Day Four-Fifty - Barry Recap!

Wow!  Last night was about 38 years in the making.  You see since about 1975 I have been a BIG Barry Manilow fan.... or a Fanilow.  There have been those that have made fun of me over the years when they found out that I was a once a 12 year old obsessed with Barry Manilow.  But it never bothered me.  I love Barry and if that makes me a geek, I'm OK with that.  In fact, I like to think I OWN it.  So last night Barry did a show at Verizon Theater in Grand Prairie and I went with two of my friends from the 1970's.  Both of them had been to see Barry over the years.  But for me it was my first Barry Manilow concert and it did not disappoint!

At 70 years old Barry is just as entertaining as he ever was.  The show was fabulous!  I couldn't wipe the smile off my face all night.  Even when a man yelled out, "BARRY!  I LOVE YOU!!!!" during a particularly quiet moment while Barry sang Weekend in New England cracking Barry up and resulting in him stopping the song while he recovered I was still thrilled and wouldn't have changed a thing.  Say what you will about all the plastic surgery he has had, it hasn't effected his talent in anyway.

I don't know if it would have been as much fun if I hadn't been able to go with my friends Dana and Krista.  We had a great time catching up.  It was the first time that Dana and I had seen Krista since we each moved away from Nacogdoches.  I moved in February of our freshman year of high school and Dana moved during the summer between our freshman and sophomore years.  So last night was a nice reunion.

During the year leading up to our moving Dana and I, with the help of our mothers, started making an embroidered and painted workshirt that we planned to send to Barry.  It was the 70's and those embroidered workshirts were very popular.  We spent months working on the shirt.  We would trade out who got to work on it.  Right in the middle of the work, my family moved to Lumberton, Tx. which meant that we had to start mailing it back and forth to each other when it was the other ones turn to work on it.  We took months to complete it.  When it was done I got to go to Dana's house for a visit and we took pictures of us with the shirt before it was mailed to some address that Dana's Mom had gotten where we were pretty sure Barry would get it.  I don't mind telling you, it was a master piece as far as folk art goes.

After it was mailed we waited months and months expecting to hear from Barry personally (or at least I was expecting it).  I laid awake at night and imagined that Barry would come to see us personally to thank us for the amazing shirt we had made.  But that didn't happen.  When Dana and I went to each others house in the summer for week long visits we went to the mall and got on a pay phone with all the quarters we could come up with and tried calling Barry's agent or someone else that we thought could get us through to the man, himself.  It never worked, but each time we would get a New York operator on the line as we called information my heart would race so much that I thought it would pop out of my chest.  Finally Dana's Mom wrote a letter to someone on our behalf and a year or two after we mailed the shirt we got a letter back saying that Barry had gotten the shirt and it was "one his favorite around the house shirts".  We were thrilled.  I got a copy of the letter and for years it was framed and hanging on the wall in my bedroom.  Unfortunately, the print is so faded now you can no longer read it.

Last night as we enjoyed the concert, on the video screens, various album covers were shown.  It was so cool to see all those old album covers again.  I still have my entire Barry Manilow LP collection in a box in the closet of my guest room.  But I have no turn table.  I think I am going to have to download those old albums so that I can start listening to them again in their entirety rather than just the greatest hits off of them.  If you've never been to see Barry in concert, I highly recommend it.  He is a truly great entertainer.  If I can figure out how to download my video I'll post it.

Have a great weekend!

Day Four-Forty-Four - Tales of Spiders!

Okay, so I've taken several weeks off from writing any blogs.  My life has been busy lately!  I won't bore you with those details.  But I'll just say that the spare time has been minimal.  The other issue is that I can't really think of much to write about.  On my other blog, the work blog, I try to write about travel.  I was in the middle of a mind trip to Tokyo and Hong Kong.  Right in the middle of Hong Kong I lost all interest.  I wasn't seeing a lot of people reading it and there were no Likes, Shares or Comments at all so I figured the readers were no more interested in it than I was.  So, I stopped.  Someone did mention to me last week that they were hopeful that I would finish that mind trip and post more about Tokyo.  But I decided that if it was of so little interest to them that they couldn't even be bothered to at least click a simple "Like" then it must not be that big of a deal.  It's hard to keep spending an hour or two everyday writing something and then publishing it and getting no indication whatsoever that anyone else even saw it much less had an interest in it.

