Do you like chocolate? Cheese? Go get a piece of your favorite. Put it in your mouth. Chew. Don't swallow. Let it coat your tongue. Taste it. Enjoy it. Experience it.
Do you like baked goods? Go to a bakery. Before ordering anything, take a deep breath. Experience the smells of the bakery. The dough, yeast, wheat. Let it fill your nostrils. Buy something warm. Tear it open and inhale. Smell it. Enjoy it. Experience it.
Do the same thing with a favorite song or piece of music. Don't go to the next song or work. Listen and then keep quiet. Enjoy the sound and the memory of the sound. Feel the tingle caused by the voice or the music. (I loved listening to my maternal grandmother talk to my father in the morning over coffee while I laid in bed in another room.)
Pet an animal or hold a loved one. Feel the skin or fur and the warmth, the heartbeat, the respiration. Hold it gently and think about how lucky we are to have another in our life that allows for this intimacy.
Look at something that you find beautiful. Another person, a building, a plant, a view. Take it all in, the color, the lighting, the angles, details. Take pleasure in each aspect.
Or combine two or more senses as you live the not-so-secret secret to happiness:
Savor something (at least once a day)
Slow down and enjoy something each day. Make it a habit.
It's supposed to rain here tomorrow. I'm going to spend 20 minutes savoring the rain.
Oddly, the recorded voice of Lyndon Johnson, former President of the United States, sends me into extreme relaxation, no matter what the topic or his mood. It has a similar effect that Bob Ross has on me.
Tell me about something that you like to savor (I understand that sex or expensive alcohols can fall into this category, and that's fine, but you don't need to share, we'll assume those...) or something that you plan on savoring soon.
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Thursday, March 6, 2008
The Secrets to Happiness: Secret #17
Fibrocartilaginous embolism (FCE) and Ralph
I promise that this is not becoming a medical or hypchondriacal blog. The diagram is helpful in explaining the past few days here at our home in Virginia.
A few months ago, I introduced our dog, Ralph (Rafe), who loves to play fetch with any sort of ball.
Tuesday evening, I arrived home from work to see Gabe and Ralph playing fetch in the yard. This is a heartwarming sight. All is right when you come home to this. Or Gabe is avoiding his homework. Just as I exited the car, Ralph lets out a painful yelp. We run to him. He is unable to move his rear legs.
We take him to the pet emergency room. We're told that Ralph has either a slipped disc, an FCE, damage from trauma, or an infection or tumor. He suffered no trauma. He was running and turning when it happened. He spent the night at the emergency center.
Jocelyn and I transferred him to a hospital early the next morning. After another evaluation and the same set of possibilities, we agreed to a myelogram to see if he had a bulging disc and would need surgery. The results came back around six pm on Wednesday. No slipped disc. It was probably FCE, but his spinal fluid was cloudy and yellow. They wanted to test for cancer.
We took the kids to see Ralph that evening. He was still recovering from the general anesthesia and look awful. Much crying ensued.
The next morning, I went to work. As I arrived, we received another call. Ralph looked to have a FCE. This was good news. If he had cancer, we did not intend on putting him through surgery and chemotherapy. His paralysis was suffering enough.
Ralph was discharged from the hospital yesterday. He is at home now. He has, they say, and FCE. This means that some of the pulpy substance in the center of one of his discs has penetrated the blood vessels surrounding his spine. That blocks the blood supply to the spine and leads to the paralysis.
Now that he is home, we're continuing to give him steroids to reduce the swelling around the injury. We're also performing physical therapy on him for ten minutes a session, six times per day. We move his legs through their full range of motion. The steroids and the stimulation should help the body build capillaries to bypass the blockage. When that happens, we'll see some signs of recovery.
We also have to feed him, make sure he drinks water, and I carry him outside for elimination. We have to keep him clean and groomed throughout this. I also turn him periodically so that he doesn't develop any bedsores.
It will be a couple of weeks before we see real improvement. If he fully recovers, it could take months.
Not that it is so important anymore, but Spring Break 2008 has been canceled for us. We'll be staying home and taking care of Ralph. Should he recover some mobility, we might take a day trip here or there.
Anyone been through this? I'd like to hear some uplifting stories. Thanks.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
March, 2008: 101 in 1,001 update
Click on the newspaper to get a better look at the official March update.
030 - See a doctor about my wrist
There are times when I just have to admit that I'm stupid. I'm not talking about willful stupidity. Rather I mean true idiocy. I'm 44 years old and wisdom is still beyond my horizon.
Let's go back 12 or so years. I lived in Seattle at the time. I don't remember if Monica was born yet. Jocelyn might have been pregnant. For some forgotten reason, I was terribly frustrated, so I did what any stupid man would do in that situation. I took out my frustration on an inanimate object.
