'Tis The Season Of Smiles And Good Horns

Tis the season, folks. Just maybe not exactly how you thought.

Twice a month, on the 1st and 3rd Saturday mornings of the month, you'll find me at the SW corner of 99th and Bell, holding up a sign saying "Honk For Peace". There will be a group of us, many of whom have joined Grandmothers For Peace. A couple of us are in the Men's Auxiliary, that being less unwieldy than forming/joining a separate group called Grandfathers For Peace.

I tend not to talk about it. I know from experience it's not always well received. I've been challenged with "Why?" in a tone that suggests I might have just admitted robbing banks to support  my retirement. (Note for the curious: I haven't. Robbed nor admitted.) Part of the answer is because I can. I was too young to demonstrate during the Civil Rights Protests, however much I supported them. For decades I was too busy or unwilling to join a host of others, and find I really hate trying to find parking in Phoenix proper where most current ones are held. And let's not forget my general ability to walk or stand for long periods expected of those who join in. This, however, I can do. 

You can't miss us. Part of that might be the noise from honking vehicles that pass. Part of it is the group, spread along next to the sidewalk, mostly sitting in lawn chairs: we are grandparents after all.  Signs are scattered all over our corner, and one regular member holds up on a pole a flag which has replaced the field of stars with a peace sign.

Yes, it's a legal US flag. That's one of the many things I've learned during the two years I've been one of the demonstrators.

I've also learned a bit about others in the group. One is a world-traveling concert pianist, able to join us only seldom. One brings bagpipes occasionally. One has to leave early for regularly scheduled mah jongg and has been unable to join us for brunch after demonstrating  until  recently when we adjusted our hours. One is bi-polar, another died during her return to her home state of Colorado last year, one is on chemo. Three have served on the management board of a non-profit, two work at a food shelf, one has held political office. Some stay year-round, others head to cooler parts come summer, same as I do. Stay or just winter here, some come from Sun City, some from Sun City West. We arrive in cars or golf carts. I'm even sorting out which names belong with which faces... sort of.

I've learned which commercial vehicles will or won't generally honk, as well as just how painfully loud some of those horns can be. But hey, we asked. I also see how many more supporters we have who'll wave and smile, but are too shy to actually honk. Or maybe, this being Arizona after all, are reluctant for their neighbors to know they support our cause. Some just wait until the light changes before they honk as if nobody will then realize exactly who honked because they're too busy driving. Others are so enthusiastic that we worry about them as they smile, wave, honk and  text all while passing by. We wish those all our best... including enough funds to pay their tickets should any cops be nearby.

Because I've also learned how many folks react negatively to our demonstrations. There are the ones who steal a glance our way from several cars back, then resolutely look straight ahead as they pass the intersection. Some go a step further, giving us a little scowl. Maybe even a big one. I have to wonder, while seeing them change from neutral observers of the world they pass, to active disapproval of us, just what it is they object to. And why? Do they think we don't support our military and by demonstrating are showing our disapproval of their glorious war service? Those folks almost never stop to ask us if we support our troops or not, and I doubt whether they can parse out the difference between supporting them but not supporting how they are  misused. (Another whole posting for later.)

Some folks are more overt in their disapproval,  using their short stop at the light to roll down their windows for commentary. A few do not hesitate to express their faith ... that we are going straight to hell. That Christ hates us. That they know one of a variety of ways to competently vocalize what awful people we are, especially when they can't discern that the ambient road noise as traffic starts up again effectively covers up every bit of what they are communicating except their tone of voice. Most of them are content to just wave as they pass by,  not understanding that it takes more than a single raised finger to show their support and encouragement.

Really, though, who actually supports war over peace?

Who?

Regardless of their reactions, we smile and wave, some of us with full open hands, some with the two-finger "V" peace symbol, at everyone who passes. The talking among ourselves we save for the gaps in traffic, due to the noise levels. That makes for some interesting conversations.

If we ignore for a bit the occupants, and just note the vehicles, there is still plenty to learn. There are changing patterns in how busy traffic is, or who moves over for emergency vehicles, or who can't signal a turn or wait for a gap to pull into traffic. Some seasons there are various items attached to show support for sport teams. This season, the most popular decorations seem to be antlers arising from back windows. Having heretofore only seen those from the back, I thought they were cute but didn't give them much thought. Facing them head-on this morning, I got the full effect when I also spotted the little furry red "nose" attached to the hoods of the cars sporting antlers. Who knew there were so many Rudolphs hanging around the area? And why are the all grounded? Shouldn't they be working on their stamina right now?

On this last protest day before the big Holidays, the mood is much more friendly than usual. 'Tis truly the season of smiles and good horns!

Good Party, Except....

Last night was the annual club X-mas party. It's a chance to dress up, dance if you wish, share lots of food, chat with old friends and meet new ones. The food was great, the company interesting and friendly, a live band played.