So last week, I went to Toledo Bend with my Mom and Dad.  We only stayed one night.  I'm not much of a lake person.  I like looking at a lake.  But the issue I have with lakes is that they attract spiders and I am terrified of spiders.  So, I got no sleep, it was hard to relax because each time I sat down, I imagined a spider crawling on me.  I didn't actually see that many spiders, but there were a lot of spider webs which indicates to me that the spiders must be off somewhere doing spidery things.... like crawling up on me looking for a good place to bite.

I'm not sure where my fear of spiders comes from.  There were never any incidents in my life in which I was attacked by a spider and I've never been bitten by any poisonous spider that I am aware of.  Yet it is my greatest fear.  If you hand me a snake and tell me to hold it, I will hold it.  Want me to hold some creepy crawly lizard for you?  No problem.  But if a nearly microscopic spider walks across the floor, I become almost paralyzed with fear. My issue is that they are so small, quiet and they weigh practically nothing so you can't even tell if they have gotten on you.  Then they can bite you and we've all seen those pictures on the internet of a person's arm rotting off following a spider bite that they didn't even feel!!!!  FREAKY!!!!!  They are silent, deadly killers!

Spiders are the one reason that I really regret never having gotten married.  I can do without a husband in my life to talk to, to go out with and to even have a little bedroom fun with.  But I NEED a spider killer.  A number of years ago, while I lived in my last rental apartment in Dallas, I had a one car garage.  I had Jingle then who was no different then than he is now.  He liked spending time in my garage.  The only difference then from now is that at the time, I would open the garage door while I grilled just outside of the garage and Jingle would walk around in the garage and even out to the grill without fear.  Now if the garage door opens he runs back in the house.

On this day, the door to the house was open and the garage door was open as I prepared to cook on the grill.  Jingle was in the garage and I was getting a steak ready to go on the grill.  When I walked out of the house and through the garage to move the grill out to the parking lot, Jingle remained focused on a bag of potting soil which was in the corner of the garage and partially opened.  When I walked back by, he was still staring intently at the bag of potting soil.  I thought it was strange and called his name.  He never looked up or acknowledged that I had attempted communication (much like the readers of my blogs).

I went back in the house for something and when I came back out, Jingle was still completely focused on the potting soil.  So I decided to see why he was so interested in it.  I picked him up and he began clawing at me to get back down to the potting soil.  I put him down and moved the bag a little... and that's when I saw the TARANTULA!  It was enormous!  It was sort of on the lip of the open bag of potting soil.  I would say that standing up, it was probably as big around as a softball if you counted the legs.  I freaked!  I thought about just grabbing Jingle and running in the house.  But then there would still be a spider in my garage and something had to be done about that.  My lease wasn't up for several more months.  So I couldn't just move.....  So, I took action.

First I decided that I needed to stun it.  So I ran in the house and grabbed a can of Raid.  I came back outside and soaked the spider with Raid.  When I had emptied the can on the spider at point blank range, I threw the empty can at the spider like they do in Western movies when the six-shooter has been emptied on the bad guy.  There was Raid pooling everywhere and the spider only seemed to be getting angrier.  He barely staggered after being soaked in poison.

I knew I had to find something to strike the spider with that would not have me getting too close to said spider. My previous rental had been a duplex on Lake Ray Hubbard... again, a property near water and therefore near creepy crawly creatures.  So I had shovels, hoes, rakes and so on.  Okay, I admit the gardening tools were more for the yard at the house on Lake Ray Hubbard and not so much for the creepy crawly creatures.  But they come in handy for that sort of thing.  So, I got the hoe out and decided to use it to kill the spider.  But it was still in my garage and the only thing that creeps me out as much as spiders is splattering a creature in an area that I will then have to clean up.  It's one of the reasons I know I could never kill another human being.  I would never be able to deal with the mess.  So I began to sort of rake the spider out of the garage using the hoe.  At the same time, I was looking around for any other humans - preferably big, masculine, strong men who were not easily frightened to help me.  There were none.  How can you live in an apartment complex in the middle of Plano, Tx. full of hundreds of other people and be in distress late in the afternoon after everyone is home from work, but before dark and not see a single suitable person to help?  What are the odds?

