Aging

“Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard”

/ cigarman501 / 4 Comments

“My daddy says that when you do somethin’ to distract you from your worstest fears, it’s like whistlin’ past the graveyard. You know, making a racket to keep the scaredness and the ghosts away. He says that’s how we get by sometimes. But it’s not weak, like hidin’…it’s strong. It means you’re able to go on.” ― Susan Crandall, Whistling Past the Graveyard

I am doing a lot of whistling past graveyards… to act or talk as if one is relaxed and not afraid when one is afraid or nervous. I’m not sure I’m afraid or nervous, but I am aware…too aware…of the passage of time. Aware that the sands left in the hourglass are dwindling…so maybe there is a little fear and nervousness.

I’ve lost three childhood idols in the past week. Bill Russell, Nichole Nichols, and Vin Scully. I knew none of them personally, but their passing brought pain and a sense of loss, and worse, introspection. Introspection…something I try to avoid.

I’m at an age when I cannot deny my own mortality, but I don’t like thinking about it.

Many of us think we are going to somehow outrun the Grim Reaper but as my best friend says too often, “We ain’t getting out of here alive.” The image of the Grim Reaper in my rear-view mirror has grown closer as I have grown slower. Still, attempting to outrun the Grim Reaper seems to be an effective way to live my life no matter my age and beats waiting around for the scythe to reap me.

Age…I’m at an age that I cannot deny I’ve lost a step or five. First thing in the morning I’m a bit unsteady. I no longer hop out of the bed anticipating the day, I ease out and try and sneak up on it.

When I meet up with old farts, I compare the way they look or move. Compared to many of my contemporaries I’m in fairly decent shape and I could beat them all in a five-yard sprint. With that and a nickel I can buy a piece of bubble gum. I remember when I could buy five pieces of Bazooka for a penny. Why does everyone my age look so old and who is that guy in the mirror?

Life is good but there are the pains that go with a lifetime of normal abuse, and I think mine might lean toward abnormal. Too many repetitive athletic endeavors have ruined my joints, too much fried food has clogged my arteries, too many cigars and brown liquor has addled my mind. I should have taken Billy Noonan’s quote more to heart, “If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”

When someone dies, known or unknown, I tend to compare ages. Well, old Bill was eighty-nine, he was seventeen years older than me. Seventeen years…that’s a long time. I still have time. Then I look back and I realize the past seventeen years have passed in the blink of an eye. I also realize, I’m not guaranteed any time other than what I have with this breath. No amount of whistling past the graveyard will change that.

I’m not afraid of dying. I admit I’m afraid of dying badly, I hope I don’t long for death to come. Dying in the arms of a passionate woman might be the best way to go.

I believe there is “something” after death. Science says energy and mass can be neither created nor destroyed, they can only be changed. I believe conservation of energy will transcend death…or is that more whistling past the graveyard? Is that in a closed system?

Whistling or not, I’ve made plans. My will has been made and I ‘ve requested a gathering of friends, a gathering I intend to attend…even if it is as a small pile of ash. A bottle of Gentleman Jack will be cracked open, toasts made to the dearly departed and funny stories told at my expense. When the bottle is empty, I have instructed my bride to transfer my ashes to the bottle and place them in a cool location. I fear I may need a cool place as I ride through eternity.

More Whistling past the graveyard with Jimmy Buffett.

For more of Don Miller’s “Corny” pone, https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR3mOJBeCIdYFmtmjd13NuoyUMu5KPAYDTwo_9yA_jnZ2oftvitbyBMjllY

🎶 Time to turn so you don’t burn! 🎶

/ cigarman501 / 3 Comments

“During this heatwave, please remember to dress for the body you have, not the body you want.”                – Unknown

There was a time when I lived for the sun and joined in with the sunbathing crowd. In high school it might have been the old swimmin’ hole or the pool in Fort Mill or Springs Park…Springmaid Beach on vacation.

Later there was the green grass known as Cromer Beach at Newberry College next to the women’s dorm or Macedonia Beach near the church with the same name on Lake Murry. The local radio station would periodically issue a burn alert accompanied by the ding of an oven timer.

The aroma of Coppertone was heavy in the air. The smell of nubile, young women in bathing suits laying around the pool, rendering in Johnson’s Baby Oil or some coconut butter “tanning lotion”. Young men cannon balling off the diving board trying to get the attention of that certain someone.

There is something about the scent of Coppertone that brings back memories. A black two piece on a deeply tanned, dark-haired senior coed who took pity on a tongue-tied Sophomore one Sunday at Macedonia Beach. Epic.