So what was the problem? A live band played.

OK, that sounds like a plus, right? The standard seems to be an assumption that live is better than a DJ. I suppose they're right. At least when the live band is good, that is. Last night's band was excruciating to listen to, and the volume was turned up so loud they were unavoidable. Even shouting at the person sitting next to you didn't quite make conversation possible. Perhaps the band members a: were already deaf, b: thought we were deaf, or c: thought volume would hide the flaws in presentation rather than accentuate them.

The musical selections were decent. Starting off, there were several really old-time goodies, the kind of music most of us geezers still recognize, and Steve absolutely loves. Luckily for him, his back was hurting so much he sent me on without him. The selections morphed into X-mas classics, mostly secular with only one or two outright religious songs.

The members of the band were fairly personable. We didn't chat with them but they smiled frequently. One of the band members was also a club member, which aided in their choice for our  party, since it was easy to tend to other details of the party without expending a lot of energy and time locating a suitable band.

The band also dressed well, in black with occasional trim in holiday reds and greens, or a fuzzy antler headpiece. The one exception needn't have been one, except for an unfortunate oversight. The woman in the front row who had a string of jingle bells wrapped around one foot so that shaking it also left her hands free to play something else simultaneously made two mistakes. Her skirt was a little short, not covering her knees even though she sat in the front row. By itself, not a problem. However, her enthusiasm for shaking the bells led to her legs spreading apart enough so that ... well, let's just say certain things can never be unseen.

My main complaint is the band's musicality. Or lack thereof. They needed a vocalist. Several members sang solo, but none really qualified. The lead singer had a range of about one octave, all very low. Where songs we all know rose in pitch, her voice went down. I'm not one who can really tell perfect pitch from relative pitch, but I recognize when someone has even more problems in that area than I do. One of the men had the second verse of a song for his showpiece. Unfortunately it took the rest of the band about two meters to figure out he was using a different tempo than they had been and adjust to match him. The harmonica soloist was never a member of a marching band. The rhythm was already unsteady, but accentuated by how she ended her musical phrases. Where the final note was to be held for 4 beats, she started the next phrase about the middle of the third beat.

Ouch. No really, ouch.

What was really interesting is how many compliments on the band's performance were offered in the club this morning while I was there.

I decided to keep my mouth shut.

More Patience Needed

Yeah, assuming you go for the idea that all the things which annoy me these days are my fault or just beyond anybody's control, and patience will cure the  problem. I posit the idea that neither applies, way too often. And hey, we're not even going to discuss President* "Cheetolini".

Let's start with my morning shopping trip to WalMart. It was a short list. I wanted to hit the photo section to make some more photo cards. I also needed a very few sundries. Steve had his own list, so we went our separate ways at the door.

Photo is along the back wall in the store. Time was when this would have been a problem in itself, but my knees are so much better that I hardly think about it. So this wasn't on the problems list. Now on the other hand, sitting before their machines - anybody's machines - to generate photo cards has always been filled with annoyances for me. The machines do not operate in ways that I think they should. Symbols don't translate the way I find logical, and options I firmly believe should be available to me somehow just aren't available. Let's add that these machines change every year, so each visit is a new learning curve, and almost never is there a person familiar with them to help out. All this is true of every visit, and not just WalMart's machines either. So add a level of frustration already built into the anticipation of the event.

However, I had just been there a week ago to generate this season's cards. I finally located another favorite picture thought long lost, and decided to take advantage of that recent experience to make another set of cards for next year while I remembered how. Alas. Sometime in the last few days they changed the software in the machines. Honest! After getting bogged down a couple times trying to work through the program, I backed out to start over. I remembered exactly where to find the card template I used this year, decided you all would forget what it looked like and I could use it again, and started hunting.

It wasn't there.

Not anywhere.

I tried several different ways to reach it, and failed. I tried a number of other cards I'd considered  and rejected, but none of them were available either. And of course the young man who had been tending the photo counter when I arrived was now someplace else in the store. Nobody to ask for help now that I finally decided I needed to.

I pulled out my thumb drive and left. I'd had enough, and this wasn't a battle I needed to fight today. I figure any time in the next 370 days will do.

Next on my list was a dust mop. There is enough uncarpeted floor in this house that could use one's attention, and neither brooms nor vacuums quite do the job. Armed with memories of childhood, I headed over to the cleaning supplies section of the grocery department to hunt for one.

They had brooms. They had wet mops. They had chemicals galore.  They had weirdly shaped replacement pads in microfibers (!?!) to fit handles I didn't own and they weren't selling. No. Plain. Ordinary. Dust. Mops.

I double checked.

Nada.