So I had worked my way almost out of the garage with the spider using the hoe.  It got away from me a few times and had just gotten away again when I saw a man carrying his trash to the dumpster which was just across the parking lot.  So, I yelled for him to "pleeeeeeease come and help me".  But somehow I had come across the most flamboyantly gay man in all of America at that exact moment when I needed a really manly man the most?  Don't get me wrong.  I love the gays.  Some of my very good friends are gay men and they are the best guys in the world to have around in most instances.  But this guy might have been more afraid of the spider than me.  He did come over but he kept getting behind me as I was trying to give him the hoe and get him to kill the spider.  REALLY??!?!?!?  It finally took the spider walking toward the man to convince him that he had to kill it.  He did.  It splattered all over the parking lot.  The sad thing is that by this time, I had almost convinced myself that this spider had probably escaped from a spider habitat in someone else's apartment within the complex.  I mean after all, it never even tried to get away from me except when I was using the hoe on it.  We probably killed someones escaped pet.

But this is what happens when you keep pets that God never meant to be pets.  They get away and people kill them in a state of hysteria.  I never found out if the spider was, in fact someones pet.  It's just a feeling I had mostly because you don't see a lot of Tarantulas in North Texas.  But I suppose anything is possible.  The man who finally killed the spider for me did not become friends with me.  You would think that the incident would have resulted in a long lasting friendship and years later we would still be laughing over the time he came to my rescue and killed the terrifying spider for me.  But in reality, I think what happened is that he began using a different dumpster on the property to insure that he would never have to come near me again because I might bully him into killing something else for me.  He probably still tells his friends about the crazy spider lady who freaked out on him and forced him to kill a Tarantula against his will.  Sorry dude....

Day Four-Twenty-Three - Another Graduation

My niece graduated from high school on Friday night.  She was one of 17 graduates at her school.  Even though I am from east Texas, the small school thing is foreign even to me.  I went to three high schools and graduated from Bay City with a couple of hundred other people.  At any of the three high schools I went to there would have been at least 200 other graduates in my class.  Nacogdoches was the biggest high school I went to.  Lumberton was probably the smallest which means Bay City was right in the middle.  

I didn't get to attend my graduation because I was sick.  Very sick.  So sick, I honestly believed although I never said it out loud, that I was dying.  I survived and have since attended the high school graduations of many other people.  I often sit in a graduation and wonder what my own would have been like.  I'm a crier.  So, I always wonder if I would have cried all the way through it or made it through without a tear simply because I would probably have been concentrating so hard on not falling down.  That is where my attention is always focused when I have to walk in front of a group of people.....  Don't fall, don't fall, don't fall, don't fall.....  But the good news is that it keeps me from crying at events like that since it redirects my attention.  

My oldest nephew graduated from the same high school that my niece did.  So I already had an idea of what to expect.  Their graduations are very personalized.  The class historian actually talks about each kid and then there is a Power Point in which photos of each kid from birth to graduation are shown.  In various high school graduations around the Metroplex, you hear about situations where the graduate is given a certain number of tickets for their family and friends to attend because the venues where the ceremonies are held won't hold all the people who might come otherwise.  At Douglass, each graduate gets a row of 12 seats on the gymnasium floor with their last name on the row.  Those 12 seats are for whoever you want to use them. Then the rest of the gym is available for whoever else would like to attend.  There are no limits.  It was actually pretty full Friday night for the 17 students graduating.  