The Coppertone Girl and Puppy

Now it is about the smell of burning flesh as I have another batch of cancer cells cut from my body and the incision cauterized. “Be sure your sins will find you out.” There will be a time when you must “pay the piper.” When it comes to the sun, I have been found out and the piper continues to insist upon his “cut”.

Now it is more about sitting around the pool under a massive umbrella covered in SP100 with the smell of BBQ rendering in its own fat. Ribs or butts being prepared by someone else. If I have my “druthers” I sit inside in the air conditioning swilling a gin and tonic or Meyer’s Dark Rum and tonic, with a twist of lime…a beer will do but I must get my dose of citrus.

Covered in sunscreen Blogspot.com

I’ve become the old fart who pontificates about the good old days. Stories embellished from a lifetime mired in the past. The nubile young hanging on my every word are neither as nubile nor young as I remember.

To quote Buffett…again, “One day soon I’ll be a grandpa. All the pretty girls will call me, “Sir”. Now where they’re asking me how things are, soon they’ll ask me how things were.” I hate to tell you Jimmy, we’ve both reached that milepost…and it is in our rear-view mirror.

In addition to losing the skin encasing my body, I don’t sweat well. At any temperature above seventy-five my sweat glands work like Niagara Falls after the spring snow melt. I don’t glisten like a Southern Belle; I gush and continue to gush well after I quit my activity.

Photo by Fabio Pelegrino on Pexels.com

I didn’t notice it so much during my younger days. I guess I was too intent on the young females in skimpy bathing suits. I did notice it in the hay, corn, and cotton fields of my youth but then there were no girls about to distract me. There was no scent of Coppertone to inhale, just the scent of “Ode de Don” as certain areas became yeasty with the heat generated from my effort.

I was reminded of this, this past weekend. My walking friend was out of town, and I decided to do our weekly walk without him. During my days running before my knees let me down, Saturdays were what I called LSD runs…you had to be tripping to do them…especially in the summer. No, LSD stood for long, slow distance. For me, during those days of yesteryear, it was usually a ten miler. Now, in real time, it is a five miler, walking.

Due to so much uncluttered time with no one to talk to, I was forced to do something I rarely do…think.  What I thought about was how thankful I was to be on the trail this beautiful if humid morning. What made me more thankful were the large numbers of people who appeared to be, like me, refugees from a geriatric ward. 

These were “seasoned” men and women who were trying to outride, outrun, or out walk the grim reaper.  I was particularly motivated by the much older couple who strolled up the slight incline using walking canes while holding hands.  There was a young man who came screaming up the incline on his low-slung hand powered bicycle, useless legs just along for the ride.  AMAZING AND MOTIVATING!

I want to apologize to the three older men I met.  Not for what I thought or said, but for the fact my jaw went slack and agape when I saw the large expanse of white skin and hair from their shirtless bodies.  Guys, I know it was hot and humid, but you should not run without a shirt. In fact, anything you might do without a shirt should be privately contained.  “Guys, I apologize for my facial expression, but you looked like three very pale Mr. Potato Heads.“

My tee shirt had gained about a pound of sweat, but I would never take it off in a public place…not even at a pool. I am in fairly good shape…for my age…but have reached the age that I now try to sneak up on mirrors when naked or partially naked. 

From Pinterest.com

Despite all the bicep curls I do; my arms are sticklike.  Pushups can’t keep my chest from falling into my stomach, sit ups and planks can’t keep my stomach from collapsing into my rear, and I don’t know where my rear is going. I guess into my feet because they are still growing.

My years of sunbathing, waiting for the transistor radio to alert me when to turn are over. So are my ten-mile LSD runs. I still reserve the right to ogle ladies in swimsuits and spandex. The cute little girl, probably thirty plus, who ran by me, her ponytail bouncing, was like a chocolate dessert. She smiled sweetly as she sprinted by, and I watched in appreciation of the female form. It is okay to look if I don’t touch. I would be like an old dog chasing a car. If I caught it, I wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway.

Jimmy Buffett’s ode to aging. “Nothing But a Breeze.”

Don Miller writes at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR3U6N5NmXWSwpqgCTf-ex4Akj7DmVnUX6kcaN6hEyBC-iHxGtJMeKQrMz0

Aging Gracelessly Redux…. 

/ cigarman501 / 5 Comments

 

Oh,  I’m feelin’ it this mornin’, the morning after my weekly visit with Hawk.  Five miles on the Swamp Rabbit, solving all the world’s problems before enjoying an after-walk cup of coffee at the Tree House.  That’s just in case it’s been a problematic week and we need more time to solve those problems.  Lately, they’ve all been problematic, and no one listens to us anyway…well, they listen to us at the Tree House and that’s one of the reasons we keep going.  They think we are the bee’s knees.

Yeah, I’m feelin’ it as in feeling old, very old.