I even expanded my search area a bit. Another of my pet annoyances with WalMart is once you know where something is located, they move stuff around the store. It ranks right up there with them discontinuing whatever my favorite brand or variety within a brand is. Some idiot probably told them that if they can get the customers walking through more of the store while they search, said customers will buy more other stuff on their way to their goal.

Actually, I've taken a poll of fellow frustrated customers. Most of us just get angry, and some of us simply go away.

I just cut my shopping list to the two absolutely-must-get items on it, and walked out. My patience for shopping was kaput.

So if any of you wonder why so many of us do more and more of our shopping online....

(1) Brain Fart Explained

If you're like me, when you're searching for a particular word, if something else pops into your mind it kicks aside all hope of finding the right word. You keep circling to the wrong one and can't get past it, not for hours, sometimes longer.

The older I get, the more common that is. Watching Jeopardy, for example, I know exactly what the answer (OK, question) is, I can see it in my head, but the word just isn't there. I would never consider trying to be on that show because everybody would have the correct answer first, and be three more questions down the road except for the fact that the real information would have been stated. It's a change. Twenty years ago, I was simply ignorant and couldn't have even imagined I knew the word. Now, especially after watching years of the program with Steve, I know the words are missing. Maybe just displaced.

Yesterday, in ordinary conversation - and don't ask me why the hell this was ordinary - I was searching for a word. It wasn't lost until I started hunting for it. I could describe why I needed that word. I knew exactly which one-and-only word I needed. It was the name of a disease and had only one name, no synonyms, no approximations. I could - and did - explain what it meant.

The disease is a blood disease, most common in children (because of poor survival rates?), and targets those of mostly African descent. It is thought to be the result of a genetic adaption that is beneficial in areas where malaria is endemic, increasing survival rates in those who contract it. Here, there appears to be no up-side, with no malaria to fight. It requires blood transfusions for the child's survival.

All this knowledge, shared with Steve, while moderately interesting, brought no word forth from him either. My years-old information sources had been different from his. Or maybe I just wasn't describing it as well as I thought. I was certain, as soon as I ran across the right word I would recognize it instantly.

Searching for the name, my brain had gotten sidetracked. I know without a doubt that "cystic fibrosis" is wrong, but the brain stuck there, like a train going down the track in the wrong direction because the switch has been flipped, with nobody to switch it back. I couldn't come up with the right term by bedtime. When I woke up in the wee hours, the fitful sleep I had after that point and the dreams I had searching for the term were all unproductive. This happens more and more these days, and on the way to my computer, I spent some time musing about my aging brain and possible "old timers disease", as a late friend used to call it. I try not to let that scare me: I've been very "brain proud" most of my life. One aunt who lost her vocabulary had a terminal brain tumor when I was a child, and I give passing thought to that as well. I can list past chemical exposures and try to calculate their effects too, or remember my parents' last years, or ....

Not helpful! There was only one solution: Google. I spent a bit of time translating my descriptive paragraph to a few key words for the search: "blood disease African children". Since my idea of what are key words seldom match Google's, while I was typing those in, I was also working on plan B. There wasn't a plan B. This was either going to work or I was going to have to pester one or more of the medical professionals I have contact with for the name, with no reason relevant to why I was seeing them.

Fortunately, the first six answers to my search all came up with the right answer: sickle cell anemia. Of course it was! Not only did I have the missing name, I instantly knew why my vocabulary train derailed, this time It was the similarity of sound in the first syllables, sickle and cystic.

For some reason I find that reassuring.

Ask George Carlin Why....

Poo... poop... crap... frass... guano... coprolite... buffalo chips... horse biscuits... turd... cow pie... dung... feces... #2... doo-doo... BM... discharge... excrement... defecation... stool...feculence... waste... manure... droppings....

All these terms are OK for use on the public airwaves according to the FCC. So why oh why did somebody decide you can't say "shit" for shit?

Medi-Go-Round

Finding just the right combination of just the right meds can be a challenge. There have been several adjustments in the 5 years plus since my A-Fib diagnosis. I was very lucky in my timing, having my first ER visit on my 65th birthday, just a few days after going from no insurance to Medicare.

First, there was the decision to take me off the diuretic that was controlling my BP, under the supposition that it was - after about 15 years - interfering with my electrolytes. It was replaced by a beta blocker, Metoprolol, which has the main effect of keeping my heartbeat slowed to between 50 and 60 bpm. Since the a-fib attacks boosted it to around 130 bpm, this was a logical choice. I'm still on that one.

It wasn't very good, however, at controlling my blood pressure. Add Lisinopril. Double the pill dose. Double the pill number.  Add Amlodipine, with regular BP monitoring, in case the dose needed to boost from one daily to two, or drop back again.