Rebecca had a pretty big crowd attending on her behalf.  Aunts and uncle on her Dad's side of the family along with all her cousins except one were there.  Additionally, some cousins on her Mom's side of the family were present.  Plus her boyfriend and his family were there.  When my brothers and I graduated from high school we never had anyone attend our graduations other than one aunt and uncle.  My Uncle EC and his wife, Aunt Ida always attended graduations.  In fact they showed up for my graduation even though I was too sick to be there.  We always thought it was weird that Uncle EC and Aunt Ida always attended graduations.  Now, as an adult who attends all the life events of my nephews and niece I wonder, was the rest of my family weird or were Uncle EC and Aunt Ida the weird ones?  It's sort of hard to say.... you know because I might incriminate myself if I do.

Maybe it's because both of my parents came from such big families.  But my aunts and uncles just weren't involved at all in our lives.  Uncle EC and Aunt Ida were the only aunt and uncle without children of their own.  So I suppose that's why they attended other people's kids events.  We never got birthday or Christmas gifts from aunts and uncles and my parents didn't give gifts for birthdays or Christmas to my cousins.  There were just too many.  On Dad's side of the family I have 14 cousins.  On Mom's side of the family I had 27 cousins.  I'm only counting 1st cousins.  Quite frankly I have no idea how many kids all of them have had on either side.  There are many second cousins that I have never met and never will meet.

When I became an aunt I decided that my main responsibility was to spoil my nephews and niece.  I'm not their parent.  I'm no one's parent.  So, I really know nothing about raising children.  My expertise lies in making them want to spend time with me because they know it will be fun.  That's not to say that I don't draw lines when they are around.  When they stayed with me as children, there were always rules and lines that couldn't be crossed.  But for the most part, they were with me to have fun and fun was had.  Rebecca will be an aunt for the first time in September.  I hope she carries on my tradition with her nephew.  Since she only has one sibling she won't have many nephews and nieces.  So, I really think she needs to take advantage of spoiling them and then sending them home to their parents every chance she gets.  Even though she will probably have children of her own, you can't spoil your own children like that because as a parent you sort of have to play the part of the bad guy every once in a while.  As an aunt you may have to be the bad guy 2 or 3 times in their life.  Even grandparents have to be the bad guys more often than aunts.  Aunts sort of have it made and I think most of them don't really take advantage of that.  

Anybody who knows me knows that I take my nephews and niece on a trip when they graduate from high school.  Jacob went to New York, Matt and Chris each went on cruises.  Rebecca will also go on a cruise.  I'm not sure what Tim will do (he's the youngest).  A lot of people say nice things about me because I do this.  But I'll tell you a secret.  It's just as much for me as it is for them.  You see, I love them all dearly and I know that once they have graduated from high school, they will go out in the world and start a life of their own, with their own families and I'll only get to see them at family gatherings and even those will become fewer and farther between as they have to spend time with in-laws.  So, I consider it my last time to spend with them one on one with nobody else there to garner their attention.  I get them to myself for a whole week.  Plus we get to go some place together and create memories that neither of us will ever forget.  I think about it like this, I could give them $500 and 20 years from now they might not even remember that I gave them anything for graduation.  But if I take them on a trip, 20 years from now maybe they'll share a memory of that trip with one of their kids.  Even if they don't share the memory with anyone else.  It will always be there.

Have a good week!

Day Four-Seventeen - My Memorial Day Message

It's Memorial Day!  It would seem that Memorial Day means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.  For some, it's simply a long weekend and they have no idea why they got a long weekend, but they are happy to have it.  For some it means a long weekend of working in a retail store so that others can spend the time canvasing the malls for bargains.  For others, it signifies the beginning of summer.  For many it means school's out.  Apparently for some, it's a perfect time to protest any rule, law, injustice or slight that they feel they've been handed while getting themselves 15 minutes in a spotlight.  And then there are those who see it as a time to thank the heroes who have sacrificed in wars, police actions, battles and skirmishes all over the world so that we can all sit back here in our safe homes and enjoy a long weekend with friends and family.