I do about twenty-five miles of walking during the week hoping to put distance between myself and the ominous figure caring the old-fashioned scythe.  Despite my best efforts, the distance between us is shortening.  As Hawk continues to tell me, “We ain’t gettin’ out of this alive.”  No, but I’m going out kicking and screaming…just like he is.  I want to be a burden on my child and grandchildren for a long time.

Hawkday Friday is the only day of the week I set an alarm and it throws my whole system out of whack.  Aging creates creatures of habit, I guess.  I am so out of sorts waiting for the Big Ben to go off.  “Did I remember to wind it?” Am I the only guy who must get up two hours ahead of time to make sure all systems “are a go?”  Friday mornings my “systems” always send out messages.  “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” 

I take my wife a cup of coffee at five-thirty because she is as crazy as I am and invariably, she mutters, “I don’t know why in the “firetruck” y’all can’t walk at a decent hour.”  I don’t know either except that it is easier to deal with my own disfunction than Hawk’s.  “And besides, you went to high school with him and learned similar dysfunctions.” He wants to walk at six to keep away from the sun and just because. I want to walk at seven-thirty to get into the sun and just because.  Opposites do attract.

So, I’m up at three-thirty and feeling like a dead man.  I had trouble falling asleep.  Late at one end of the day, early at the other makes for a grumbly old guy.  I could blame Hawk’s goofiness but to be honest, it’s just as much mine.  “How long before the alarm goes off?”

Who lays awake worrying about lying awake?  I do, that’s who.  When my bladder drives me out of bed in the middle of the night I worry about when the alarm is going off.  “Don’t look at your watch, you’ll only worry about going back to sleep.  Don’t look I said.  You’re a dumbass, you looked.  Jeez, I gotta get up in an hour.”  I might as well get up now, all I’m going to do is worry about having to get up.  Jeez, forty-five minutes, thirty minutes, etc. and finally I fall back to sleep…thirty seconds before the alarm goes off.

I feel as though I have been beaten.  My aging body has become an alien thing…as alien as Ripley’s Alien Queen and just as nasty at times.  An ever-changing sack of tiny aches and pains, a “thousand little paper cuts” kind of agony.  Nothing major, just my sagging bag of bones letting me know what I did yesterday, maybe the day before, maybe the hit I took in a football game fifty years ago.

Once I jumped out of bed in anticipation of the day to come, now I ease-out, one toe at a time, hoping I don’t pull something before my feet hit the floor.

Sagging bag of bones…. Did you know besides your hair and nails, your nose and ears are the only body parts that continue to grow as you age?  I don’t mean stretch as in sag…that’s kind of funny looking.  It would be funnier if it was someone else. Damn you gravity.

I mean body parts that actually continue to increase in size.  God must have a twisted sense of humor.  If I live long enough, I’m gonna look like a caricature of Ross Perot…according to the mirror, I already do.  A truly loving God would have given me hope in another area and a reason to get rid of my big ole four by four.

Every morning I wake up as the dark-headed, dark bearded young man of forty years ago.  I walk into the bathroom and yell in my head, “Don’t look in the mirror.  Don’t do it!  Boo, you looked.”  The vision in my head is a mirage, replaced by the image in the harsh light of the mirror.  An old guy with a bigger nose and ears than last night, with less hair and more wrinkles turning into crevasses.

Still, as Hawk and I discussed, we are better off than a lot of our peers.  We’re still mobile, hostile, agile…and delusional.  Youth is a state of mind and we are still in diapers…or are heading back to diapers?  We still have a childlike wonder about the world.  We still wonder what we are going to do when we grow up.

I’m a gluten for punishment and out of habit I walk again this morning.  I walk alone with my earbuds until I meet a pretty blond runner, her long ponytail bouncing, blue eyes twinkling.  For a moment I remember being thirty.  As I continue my walk, we pass each other three more times.

Finally, I ask, “How far are you going today?”

A big smile followed, “I’m doing eleven.”

I shook my head and returned her smile, “I remember those days, long runs on Saturdays.”

“How far are you walking?”

“Near five.”  She smiled, gave me a thumbs up and shouted “Great job” before continuing on her way.

My heart melted a bit and I thought, “You know your knees feel pretty good.  Maybe a little running next week. Maybe if I’m careful I can do a marathon by the time I grow up.”  I don’t know, I’m sure a nap will cure those thoughts.

For the clarification of those who don’t live in the area:

The Swamp Rabbit Trail is a fitness trail that runs from above Travelers Rest, SC through Greenville, SC.  It was named after and follows the route of a short spur railway once called The Swamp Rabbit.

The Tree House is the Tree House Cafe and Studio, which sits next to the Swamp Rabbit Trail in Travelers Rest.  Great coffee, sandwiches, great service, and great company.