A smart person would have slugged a pillow or gone for a run. A wise person would have shrugged off the annoyance and gotten on with what is important in life. I punched a piece of furniture. The top of drawer of our chest of drawers to be exact. I hit it hard. The pain shocked some wisdom into me. (Though I have struck one more inanimate object since that time. Over the dog's behavior no less. But this post isn't about anger issues. Though that punch, about four years ago, certainly didn't help the present situation.)
After a few weeks of dull pain, I went to the doctor. From there I saw a hand specialist. By now I had a ganglion cyst on the back of my wrist. They're fairly common and mostly harmless. The hand specialist dismissed it as a simple cyst and said it would go away with time. A lot of money was spent for nothing. I had one x-ray and no MRI. To confirm my stupidity, though, I failed to mention that I punched a thick piece of wooden furniture.
Since that time, I have had a series of ganglion cysts that come and go. My wrist has been getting weaker, too. I'm right handed and I have trouble opening things with that hand. I have to open jars with the left. My wrist is losing flexibility. It cannot support my weight for push ups. I fear it will fail me when I do bench presses. I have to hold it at a certain angle to prevent sharp pain. It's also a very noisy joint (crepitation it's called when the joint pops or grinds when moved.)
So, of course, being supremely stupid, I've done what most guys do. I've lived with it.
But, as we shall see on this list of 101 things in 1,001 days, I want to return to a weightlifting routine. I'd like to do that without pain.
So, I've made an appointment in March to see my doctor, who I last saw at a checkup last year (where I stupidly failed to mention my wrist.)
Looking at the diagram, I believe that my injury is on the radioscaphoidcapitate ligament and the capitate and possibly the lunate bones are affected. The injury also causes problems (pain) all way across the wrist away from the thumb. This is why I think the lunate is involved. Things are either being pushed around by excess fluids, thus the cysts when I actively use my wrist for exercising or sports. Or things aren't in decent formation due to a weakened or injured ligament or a roughed up bone, which would explain the noise and the pain.
I'll post an update when I know. I'm just hoping that I don't have arthritis.
Anyone out there have a ganglion cyst that causing them trouble? What did you do about it?
Saturday, March 1, 2008
093 - Organize all photos, digital and prints
In the good old days, we picked up our photos from a remote developer or a photo shop. They were stacked in an envelope with the dark negatives stored in a shorter pocket inside. We were limited by the size of the film role, usually 24 or 36, though we could sometimes squeeze an extra shot or two out of it.
Most of us--the normal ones, anyway--ripped open the envelope and rifled through the pictures. "Look at this one," was a pretty common phrase along with the variation: "Check this out." Then we put the envelopes full of photos in a shoebox with a promise to ourselves that we would have to load these things into a photo album.
Ahem...
Maybe I just dislike buying photo albums.
Then there is the situation such as the one at my parent's house. They have tons of old photos, most of them haphazardly stored in boxes, mixed like so much soil and gravel. A vein of their early years of marriage can be found, like a layer of sediment, only to abruptly end and a mix of color photos from Christmas in 1971 and my sister's junior high days in the 1980s dominates. You can sense there was once a rhyme and reason for the contents but it has long since been lost to browsers who were not privy to the system.
Not to fear, technology has created a wonderful cure: digital photos. Now we're only limited by the size of our storage cards or the memory on our cameras. We can review photos instantly, discard those we don't like, only keep the good ones, experiment with poses and angles and lighting and effects. Life is good.
Except now we have more photos than ever. And they're all over our virtual worlds. In fact, they might be more disorganized than the printed photos. If we don't have them stored somewhere besides our primary disk drive, we run the risk of losing them all...permanently.
Photos have never been more disorganized, unsafe, and plentiful as they are now. While technology is an enabler of this situation, it is also the savior. We can digitize everything. We can infinitely copy (assuming available storage) each photo.
Thus, task #093 on the 101 Things in 1,001 Days: organize all photos. Jocelyn and I will undoubtedly share this task. I'd like to organize all of our digital photos, digitize all of our old print photos, and archive (either online or to DVD or both) all of them.
This is a big task. Have you done this? Or are you one of those people that keeps everything nice and tidy?
I need tips, pointers, and lessons learned.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Twitter and tumblr
Two things (that are new for me) that I've been experimenting with are twitter and tumblr. First, I'll explain what they are, then why I'm even bothering, and why you might like to try them.
The other toy I've been playing with is tumblr. This is a site that lets you maintain a "tumblelog" or tlog. Postings on a tlog are short and media driven. Photos, videos, quotes, links, short text entries, audio files, and chats are the types supported by tumblr.Thursday, February 14, 2008
She loves me, she loves me not
But I think she loves me. Even if these are the candy hearts I received.