For the one or two people who will read this, I'm not that politically driven when it comes to this stuff.  I think that patriotism has no political motivation (or it shouldn't).  Patriotism is something that comes from your heart regardless of your political affiliation or lack thereof.  Did you wake up this morning in a free society?  Did you do whatever you wanted last night or at least whatever your monetary resources would allow?  Did you go to whatever type of church you wanted yesterday or perhaps none at all if that was your choice?  If your answer to those questions is yes, then have you thanked a veteran or his/her family this weekend?  Or for that matter, ever?

You don't need to be a dork to be patriotic.  You just need to care.  So, fly a flag today.  Wear a little red, white and blue.  As you go through your day, if you catch yourself humming the National Anthem, good for you!  We live in the greatest country in the world and if not for veterans who made sacrifice after sacrifice for our freedoms, we wouldn't be able to say that.  Happy Memorial Day and thanks to all the men and women who have sacrificed for our country.

Day Four-Sixteen - Things That Make Me Mad!

What is up with this weather?  If April showers bring May flowers, what do May showers bring other than aggravation?  I just wanted to spend the weekend out at the pool.  But instead I have spent it all indoors waiting for rain cloud after rain cloud to pass over.

Yesterday as my friend Jenny and I sat at Cedars Woodfire Grill enjoying what I thought at the time was a light lunch, (note to self - in the future review nutritional information BEFORE ordering and eating every bite of a Chophouse Steak Salad.  How in the hell can a salad have 71 grams of fat and 47 grams of carbs??!?!?!?!?  Shouldn't that be illegal?) a rainstorm came up that was almost shocking in it's intensity.  It wasn't a violent storm or anything like that.  It was just raining so hard that I was amazed by it.  I mean it was almost as amazing as a salad with 71 grams of fat and 47 grams of carbs.....

During the storm Jenny and I both pulled our smart phones out and checked the Fox4 WAPP which until today was my favorite app.  Today is when I discovered that those guys at Fox4 just put in a forecast that they think might make you happy.....  At least that's what I now believe.  Yesterday during that storm, the forecast showed thundershowers on Saturday, sunny and 87 degrees today, and sunny and 85 degrees on Monday.  Then today I went out for a walk on the local bike/pedestrian trail for just a few minutes an hour ago and it started raining on me.  Mind you it has been overcast since I woke up this morning.  I didn't even get to walk a 1/4 of a mile before I had to turn around and come home so that my phone wouldn't get wet.  So, I opened up the trusty WAPP again to see what was going on and here's what it says today....

Today:  Thunderstorms and 85 degrees
Monday:  Sunny and 89 degrees
Tuesday:  Windy and 89 degrees

So, I'm thinking that if it rains tomorrow this is what I will see when I look at it during the rainstorm....

Today:  Thunderstorms and 85 degrees
Tuesday:  Sunny and 89 degrees
Wednesday:  Sunny and 89 degrees

So I guess I'm wondering why in the hell Fox4 couldn't have predicted the overcast skies today and the rainstorm that got me wet during my walk.  I mean in this day and age of Doppler radars and being able to slide your finger across a green screen on your newscast and predict where a tornado is going to head next, they can't tell whether or not it might rain in the next 24 hours?????  Here's the deal Fox4....  I don't need for you to tell me what my idea of perfect weather is.....  I need for you to tell me what the weather will actually be like.  THAT would be much more helpful.  You see, I already know what I want the weather to be like.  But based on the information I can get from you, I don't know what it actually will be like.  So, while I appreciate that Fox4 wants to please me, it really doesn't help me.

Okay, with that rant out of the way, let's get back to this salad I had yesterday.  I've been ordering this same salad each time I have gone to Cedars for a year or so.  I love it.  It is delicious and until just a few minutes ago, I thought it was healthy.  When Jenny and I were trying to decide where to go, it is the reason we chose Cedars.  We wanted a healthy lunch.  Ummmm.... not s'much.  That guy who writes the Eat This Not That books needs to make a trip to Cedars because those people try to make you think you are getting healthy food there when in reality they are trying to kill you!  I guess I should be happy that I can at least look up the nutritional information on line and see ingredient by ingredient just what is causing the enormous fat and carb content of my favorite salad so that I can order it next time without any of the good stuff on it.  But I'm not sure that it's enough.