Don Miller writes on various subjects, non-fictional and fictional, and can be found at  https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM.

Lena Christenson, Don Miller’s feminine pen, has released a new book, Dark Tempest, a suspenseful romance with a hint of the erotic.  Lena can found at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07B6BDD19

The image, Old Man Loves Smoking Cigars, is by Greg Cartmell and may be purchased at https://gregcartmell.com/product/old-man-loves-smoking-cigars/

…For Your Age

/ cigarman501 / 1 Comment

 

“Gee, you don’t look your age.”  Thanks!  Just what I wanted to hear from a cute, brunette nurse.  Cute, YOUNG, brunette nurse.  I was having a checkup and she had noted I was a day shy of the annual celebration of my birth.  When your birth year ends in a fifty it’s easy to make the calculations.  At least I’m not too old to enjoy her feminine form, dark brown hair and the splash of freckles across her nose.  At least she didn’t say, “You don’t look that old.”

Buffett sang in my head, “One day I’ll soon be a grandpa.  All the pretty girls will call me ‘sir’.  Now, where they’re asking me how things are, soon they’ll ask me how things were.”  I am a grandpa and the cute nurse did call me ‘sir.’

There was a time when my birthdays were fun.  Frolicking in the glow of birthday candles before the need to have a fire extinguisher at the ready.  Back before every move was accompanied by sound effects.  Snap, crackle, pop, groan….  Now celebrating the memorial of my latest trip around the sun is…well…painful and not as much fun as it was fifty years ago.  It is more a memorial to lost youth…and hair.

I should be thankful.  I could have lost more than my hair.  I have most of my body parts remaining…battered, wrinkled and scarred as they are.  “You don’t look that old”…just almost that old.

Everything works…much more slowly and in one case much too often…geez, I just peed and now I must go pee again because I thought about peeing.  Oh God, now it’s raining.  There is something about the sound of falling or running water.

Did you know your nose and ears continue to grow right up until the day you die?  Great, I’ll be Dumbo’s stand-in in heaven.  To make things worse, it seems another body part is shrinking.  I can’t wait to be welcomed into the great beyond with the biggest ears in the universe and the smallest…well…you know.

“Consider the alternative.”   Okay, I get that.  I am certainly not actively awaiting or embracing the “Great Wink Out.”  Here today, gone, and somewhere else tomorrow…or in the next second or two.  Somewhere else with dirt in my earthly face.  No, I’m going for the smoking, hot body…cremation!

Will I be welcomed into a warm, welcoming light or will the light be accompanied by a blast your face off gust of heat?  A bearded guy in a white gown by the name Saint Peter or an impish fellow dressed in red with a tail, horns and a pitchfork?  Satan! How the hell are you?  Whatcha got on the barbie?

I guess it is normal to contemplate one’s life whenever one celebrates a birthday.  What you’ve accomplished, what you haven’t.  New friends, old friends, dead friends, family and such.

The killer, a poor choice of words.  The killer about getting older, at least for me, is a loss of energy…no a loss in the desire to be energetic.  I’m in good shape…for my age, but I don’t have the stamina I once did.  Keeping up with a two and five-year-old grandbabies are near impossible.

Often I hear, “You are (fill in the blank) for your age.”  “You move well for your age.”  “You still get stuff done…for your age.”  “I’m not as good as I once was but I’m as good once as I ever was”…sometimes.  That pretty much sums up my entire life now.  “I’m not as good at (insert any activity) as I once was….”  That even includes sleeping…ah, but you can sleep when you are dead.

I’m not really obsessed about age or death.  I rarely think about it…except on a birthday or a random dream.  I may be more concerned about age than death or the prospect of aging gracelessly or dying badly.

Every time I look in a mirror, I realize I don’t have a portrait hidden away aging while I maintain my youthful and dashing good looks.  Okay, let’s be real, I didn’t have dashing good looks when I was youthful.

I’m trying to take Shakespeare’s attitude when he wrote in the Merchant of Venice, “With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”  I guess it is just as easy to laugh as it is to cry…and both cause wrinkles to come.   Happy Birthday to Me.

Song excerpt, Nothin’ but a Breeze, written by John Denver but the Jimmy Buffett version played in my head.

 

Check out Don Miller’s author page at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

Kaleidoscope Eyes

/ cigarman501 / 4 Comments

 

I’ve never been on a trip in my life…a drug trip.  I’ve abused alcohol on occasion, made a road trip or a dozen, but I’ve never dropped a tab of acid.  For some reason, my mind is broken, and I now understand the description kaleidoscope eyes despite mine not being drug induced.  Unlike the lyrics from the old Beatle’s song, there were no “tangerine trees and marmalade skies.”  My scrambled and flaring neurons fired in black and white.  It was just a damn dream!

