Don't Turn Around, There'll Just be Something Else to Do

Rustin' away in Retirementville, ain't that what somebody said once upon a time. Sippin' Margaritas on the patio between golf rounds is how some pictured these golden years of reward and relaxation from the decades of workin' for the man. Or maybe just lazin' your way through the days, no hassles, no schedule, no deadlines, no commitments.

I guess there are people who do one or more of those things, but this seasoned citizen seemed to be passed over in that rustin' in the rockin' chair scenario. I haven't been on a golf course in a couple decades now and I gave up the Margaritas and their alcoholic kin and I sure ain't sittin' and rockin'. Seems lately there is always somethin' and if I turn about there is just somethin' else.

We're tryin' to cobble this old house back together before we're that poor odd couple in the dilapidated

death trap down the road, hoarding old newspapers to the ceiling while surrounded by cats. It ain't easy goin' into old age without money, but you do what you can to keep things goin' when you get a little windfall. Nonetheless it turns your live topsy turvy  when you got all your furniture in the middle of the floor cause you are patchin' and paintin' and you got vendors poppin' in every other hour estimatin' or fixin' or measurein' what comes next.

Of course, I'm tryin' to keep up my relationship with the Little Woman in betwixt all this hubbub, cause you don't just set a marriage aside when the calendar fills up. Plus I got obligations to my church that continue and you don't stick them on a back shelf either. I mean, normal life has to go on even during the abnormal.

Then come the health issues, because you just don't ripen' with age, you begin to spoil a bit and if you don't tend to that you begin to rot. This body part don't work like it use to and that body part is touched with pain and somethin' else got spots on it or is bent wrong or just plain looks weird. Just as the difficulties of last year, with the search for nursing homes and then the death of my parents was winding down, and as this gettin' our life and house cleaned up started, I got clobbered by the bad health stick.

I've been relatively healthy in my life. I had a bad patch back in the 'nineties when my thyroid went a little crazy on me and had to be killed, but since then I've not had much illness. I've had psoriasis since a child and it is pretty extensive, and with it has come psoriatic arthritis, and there in lies the rub. I've had bouts with pain, I mean don't you-dare-even-breath-on-me pain, at times over the last 15 years, but it comes, it hurts and it goes away for a while. You live with it. But since Match this year it hasn't been so livable.

I got up one day in March with the gonna-scream-any-minute pain grippin' my left wrist. I've had this type before, mostly in my feet and ocassionally in the knees, but it was new to my left wrist. I quickly learned just how much I depended on that left hand that I never took note of before. But mostly I was thinkin' about the pain and poppin' those aspirin like crazy. I could bought out Bayer's inventory and it probably wouldn't have helped. There was a chain of thorns dug deep into that wrist and it just kept goin' into a second week before letting up at all. I still get pain there if I bend that wrist too far.

But it did let go and I felt maybe old Mr. Arthor Itis will not knock on my bones for a while. Of course, somethin' else came along, most likely a result of all those aspirin I was chuggin'. Happened like this: I came home from easting out with my wife and I went into the bathroom to (as they say) relieve myself. As I was I felt dizzy, I mean, hurry up and empty blatter because I am goin' faint dizzy. I had to sit down on the bathroom floor before I could go back to the living room.

The next day I had an ache about my middle and figured I was gettin' a touch of the stomach flu. I had heard it was goin' around and I guessed it was my turn. I'd just have to take it easy. Palm Sunday I went to church actually feelin' better,  but when I came home I was very tired and fell asleep on the sofa.

But then this is the stuff of another post, if somethin' else doesn't sneak up upon me before I get to it.