Don't get me wrong.  I don't want to release that idiot NYC mayor on Cedars or anything like that.  But shouldn't there be a surgeon generals warning on any salad that unhealthy?  Maybe on the menu next to the salad there should be a picture of a ginormous pig laying on his back dead from having eaten the salad one too many times.  Perhaps if that is too much, they could just post pictures of all of the 300 plus pound women who like to order this salad wearing nothing but sports bras and spandex bike shorts like they are weighing in on The Biggest Loser next to the picture of the delicious salad.  That might do the trick.  They could post a comment next to the photos that says; these are some of our customers who order this salad on a regular basis..... what do they have in common????  I think something like that might get my attention before I placed my order.  At the very least when you order a salad like that, the cash register should start oinking when the girls presses the button indicating the most unhealthy salad in the world has just been ordered.

Seriously, I feel like Jerry and Elaine discovering that the yogurt they thought was healthy was in fact, not healthy at all!  Can I tell you how upsetting this is to me?  I may be scarred for life by this.  From now on when I go into a restaurant and start to order a salad, I may start twitching and break out in spasms over the stress of ordering a salad that may or may not kill me over time.  Hey....  I know.... maybe a class action lawsuit......

Okay, I'm finished with my rants now.  Have a good Sunday afternoon.  If you have been counting on your Fox4 WAPP for your weather predictions, I hope you'll enjoy the rain as you sit outside under the bright sunny sky that you were promised today.

Day Four-Fifteen - The Holiday Weekend Phenomenon

Okay, I understand that most Americans are out having a great weekend.  I could have been in Alabama right now with a little more planning and a willingness to lay out the money.  But here I am sitting in Dallas on Saturday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend.  I'm going to dust and vacuum today.  I'll probably mop a few floors and do a couple loads of laundry then my housework will be complete.  All of that will take a total of 2 hours.  So how do I spend the balance of my Memorial Day weekend?

It's really overcast so it's a pretty crappy day to be at the pool.  At about 6 last night I discovered that there isn't going to be a thing on TV all weekend that I care about watching.  So that's out.  Last night I actually turned everything off downstairs at 7:35 and headed upstairs to read.  I was bored with my book by 9.  Then I watched the Rangers game....  I can't deal with a weekend like this.  The problem that I'm facing is that when I have an extended period of time with absolutely nothing to do, it generally costs me a LOT of money.  We've talked about the Target Phenomenon before....  You know that's where I go to Target to get a package of trashbags and walk out after spending $150 on everything from electronics to yogurt.  It's impossible for me to walk into Target without spending at least $100.

This is the Holiday Weekend Phenomenon....  I'm not sure how it will go.  Knowing what I am facing could be a good thing.  It could result in me directing my spending and/or energies toward things that I need to spend and/or work on.  Or I could just go nuts and get on line and have UPS trucks lined up at my house in 5-7 business days with everything from Life is Good apparel to live Maine Lobster.

Seriously, yesterday there was a Living Social with fresh fish and crustaceans from various parts of the country that they will deliver to your home..... Greatness!  But they sort of lost me because they were featuring Maryland Blue Crabs.  My Dad has a theory that Maryland orders crabs from the Texas Gulf coast and has them shipped there and then they call them Maryland Blue Crabs.  Now maybe that is just my Dad's 70 - something Texan thinking.  Or maybe he's on to something.  But either way, Dad and I have been talking about going crabbing this summer and with that in mind, I figure I can get fresher blue crabs here.  So, why pay to have them shipped from Maryland.  Even if Dad and I don't go crabbing this summer, I can always jump in the car and head down I-45.  Before I get to Houston I'll start seeing old beat up pick up trucks lined up in parking lots along the interstate selling shrimp and crabs that were probably caught within the last 24 hours.  Plus, I'd get to stop at Buck-ees...  Ummmm... can you say win - win?