I slept in my recliner.  Upright to offset the post nasal drip exacerbated by our extended ragweed season and the sudden change from a long summer to the late arrival of fall.  Undoubtedly my location confused my blind and aging puppy and sent me down a path that didn’t include “cellophane flowers of yellow and green”.  It bewildered me just as badly as any of the lyrics from Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Tilly pawed me awake begging for attention, a treat or both.  The thirteen-year-old would not be quieted until she received her puppy treat and an extended belly rub while lying on her back on my lap.  Finally satiated and bored, she left me for her mommy’s side.  I looked at my watch and found it to be just a bit after three…maybe it was a little after three, now I’m not sure…of the time or the blind puppy dog receiving a tummy rub.  Did that really happen?

I tried to return to sleep, my mind misfiring, sparking like an electrical short.  My thoughts were on our aging puppies, their aging owners and friends I have lost or are losing and not on “the girl with the sun in her eyes”.

When you’re sixty-eight thoughts of your own mortality lurk nearby, no matter how much you try to push it out of your mind.  There are fewer sands in the hourglass.  I don’t dwell on those thoughts but they tend to explode unexpectedly.  I pushed them aside, and they shoved back…hard.  My thoughts seemed to be on a repeating loop, a loop flashing from scene to scene, person to person, my own version of Dante’s Inferno on rewind.

After fifteen minutes of futility, I decided I was beating a dead mule when it came to sleeping.  I needed to get up and be productive or read or watch TV…something to remove the broken kaleidoscope in my mind or at least shade the sparking.  Looking at my watch my scalp crawled.  My loop had not lasted fifteen minutes, it had lasted over two hours.  Every timepiece in my house told me the same thing, two hours had passed.

According to my newest technological marvel, my Fitbit, I had never been awake.  I don’t know which is worse, a lost two hours or living a dream so real it doesn’t seem to be a dream.  Was my puppy even there?

The dream has been lost.  It’s memory rendered like a wind-torn fog.  If it is truly gone why am I still under its influence.  A four-mile walk and a church service later I am self-medicating with a beer…or five.  Maybe I should just listen to Judy in Disguise.  The words make no better sense than my dream or the old Beatle’s tune…but it does seem to be a happier song.

The image is  from Deviant Art at https://www.deviantart.com/ninjahekla/art/Kaleidoscope-Eyes-114938033

For other gentle musings go to Don Miller’s author’s page at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

 

Don’t Let The Old Man In….

/ cigarman501 / 10 Comments

 

I didn’t recognize the face in the mirror.  It sorta looks like me.  Five in the morning is not the best time to look into the mirror but at my age, it’s better than seeing myself in the harsh sunlight.  The face wasn’t “the brown-eyed handsome man” that Chuck Berry sang about sixty-one years ago.  This face is cut by crevasses covered by a wild beard.  The brown eyes sit above “steamer trunks,” not bags.  What hair there is, is now more silver than brown…as is a beard that was once redder than white.  My eyes are still brown and, in my mind, behind those eyes, somewhere, is a young, “brown-eyed handsome man.”

I’m looking down the barrel at another birthday.  Can you tell?  One month from today.  Another year older.  The grim reaper another year closer.  Can it be another year already?  As I look back…into the mirror and the old gentleman looking back at me, I realize a time versus age graph would show a steeper line after the age of fifty than before.  Time flies when you are having fun…and growing old.  Yes, I know there is another alternative.

Looking back into the mirror I realize, “that old geezer wants to get at me.”  He wants to be me…or rather, he wants me to be him.  I refuse to invite him to do so.

I have always been a people watcher…particularly attractive female people, a kink in my sterling armor.  Recently I’ve begun to look at older people I know, OLD people my age.  I always think, “I don’t look that old do I?”  I even asked my best friend Hawk, “Do we look that old?”  He said no…but then he’s just a year younger than me.  Would he lie?

I hear a tap, tap, tap.  Is it the hot water line that needs to be tightened or the old man in the mirror?  He wants me to invite him in.  No, no, no!  I’m going to keep dancing badly until I die…even if it is dancing from the seat of a chair.  Maybe I won’t be able to run, but then I’ll walk, or I’ll crawl or do invisible snow angels in the middle of the floor….  Too many people die because they are afraid to live.  I will not invite that old coot in.

I awoke to the groans my father made, so many years ago…except they are coming from me.  Snap, crackle, pop go my joints as I try to get out of bed.  Once I get moving I do okay.  Is that the lesson from my ruminations this morning?