Every day should be Valentine's, don't you think? I don't mean wearing red and buying flowers and candy and going to dinners. I mean thinking about how much you love another person (or other people.)
It is one of my favorite holidays mainly because it offers a free pass to be goofily romantic. Anything goes on this day when it comes to professing your love. I say the sillier, the better.
Go ahead and kiss in public. Embarrass the kids if you got them. Embarrass other people around you if you don't. Wear matching clothes--Aloha wear in February is always special.
Oh, Jocelyn just brought me three more candy hearts to make up for the droll ones above.
Oh, she is the sweetest woman I have ever met.
Such poetry.
I don't deserve her.
I'm so touched that I can evoke such sentiment from her.
Happy Valentine's Day everybody.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
049 - Spend a one-on-one day each month with Gabe
Sometimes the guys just have to have some serious guy time. Women reading this probably don't understand what I mean. This isn't bonding over shopping for clothes or shoes I'm talking about here.
No. This is about spending a day hiking, or driving go-carts, or playing laser tag, or going fishing, or visiting historic battlefields.
Gabe and I need more time without mom or sis around. This 101 thing in 1,001 day activity is meant to create the habit, for both of us, of planning and spending time together.
You might think, it's only one day per month, that isn't a big deal. Well, I'm talking about a whole day here, not a couple of hours. These are days when we leave the house early, go grab breakfast, and start exploring and doing stuff together. We won't be home any earlier than 4 or 5 in the evening. In the summer it will probably be later.
He's going to be 11 years old soon. He won't be young for long. We need to make sure we stay connected now. This is meant for me as much as him. I want Gabe to talk fondly of me to his grandkids.
And when we're out and about and we get tired, we can act like orangutans and lounge around chewing on some straw.
Sometimes the day gets away from you
Some days it's best not to have plans.
On those days, the best you can do is have a general guideline of where you'd like to go and what you'd like to do, but you agree to follow the current and let the flow of the day take you where it needs to go. We do this in the name of family, work, civic responsibility, etc.
Yesterday was a bit like that.
After getting my daughter off to school, I went to vote in the Virginia primary before heading to work. Like much of the country, the weather was windy and cold.
When I arrived at work, my calendar was magically full of meetings. Not just meetings, but working meetings. The kind where I can join via a conference call and continue working on other things. The kind where we're not talking about doing things, but actually doing things. And, in a few cases, the kind that had me as the discussion leader.
They were scheduled straight through lunch. No breaks. I had to arrive late at one of them in order to use the restroom.
Oh, I haven't mentioned that I skipped breakfast. My energy levels dipped to 4:15 a.m. levels by 1 o'clock. Luckily the one o'clock meeting ended after only 15 minutes. I could grab lunch before the 2.
But the cafeteria only had fried food. Eating a meal only from the salad bar was out of the question. So, I had to chance leaving the building.
By that time, it had been raining for a couple of hours and the temperature was nearing freezing.
A quick trip to Arby's turned into a long wait in the drive-thru for a sandwich and an unsweetened tea...I could've eaten a large curly fries. When I returned, it was 5 minutes after 2. My next meeting had started.
We had 4 points to cover in that meeting. When I arrived they were still discussing point 1. When I left at 3 for my next appointment, we were still working out the kinks regarding point 1. You know what a mix of guilt and relief feels like? Well, I do.
At 3, I was supposed to be at Virginia Blood Services, where I was donating platelets again. Normally, I donate at work, but they called and I felt compelled so I scheduled an afternoon appointment. I drove there, knowing I would be 15 minutes late, only to discover that they had moved into a new building that was only about 3 minutes from my office. Oh, boy.
I arrived at nearly 3:30. They did not hook me up to the machine until nearly 4. The procedure takes 76 minutes once it begins. I read old issues of Time magazine and last week's Richmond Style Weekly. They gave me Fig Newtons and water. I had finished off the iced tea on the circuitous drive to the new building. My blood pressure was nice 108/71, but my pulse, at rest, was 90. Lovely caffeine.
At 5:30, with numb lips from the anti-coagulent, I headed home. I would have just enough time to eat before we set out with Gabe for the middle school he'll be attending next year. They were having an open house for parents and kids, introducing them to the school and what middle school life is like in this particular program.
Arriving home, in the rain, in the dark, at 6:15 with only a roast beef sandwich and a couple of Fig Newtons in my system, I was starved. Everyone had eaten. I had kid leftovers of a small bowl of mac & cheese and a bowl of steamed broccoli.
Monica called from school at 6:20. She had stayed after to work on an orchestra presentation. They were performing at the open house at 7. She didn't have her informal performance polo with her and she would like to have it by 6:30. We live 15 minutes from school. We hurried and arrived by 6:45.