So, getting back to directing my energies and spending.....  I still have a lot of work to do around this house. I have re-floored the upstairs but no painting has been done up there.  Additionally, I have painted the kitchen and breakfast room.  But I still need to complete some touch up work in there and then I need to paint the rest of downstairs.  I also need a new storm door for the front door and I'd like to replace my sliding glass door with french doors.  So, with just a little concentration, I could spend a pretty penny in this house.  But every bit of that requires effort on my part.  And THAT'S where I run into a problem.  Of course, it would insure that I don't get bored again all summer.  But the downside is that I won't get bored again all summer.....  know what I mean?

I've been kicking this painting thing around for months.  I have very high ceilings.  Downstairs in spots they are about 20 feet high.  I had this little issue right after I bought my condo where the flue on the gas fireplace was not adjusted properly.  The gas fireplace creates black smoke and that black smoke was coming back into the house for the entire first winter I lived here.  Not all of it, not enough to kill me, just enough to create a black film over everything including the white popcorn ceilings.  So, I've always had ceilings that were in desperate need of painting.  So, what I've been thinking about doing is hiring a handy man to do all of the cutting in on both the ceilings and walls.  Then I can do the rolling using my trusty telescopic pole that I bought  when I moved in here.  I'm thinking handy man as opposed to a painter because I discovered with the painter that I have used in the past that they are loyal to particular brands of paint and they probably won't use the paint that I have already picked out and fallen in love with.

So, that's what I am facing this Memorial Day Weekend.  Either spend a crap load of money on my house and create projects for myself that will last all summer or start doing boredom spending and throw away money on crap I don't need.....  Maybe I'll run to Target for some trashbags......

Day Four-Oh-Nine - More Bike Tales

Shortly after I finished writing yesterday's blog I realized a pretty significant inaccuracy and it has been bothering me since.  So, I thought I would clear that up in today's blog.  I said that Ronnie's concussion that he obtained coming down Deadman's Hill was the only Meyers trip to the emergency room as a result of a bike accident.  While that is technically true, there was one other Meyers bicycle accident that resulted in the need for medical help.  Additionally there was a Meyers bike accident that occurred on a motorcycle rather than a bicycle that actually resulted in an ambulance ride to the emergency room.  So, let's cover those today, shall we?

First we'll cover Robbie's "bike accident".  During college, Robbie got a motorcycle.  This effected me in a couple of ways.  First of all, since it was his only mode of transportation, when the weather was bad he required another way to get to and from work and school.  I had a 1980 Toyota Starlet that looked very much like the one below.  In fact after Robbie had driven it for a while, in front of an automotive center would have been the best place to get a glimpse of it since that is where it spent most of it's time.  Actually, it spent most of it's time in my Dad's garage while he overhauled the engine, but that is a story for another day.

I could tell you about the times that Robbie "borrowed" my car and drove me to work saying that he would pick me up when I got off.  Then he would forget me and I'd end up sitting outside of a closed mall waiting for a ride for an hour or so in the days before cell phones, but I won't.  His incident happened on a drizzly morning in Nacogodoches.  I had an 8 AM class and had gone to school in my own car that I was paying for being the selfish person that I am.  After class I stopped off at the former employer who shall not be named because even then I was a slave to them and we were having a walk through that afternoon and I wanted to make sure my department was prepared.  (It was naturally, because I had worked for about 14 hours the day before and the store hadn't opened yet for the day.)

When I got home, my sister-in-law who was living with us and was Ronnie's girlfriend at the time, met me in the driveway.  She was wearing the uniform that she wore to work at La Hacienda everyday.  I wish that I could show you a picture of that hideous uniform that she had to wear to work.  But I'll just have to describe it to you.  It was a skirt and top.  The top was off white and peasant styled.  I think it may have had some rust colored rick-rack around the collar and sleeves to match the ugly rust colored full knee length skirt that went with it.  It doesn't sound that horrible when I describe it, but I think after seeing it for so many years and smelling it when she walked in the house at night I was a little disgusted by it (I'm pretty sure she was too).  When she came home from work, she always smelled like a big burrito.  Which may be why I think burritos are really gross today.