The “brown eyed handsome man” in my head thinks he can still do anything.  I’m listening to him.  I’m going to keep doing my thing…just a bit more slowly.  Like a wind-up toy, the spring will wind down or break sometimes, but sometime could be a long way off.

I just learned that a friend’s cancer has returned and invaded his esophagus. He has battled cancer for years, battled it with a joyous heart and a cheerful and exuberant attitude.   I hope and pray he is able to beat it but the cards are stacked against him. He has never let the old man in…for eighty-five years.

A piano player, he always reminded me of Hoagy Carmichael’s Cricket in “To Have and Have Not.”  I’ll bet Charlie will be playing the piano, cracking jokes, dancing or doing snow angels on the floor until they carry him out. I’ll miss him when he goes but I won’t mourn for him because he kept the old man out of his life.  Maybe I can get him to play “Am I Blue” one more time.

Yessir!  I’m going to be like Charlie.  I will never let that old man I see in the mirror in.

Video credit: YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C1vJ2Z8aI0

Photo credit:  Hoagy Carmichael and  Lauren Bacall                    https://indianapublicmedia.org/afterglow/rainbow-hits-ground-hoagy-carmichael-hollywood/

Don Miller’s writer’s page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

Don Miller, writing as Kena Christenson, may be found at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07B6BDD19

HOSPITAL FOOD

/ cigarman501 / 9 Comments

Freaking A…fib!  What’s next?  Sciatica then shingles, now afib?  This aging sh!t is for the birds.  My childlike brain encapsulated within this bag of crumbling organs.  I feel like a blivit…never heard of a blivit…rhymes with ‘live it’?  It is ten pounds of pooh in a five-pound bag.

It was to be a simple, three-hour process…just a little shock to put the ole ticker back into rhythm…so simple.  Like Gilligan’s three-hour cruise, it didn’t turn out like it was supposed to.  Four hospital days later, my heart is back in rhythm but I’m taking a cure that may be worse than the disease, have seen four different doctors and am waiting to see if I need a pacemaker.  My choices bother me but not nearly as much as four days of hospital food…especially hospital food concocted for a cardiac patient.  Um, yum.  Gilligan and his merry crew of castaways ate much better.

I have attempted to reach a happy medium between doing the things necessary to extend my life, providing I don’t step out in front of a beer truck while enjoying my life.  I did have that heart attack thing.  Eating healthy, smart exercises six or seven times a week, reducing stress…most of the time, although there are those days I walk with Hawk.  Cigarsssssss!  Only once in a blue moon.  Speaking of Blue Moon, less than a six pack a week.  Most days eating food with the consistency of wet cardboard and the taste of unseasoned butcher paper so that once a month I can trip the light fandango…or is it skip the light fantastic?  I’m reminded of a question, “How is the best way to prepare carp?  Easy! Nail the carp to an old barn board. Cover it in moist cow manure and bake until done.  Allow the board and carp to cool until you can handle it.  Throw the carp away and eat the board.”  A lot of the healthier food choices I eat seem to taste the way I imagine a manure covered board might taste.

I’m just not going to eat that way…every day.  There must be a certain joy to life or it is not worth living.  For instance, I have reduced my salt intake but not on grits and eggs…I also don’t eat eggs and grits every day…or even every week.  Occasionally I’m going to eat eggs and grits covered in cheddar cheese and running in butter…real butter…just to remind me of what life has to offer.  I’m going to eat it with salt…and a side of bacon or sausage.  But not every day.  Some days, I’m going to eat slow cooked pork that has been marinated in a brine mixture and then covered in a special rub…but, not every day.  I am never going to eat tofu…ever.

The hospital food reminded me of the good things I was missing…because it was so terrible.  Honestly, it was good hospital food, which is like saying Mississippi River mud taste better than Colorado River mud.  Well, I’m home now.  No pacemaker, no flutter in my atrium and no hospital food.  Also, no cigar, no beer…today…may be tomorrow…and tomorrow, I’ll probably eat oatmeal for breakfast…with no salt…and no taste.

TWO OLD FARTS WALKING IN THE DARK

/ cigarman501 / 5 Comments

“You can think what you want, do what you want, say what you want. We’re old, you might as well embrace it!” My best friend, Hawk, had just responded to a statement I had made as we finished our weekly “walk.” My response to his response, “Bullsh@t! You’re old, I refuse to concede. I’m not going to embrace that sixty-something someone staring back at me from the mirror. He looks like my grandfather.” “You’re a year older than I am Bo,” was Hawk’s retort. Well, yeah, but age is just a number…until you groan getting out of bed in the morning.

Hawk and I walk every Friday. Due to our work schedules, we walk at five thirty in the morning. WAIT! We’re both are retired soooooo…due to being set in our ways, we walk at five-thirty in the morning on a local paved pathway called the Swamp Rabbit Trail. It’s named after a…I’m sorry…somehow, I’ve got to stop turning everything into a history lesson.