The Metoprolol also wasn't good at regulating the cardiac rhythm. Irregularities progressed for a couple years until, while on vacation back in Minnesota, I required an ambulance ride during which I kept nearly passing out about once a minute. I've got some real interesting EKG tapes from that ride to take home to my Arizona cardiologist so he could see just what had been happening. You may have read here earlier that his response was, "Well, it's not flatline, but it's just as bad." It was enough to scare the crap out of me.

Luckily I had a relationship with a cardiologist in Minnesota that enabled me to slip in an appointment the very next day in their clinic office. They prescribed Amiodarone. It worked so well that after 6 months of no irregularity whatsoever - and I'm one of those who can tell it's happening - I was taken off the Warfarin, prescribed to prevent strokes. Stopping that was fine, since we never did get to the point of regulating what the proper dose for me was.

So now everything was stable, and for several years. End of story, right?  Well, not exactly. My eye surgeon, the one who replace my cataract, in a regular follow-up visit, noted brown spots accumulating in the back of my eyes. It's a symptom of Amiodarone toxicity. There are other nasty effects when your body decided it's toxic. Last spring, before heading north again, I discussed with my cardiologist my desire to go off Amiodarone. Just, not until I was back for 9 months for medical supervision. The toxicity wasn't going to drastically change while on vacation.

A month ago, the process started. The plan was a half pill for 2 weeks, then cold turkey. The medication stays in the system for weeks anyway, so the effect would be a gradual tapering off.

Theories are great. Life doesn't always cooperate. Within just a few days I was getting episodes of arrhythmia, prompting a call to my cardiologist. Each day's episode was more extreme. She took me seriously, put me back on my Amiodarone, doubling the dose to make up for the tapering off, before settling back down to normal dose. That is what prompted my going back on Warfarin as well.

Fortunately I had the foresight to keep the medic alert bracelet I wore last time I was on Warfarin.

The rhythms are back to normal. INR levels not so much. Those are getting monitored twice weekly, as opposed to every two weeks or even less often for most other people. After two weeks, my numbers which should have been between 2 and 3, with one being unmedicated normal, were over 7. My blood's ability to clot was so low that the regular BP cuff was enough to raise a bruise. The lab tech who took that reading told me to start eating with a spoon because I didn't want to stab myself with a fork.

I confirmed that wasn't a joke.

Today we started Plan B for weaning me off Amiodarone. It involves replacing it immediately with Cardizem. It's expensive. However, it's also stronger than what I've been taking at lowering BP. So, I also quit the Amlodipine and cut the Lisinopril in half. Not that they get thrown out, but instead are kept around in case this doesn't exactly work out. All in all, the cost is close to a wash. Plus, the cardiologist and I had a long discussion on the desirable range of BP readings, now that too low is an actual possibility. So that will be checked twice daily, and the Lisinopril intake will be modified accordingly.

I'm just a work in progress.

Low-Info Voters: No Excuses

Public radio often has segments I find highly disturbing. Today, Nov. 6, Election Day, was no exception. The interviewer was speaking with a Millennial who was representing the viewpoint of others in his generation, explaining why so many of them did not vote.

After listing several "reasons" for not voting, one stood out. Too many of them were low-information voters. Not knowing everything about all the candidates, they were unwilling to vote for any of them.

There are so many ways that is wrong. And this time around, it is so very important. That is, unless you have no problems with a president* and a political party promoting racism, misogyny, fearmongering and violence, not to mention destroying the environment so the rich can get richer, incidentally the same principle behind the tax cut plan, and ignoring the Constitution.

It's not hard to get the facts, folks, as long as you pay a little bit of attention. If you don't have time for in depth research, check with somebody who's well-versed in the party platform from each major party, ask what they stand for, and decide which most closely matches your personal ideals. It is possible to vote the party line, as they are so far apart these days, and any representative of each is more likely to, well, represent. Don't let yourself be fooled into thinking somebody has to be a "purist" in following the party line, and if not, you can't vote for anything they stand for. The perfect should never be the enemy of the good, particularly when the choices are so stark.

I always ran into trouble once the ballot got to the point of voting for the judges. I'm not sure why they were ever put on the ballot. Politics should not be part of their process. Following the laws should be. Besides, they were never out there advertising themselves. I simply asked my attorney friend who lived in the same county whether anyone was way out there so far they weren't fulfilling their duties. And more often or not, candidates way down-ballot got no marks either way on my card. If I couldn't decide from ignorance, blank did seem to be the proper choice. So yes, I get that. We may not know everybody well enough to make all the choices wisely. But we should still know some race(s) that we have an opinion on, and get out and do our civic duty by VOTING.

It's a small price to pay for the privilege of living in this country.

Too soon we forget how recently so many of us weren't allowed to have a say in how our country was run. Minorities, the poor, women, those between age 18 and 21 - we've all had to fight for our places as additions to the rolls. And today, too many of the powerful are working to deny that right all over again. Let's not do that job for them by staying home.