Anyway, she met me in the driveway and was a little panicked.  She explained that the hospital had called and Robbie was there and one of us needed to go to Medical Center, but she was running late for work.  So, I rushed over to Medical Center Hospital while Christina went to work.  When I got there, they were ready to release Robbie he just needed someone to take him home.  He said that he had been turning off the loop onto University Dr. and apparently on the slick street the wheels had gone out from under the motorcycle.  His head hit the pavement but fortunately he had been wearing a helmet which had cracked.  He had a concussion and didn't remember any of it.  He only knew what the witnesses had told him.  When he got to the hospital he didn't know who he was or what had happened other than what he had been told.  They got his information off his drivers license and he said that when they read it to him, he was really excited because he knew that was him!  But they still needed his phone number so they could call someone.  The phone was in my name and fortunately our childhood doctor was in the emergency room and knew my name, so they found our number and read it out to him.  He said when they read those numbers out he felt like he had won the lottery because he recognized them.  Anyway, he recovered, but he got rid of the motorcycle shortly afterward.

Now the other incident didn't really result in a trip to the emergency room although I suppose in hindsight, it should have.  It happened just a few years ago which is why it didn't occur to me yesterday.  It was a Saturday morning and I had taken my beautiful Trek bike to Arbor Hills in west Plano for a morning ride.  I forgot my helmet and was wearing a baseball cap.  But I was going to stay on the cement trails anyway, so I thought I would be fine without a helmet.  I had been riding for 45 minutes or so when I came down the biggest hill there.  At the base of the hill there is a Y and you have to veer either left or right.  I was going to go left and had started to turn when my cap flew off.  Rather than just letting it go, I tried to grab it with my left hand while braking with the right hand which was my front wheel brake.  I hit the brake too hard and went over the handle bars.  The crazy thing is, I never let go of that right brake so my right side had a lot of road rash where my knee, shoulder, arm and wrist had met with the cement.  But I tried to brace myself with my left hand and broke the bone in the lower part of my arm right at the elbow.  It also dislocated my elbow but it popped right back in and tore the skin off my left thumb.

There were people walking behind me when all of this happened and being a veteran "faller" I knew the first thing I had to do was jump up and assure everyone that I was fine... even though blood was dripping onto the cement from my knee and thumb.  The people helped me get my bike.  I got back on it and road it back to my car.  When I got to my car, I still had to lift the bike up to put it in the back.  This was the difficult part.  I had almost given up when a guy noticed my problem and came over and helped me.  As I drove home, I thought about detouring to Plano Medical Center but decided that I was just being a wimp and would be fine when I got home and cleaned my wounds and put ice on them.  So, that's what I did.  I thought the worst wounds were the ones that were bleeding and concentrated on those when I got home cleaning them all well with soap and water, then peroxide and bandaging them.  But as time passed that day, my left arm continued to swell even with ice on it and the pain was horrible.  I kept ice on it all day Sunday and took tons of Advil.  I went to work on Monday and told my co-workers about it.  By then my left arm was bruised which I didn't realize since the bruising was on the back side of my arm.  Finally, by Wednesday I decided that I should go to the doctor because the pain was getting no better in my left arm and the swelling had still not gone down.  They couldn't get me in until the next day.  So on Thursday, I went to the doctor where they examined and re-bandaged my open wounds and then sent me for x-rays on my left elbow and wrist.

From there I was referred to an orthopedic surgeon who told me about the dislocation which had stretched stuff that shouldn't be stretched and the fracture.  He was hesitant to put a cast on it because of the dislocation part of the injury.  So, they put me in a sling and I had to go back to the doctor every week for about 2 months for new x-rays and for him to check on the healing.   The good news was the it all healed on it's own and no surgery was required.  I remember thinking during my weekly trips to the doctor that if I had just gone to the medical supply store on my own and bought my own $25 sling, I could have by-passed the doctor entirely.  But that too is another story.

Have a happy Sunday.  It's looking like a pool day in Dallas!  :-)