Back to the point…WHAT WAS THE POINT…oh yeah, Hawk and I walk every Friday at five thirty am. It is a seven-mile power walk, a sub fourteen thirty mile per hour pace as a goal, in the dark. We haven’t quite made it yet but we are close. Our earlier conversation occurred because I pointed out that we used to run it and I wasn’t ready to give in to my age although it would seem my age might have other ideas. I know my sciatica does.

In between the occasional gasps of our exertion, we attempt to solve all the ills facing our world, discuss religion, our wives, children and grands, wonder what is happening to the youth of today and whether we had a great bowel movement this morning. There is usually a discussion about the number of times we got up during the night to pee and what we could have done to cause the extra two bathroom trips. Afterwards we enjoy a cup of coffee while completing our discussions at a local coffee shop. I’m sure the people we run into there refer to us as the “two old guys” and worry about us if we miss a week, fearing one of us may have died. “I wonder where the ‘two old farts’ were today. Hope they didn’t die.” When I see the cute little girl who serves us every Friday, Jimmy Buffet lyrics from “Nothing But A Breeze” come to mind, “All the pretty girls will call me ‘sir’. Now, where they’re asking me how things are, soon they’ll ask me how things were.” Please God, don’t make him right!

While Hawk and I have much in common, religion and politics ain’t two. I am the social liberal who attempts to follow in Jesus’ hippy footsteps and is not afraid to interject a bit of Buddhism and humor into his belief system. When still coaching, I will confess to having prayed to the baseball gods for a needed base hit or an easy ground ball double play on occasion. Does that make me a pagan? Hawk is not exactly the opposite but…can you be religious to a fault? I just had a vision of him dressed as a Puritan religious leader complete with powdered wig, white hose and buckled shoes. Hawk is in the process of reading the Bible through for the umpteenth time and is not afraid to ask my council and understanding. I’m not afraid to give it. I receive five am texts with scripture to read and react to. When I react, Hawk is not afraid to disagree before asking me if I’m really saved. It’s nice to have a friend who is concerned about my spiritual well-being and where I’m going to reside after my time on earth has passed.

To describe my socially conservative friend I must quote Churchill. Hawk is “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” As tough as he is on the exterior, he often melts like a marsh mellow and truly follows in the footsteps of Jesus…literally giving the homeless guy the jacket off his back, along with five gallons of kerosene to run his heater during a recent cold snap, or working at a local soup kitchen. He’s always been a human conundrum, disciplining the kids while asking “Are you stupid or what?” and then making sure the stray cat at the stadium is fed or the killdeer nest is roped off so our grass cutting doesn’t disturb the mother. What does this have to do with kids? Really? If he’s going to do that for an animal what do you think he does for his kids. We both call them our kids and have special places in our hearts for them. So maybe we are more alike….

Two old farts walking in the dark before enjoying a cup of coffee should give the world hope. If we can come to an understanding, poking fun and laughing at our differences while embracing our similarities, the rest of the world can too. Maybe Hawk is correct. Maybe I should embrace my age and the wisdom deriving from it.

For more of Don Miller’s unique views of life, humor, WISDOM and Southern stories of a bygone time, go to http://goo.gl/lomuQf

GROWING OLDER GRACELESSLY

/ cigarman501 / 3 Comments

Lying in bed I go through the same progression every morning. I wonder if I move, “Am I going to break?” I begin by wiggling, first one little toe, then the other and gradually work my way up. My goal is to get my feet on the ground and stand erect without making the same noises my father made when he was my age…I am now faced with the realization I have outlived my father by five years. That is a sobering thought. My second goal is to check the local obituaries and find that my name is not listed there.

While I am aware of my age, it has not been an issue until recently. For the past year I have battled an arthritic knee that keeps me from running and rocked a vertebra onto my sciatic nerve while splitting wood that, for a month, kept me from doing just about everything else. Bad enough but a conversation with a friend of mine really made me pause to consider the question of my age. Married, hers is a May-December romance. She is May and he is December…which is not true. She is more April and he is more, say, October. With his impending retirement she has suddenly become concerned about her husband’s age or rather what her husband’s age might have in store for them both. Seeking enlightenment from me, I was not able to give it. My mind asked “Why is she asking me? I’m not old?” My body answered, “You’re three years older than her husband.” Gee, where is my cane?

