a man who is blessed with two different walkers and a scooter.  I cannot manage to walker around Tom's machinations, so I use the scooter to get me through them more speedily.   Rhoda is truly exhausted--but I don't know what to do about it, except to do as much as possible for myself so as to take the burden from her.  

.....Well, now it has been decided that I wear an "Alert" button on my wrist and a lock box on the door.  The button will summon the emergency guys if something should happen to me while she's away, and the lock box will contain a combination lock to the door so that they won't have too use an axe to get into the apartment.  Whoopee.  Now I have to have someone holding my hand whenever I make a move.  So, I imagine all of this is good for Rhoda as well as it might be for me. The time may come when I can go back to using a cane.  Being home now is a lot better than being in Whitehall--the rehab facility.  Even the name "Whitehall" sounds Dickensian.  The first time someone came around to take my blood it was five in the morning.  I was awakened from a sound sleep.  I asked the nurse why 5am and she said "...it was on her schedule".  I told her to remove it from her schedule and come around 8am from then on.   And that was what was done.   

.....Then, strangely, an ANA came around at 4am and asked if I wanted a shower!  I asked her if she showered at that ungodly hour for waterworks.  I told her never again to bother me for showering at that Dickensonian hour!  And that was done.  I had to correct every ungodly procedure so that it served my benefit--not theirs.  After seven weeks, I managed to escape that institution and continued my rehab at home.  

This is adding insult to injuries...(Moore)

Good evening my dear friends, as you can surmise  by the disjointed colors of the text--I too am disjointed.  I went on holiday aboard the Oasis, a ship containing 5000 passengers, and I was the one who fell and broke his hip in four places.  What are the odds of that eventful hubris?  I was on a stool by a slot machine and I slipped while discharging myself, but only my hip was "discharged"!  I do hope that all my readers will return to this blog and receive some joy from this colorful text.  The first thing I saw in this rehab institution was a behemoth surging out of the mist who looked somewhat like the letter "B" (capitalized) Also this dreadnought (described in Job 40:15-24) was rather dark--end somewhat like the Dove chocolate ice cream pop.  I soon discovered that this colossus was of the female persuasion and one who spoke creole mingled with checkerboard English for which she seemed proud.  She greeted me with this strange unintelligible musical Caribbean language a word of which I could not comprehend.  She however continued to check out my vitals, after which I was assigned to a cell--pardon, a room.  I had a dear friend who was also roomed and I asked that I be quartered with him--and so I was.  And we both derived some cheer from the arrangement until he was discharged.  After he left I transfered to a solo room.  I did not care to speak to anyone under the dire circumstances.  I believe someone out there can imagine my mood of distress...and like Janus...relief .


.....After thinking about the letter B looking like someone who could get a job at Hooters or the Miami Dolphin's cheerleading squad I wondered how humans could communicate with the alphabet that existed a millennium ago and how they might be able to write this column.  The letter "A" could stand for a tent; the letter "b" could represent a pregnant woman; the letter "I" could stand for a skinny rabbi; and the letter "Y" could stand for a rosebush with one thorn. Thus my blog would read "Hey, be careful of those roses, there's a skinny rabbi wedding a pregnant woman in that tent."  

.....The food was vile, (not at the "wedding" in the tent")but I was fortunate enough to see a small "cafe" in the main lobby.  And so I existed on hot dogs with mustard and onions most of the time with a root beer float for dessert. When I had breakfast in my room I had the nurse trained to bring me a Maxwell House coffee bag, two Sweet & Lows, a dairy creamer, and two mallomars.


Well, there really is no place like home.