From that point, we listened to a variety of presentations from students, teachers, and administrators. We heard music from the orchestra and later, the band. We had Q&A sessions with students, went on a tour of the building with the kids, and had a long conversation with Monica's orchestra teacher.
We made it home at 9:30. Monica was starving. By the time we settled down, cleaned up and went to bed, it was well after 11.
Some days fly by and you have no control. Yesterday felt that way for me.
But I am glad that I didn't have to play rugby in the mud.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Why I could never be a movie reviewer
There was a time when I would see practically every movie that was released. Whether they were good or bad, or so nondescript that they might not ever be viewed again, I paid my for matinee ticket and went to the cinema.
If you see a lot of film, you start thinking that "Hey, maybe I could write movie reviews." I thought that, but never acted on it. Now, I'm glad I didn't.
Here are my reasons why:
1) Most movies just aren't very good. They have about as much value as the typical television show. They aren't worth the time for the reviewer or the filmgoer.
2) Movies that are considered "good" usually, these days, contain strong imagery that sledgehammers you over the head with its goodness.
3) Escapist comedies always run the risk of containing some form of scatalogical humor, which I detest and which, unfortunately, lingers in my memory for the rest of my life. I'll never forgive the makers of Ladies Man, for example.
4) Obviously, a reviewer has to spend time at the cinema, subjecting him or herself to the law of bad movie averages and then he or she has to come up with a coherent review of a likely incoherent movie. Or even worse, come up with something to say about a so-so movie.
I can't subject myself to gross out humor, or tense situations involving a gun and the potential for graphic violence. I can't separate myself from realistically cruel depictions of life, such as movies regarding the Holocaust.
While horror movies used to be my thing, today I find them tedious. There scares come from very loud noises and things jumping out from the dark. I just don't feel like sitting through these things, watching characters make very stupid choices.
And, we should probably not talk about the stupid choices made in so-called chick flicks. Sometimes two stupid people deserve each other. These types of movies provide the fantasy situation where it actually happens. Typically, these people wind up in terrible relationships and marriages with mismatched partners. If we're lucky, we too can find someone stupid enough to love us. I don't need these types of movies.
Wow, this post has a decidedly negative vibe. Let me remedy that. But first, a quick restatement of this post's purpose: I couldn't be a movie reviewer because I cannot tolerate the thought of subjecting myself to movies that will likely be uninteresting and valueless at best or contain images that will be indelibly stamped in my psyche at worst.
Now the upbeat part: I am so appreciative of the fact that there are people who review movies. They reduce my risk and save my money with their takes on film. Thank you, movie critics.
Plus, I love movies. Even the ones that make me uncomfortable, I can still appreciate for the artistry and effort that went into making them.
Those movies that I love make it all worthwhile. I like making lists and ranking things. I love a lot of movies and if I had to make a Top 10 list it would change depending on the season, my mood, and my current interests. Here's a look at what it might be today, in no particular order:
1) All About Eve
2) Patton
3) Glory (probably a consistent Top 10 for me)
4) Singin' in the Rain (except that silly dance daydream sequence...sheesh)
5) The Sixth Sense
6) Evil Dead 2 (probably another regular Top 10)
7) Blade Runner (this one, too, would be a regular on this list)
8) The Princess Bride (and this one...maybe I could make a Top 10)
9) Little Miss Sunshine
10) Once Upon a Time in the West (if Henry Fonda is the bad guy, it has to be interesting, if not good)
What movies do you like? Whose your most trusted movie reviewer? I trust, but don't always agree with, Roger Ebert, as I have for going on 30 years.
Friday, February 8, 2008
025 - Complete two oil paintings
I've never had the nerve to paint with oils.
Or maybe I'm too lazy to clean the brushes.
Arcylics and watercolors, even housepaints, have been part of my attempts at paintings, but never oils.
Over the next 1,001 days, my goal is to complete two oil paintings. They won't be very large, I expect. The largest will be a 24" x 24" more than likely. Maybe, if I feel good about it, I'll do a larger canvas.
At some point, I will actually post some of my paintings. Like everything else that I do with a modicum of creativity, I take my inspiration from the things that I like and I try to copy them. That at least gives me the confidence to begin.
Painting, like any form of art, isn't about creating the masterpiece, it's about losing yourself in the process. It's not about being courageous or fearless because courage and fear don't even enter your mind. Questions of good or bad are best left to people with nothing better to do.
The quote on the poster (that I made at one of my favorite websites) captures the essence of the amateur artist. It's easy. Just do it.
So, I'll hold my nose and get out the turpentine and have patience with the long drying times and paint a couple of oils. I'll post the results.