Today I got to do my “Medicare Wellness Profile.” It included an eye test, whisper test, walking test and questionnaire with such thought provoking questions as “Can you bathe and wash yourself without help?” Yes, and I can wipe my butt too. All went with the normal check of BP, ability to process oxygen and EKG. “You want me to get out of a chair, walk six feet return and sit down again?” Oh me! The nurse in charge said I passed with flying colors until you consider I am being compared to “really old people,” something the old bat pointed out. Funny, I think like a young person, but I guess the mirror doesn’t lie. Why couldn’t I have at least had Sam Elliott’s hair?

Forty years ago, during the first jogging craze, I began a haphazard exercise regimen. Haphazard in that I would allow anything to get in the way in order to avoid it. Finally getting my mind right in the Early-Nineties, I got into the habit of exercise…until a side lunge put me in the hospital to have cartilage removed. No more lunges of any type. Later a miss step on the baseball field would require the other knee to be scoped for the same reason and in 1999 I had the second of two operations on an arthritic big toe. I found myself out of the habit of exercise and into any habit that involved sitting on a couch and consuming mass quantities of fried foods and beer. Forty pounds later I could not deny what the mirror was showing me. Two hundred and thirty-two pounds on my five foot nine frame could no longer be hidden. I was sloppy fat. On April 8, 2006 I made the decision that I had to make radical life style changes. My realization would be further emphasized the next day.

In a month I will celebrate another birthday and a ten-year anniversary. “Happy birthday to you…How old are you? F@#$ YOU and your horse!” Family had gathered to celebrate my birthday on April 9. Always irreverent, my brother presented me with a birthday card featuring a grim reaper reflected in a car’s rear view mirror and the warning “Objects may be closer than they appear.” Five hours later I found myself hooked up to a gazillion monitors after having just survived a heart attack and having had a catheter and stint surfed into a clogged artery. One month later the original stint would be joined by three more in three different arteries. I was six months away from a loss of seventy pounds and running a 5-K. Yes, it was a radical life style change. My brother was so broken up about the card he had given me, I got it again the next year. It is now framed as a constant reminder of what I am trying to outrun or out walk at least.

For ten years now I have drug myself out of bed and done something. Now at least I wait until the sun is up. At any age, walking, running, cycling, stretching and strength training, I guess it’s all about movement. Moving your ass out of bed and onto something more productive. If I happen to live to be ninety-five I want to be mobile and not in bed…wait. Bed? I just thought of a great way to die…traumatic as it might be for the other individual…or group. I would have to stay in good shape to do it. I believe I will get out of bed in the morning and do what I have been doing for the last ten years.

Move that butt Lard-O! Time’s a wasting!

For great #nonfiction try Don Miller at http://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

AGING AIN’T FOR THE FAINT OF HEART

/ cigarman501 / Leave a comment

It’s 1-13-16 and many of my goals for the year are in jeopardy. On 1-4-16 I decided I would begin the week by being productive, one of my major goals for the year. Really maintain and dig into the “honey-do” list that I will need another life time to complete. Do my five miler and then load my chainsaw, axe and maul onto my tractor. Time to cut and split a little wood and clean up some deadfall along with it. “Get back to my self-reliant roots!” No problem. I got a great little chainsaw, cuts like a “hot knife through butter.” Light and modern, its anti-vibration technology allows me to cut forever…if I so desire. The axe and maul on the other hand…and there lies the problem I think.

I had cut, split, loaded and unloaded about a pick-up load of wood when it hit me…or grabbed me later in the day. My hip is a little sore and became increasingly so. I had felt this pain before and knew it would gradually work its way down my leg. I joked with my wife, “If I can walk in the morning I’m going to….” I don’t remember what I was going to do because it became a moot point. While I could walk, it was too painful to want to. Recliner to bathroom was about as far as I could go. SCIATICA!!! I’ve had it before. Usually after the Wednesday practice of the first week of baseball season. Too much torqueing due to hitting ground balls or throwing batting practice. Narrowing of the spine due to…AGE! Funny not, I don’t feel old…most of the time. I know my knee is shot but mentally, when I sitting in my recliner, I don’t feel old…until I get up and go look in the mirror. “You don’t look too bad for…AN…OLD…GUY. Right. It took me five days of Advil and stretching, along with hot and cold treatments, to get over this. No walking, no exercise and no productivity.

Finally, I feel great. It’s 1-11-16 one week and one day since my attack of sciatic began and three days since it ended. I’m going to do an easy three and one half miler and then go out with my weed eater and a rake and do a little preparation for spring in my yard. Just maybe fifteen minutes with the weed eater and another fifteen with the rake. Just to test things out…I wonder if it is going to take me a week to get over this bout. I am at a loss. I refuse to give in to my age. Let’s see, there are only fifty-two Mondays in the year. That’s not a lot of productivity and will make a very small dent in my “honey-do” list. Being laid up in the hospital will make me even less productive. Decisions, Decisions.