Shingles

Could it be the Lard? Said the Spider to the Candle Fly.

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Who knew the shingles could be such a great diet aid. The day before they hit I stood on my scales and commented out loud to myself and the spider creating the web above the back door, “You better be careful, your weight has been creeping up. You are about five pounds above where you want to be…need to be.” The spider ignored me and continued “casting” her web.

That was a month ago and I no longer am concerned about being five pounds too heavy. Now I’m worried about having lost twelve pounds without trying. The spider doesn’t seem to be too concerned although the candle fly joining her in the web seems genuinely frightened to death. Why am I thinking of a spider in female terms? Anyway….

Because of my weight loss and the reinvigorated appetite coinciding with the passing of the shingles, I decided to go on a quest, the holiest of quest. No, I am not joining Percival questing for the Holy Grail, my quest involves gaining four or five pounds using flour, cream, baking powder and …well there is my problem. My quest is to create a biscuit just like my grandmother made; tall “catheads” with a break midway, buttery crisp on the outside, yet moist, light and fluffy on the inside. I’ve tried cold butter ala Bobby Flay, both shortening and butter from Paula Dean and all I have to show for my efforts is a net gain of two pounds. They were good biscuits, worth the two pounds gained, especially the peppered version by Flay, but it’s still not quite right.

It’s my fault. I should have pressed my grandmother for her recipe earlier before she had entered the twilight of her mind. When I finally asked for her recipe, the best she could give me were her dry ingredients and a statement, “When it all comes together it will feel right.” I remember my father saying something similar about love. It took me a while to get that right but I have actually been more successful with my quest for love than my quest for the perfect biscuit…wait, I am no longer questing for love…well, I guess its love for a biscuit.

Well, Miss Spider, what do you think? More silence and for some reason, the candle fly has ceased her struggles.

My mind has been playing around with a thought…the one I’ve tried to ignore. Could it have been lard? Epic pork fat at one hundred and thirty percent of your daily fat requirements in one serving. And if I add a little sausage or sawmill gravy…I’m a dead man. What do you think spider? Could it be the lard?

My quest might be for the impossible. Did Percival ever find the Grail? Okay, yes and no, depending on which version you read. Maybe I have created a standard in my mind that will be impossible to find or meet…well, I still have five or six pounds to play with before I must give up my quest.

Okay, spider…what did you do with the candle fly?

“Looking for answers to questions that bothered him so” For more musings and other stuff from Don Miller, check his author’s page at https://goo.gl/pL9bpP

IT’S THE WHAT?

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The face looking back at me from the mirror is almost unrecognizable. Tiger Wood’s most recent mug shot is a glamorous compared to what I see. I wish I could blame it on poor lighting…OR A MONTH-LONG BINGE. Gray and strained, my watery and bloodshot eyes belie the fact I rested a full eight hours…rested? I slept for a full eight hours, awakening not to relieve my bladder but from strange dreams. Every hour and a half I awoke to wonder…where did they, the dreams and the people in them, come from and why do they haunt me so? As I contemplated my dreams I fell into another dream tossed slumber only to awaken and begin the process over again. A bizarre “Groundhog Day?”

The dreams are surreal. Picasso and Dali would be pleased. They are in technicolor with disjointed bits of brilliant color reminding me of light shining through a broken kaleidoscope…or maybe an LSD driven trip. Nothing quite fits, they are not nightmares, simply the misfiring’s of a troubled brain. People from my past involved in situations from my past…but situations they had no part in during the waking hours when the friends and situations were real.

I have had nine months of personal hell. Drugs and muscle relaxers to “NOT” relieve sciatica pain, antibiotics that have not cured a sinus infection and the resulting salivary gland infection. Then the shingles on top of it all. More drugs, some are “self-prescribed” for my own self-medication…none very effective. I try to tell myself it could be worse. It could be chemo or radiation…it could be “knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door.” It is still my own personal hell and everything is relative including “death by a thousand paper cuts.”

The blisters are healing but the pain is still there, radiating from around my right eye to the forehead and scalp above. Every night when I attempt to sleep the fiery pain is an unwanted bed partner and every morning when I awake it’s there to remind me of the day to come. My scalp seems to want to crawl off my skull.

How can I be so tired, I slept for eight hours? The dreams, it must be the dreams. I haven’t exercised in a month; my back yard is on its way to becoming unreclaimable. An hour and a half of garden weed pulling left me spent and trembling. I struggle to my recliner. I grow tired from contemplating it. At least when I doze during the day there are no dreams…sometimes.

I have weened myself off the drugs. The steroids and Valtrex have run their course along with the antibiotics. I fear my addictive self even though I doubt Alka Seltzer Cold Plus is addictive. I also wonder why it seems only a cold medication takes the edge off the pain when the called for Advil doesn’t remotely affect it? I have leftover hydrocodone from…I don’t remember. It is a good thing to have leftover hydrocodone I guess but I know it’s there… behind the closed counter drawer… calling to me late into the day. So far, I have not heeded the siren’s call…so far.

The shingles. How innocent they sound. I survived a heart attack, walking through a glass door, a chainsaw to the face…and a thousand paper cuts. I thought I was so tough. I would not wish this on my worst enemy.

For stories or essays of better days take a little time and go to Don Miller’s Author Page at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B018IT38GM