What a relief! My surgeon removed my appendix and a small part of my cecum in a laparoscopic surgery on Tuesday. And the verdict is... no cancer! Below, a video of a laparoscopic appendectomy.
The first surgeon I consulted before this operation, an (Asian) Indian, had wanted to do a laparoscopic procedure on my appendix, then open an incision to check my bowels. My GP vetoed that and sent me to a Chinese surgeon, who did both procedures laparoscopically.
Non-invasive surgery means less trauma to tissue, quicker healing and less pain.
Potentially struggling with cancer troubled me for a couple of months. The emotional weight of that worry has lifted. Three days after the surgery, I'm almost pain free.
My doctors advised me to sit and do nothing for a couple of weeks. No exercise, except perhaps for walking.
I'm facing a 3 to 4 week recovery, then I'll be able to care for my grandkids again. Doctors especially advised me against lifting heavy things during my recovery. My one year old grandkids already weigh about 30 pounds apiece.
And, my one year old grandson loves to use grandpa's belly as a trampoline.
Thanks to commenters for your support through this tough period.
The house is a mess. I'm a lonely old widower with a part time girlfriend. Things get kinda backed up. Waking up to the aftermath of a "swell party," as Betty Boop does in this 1937 cartoon, is only a memory for me.
The girlfriend is coming up from the city for the day. Not that we'll spend much time at my house. Today is the big combined birthday party for the grandkids. My twins just celebrated their first birthday. My toddler girl celebrated her third birthday on Friday. The big party will be held at the pavilion at the park.
When you factor in my month long struggle with health, including a couple of surgeries... well, house cleaning has been at the bottom of the to do list. It's pretty funky around here.
I try to stay off the social media on Sunday, and I'm thinking about extending that to the entire weekend. Political argument and controversy on the web doesn't do a damned thing for me. It's a non-productive annoyance. My weblog long ago ceased to be about political argument and controversy, too. There is an unending and unendurable supply of that shit out there. What could I possibly add?
So, my weekends are normally spent in silence. Haven't been getting out much any more.
Four years of sitting up here in the woods in my cabin in the Catskills. I've enjoyed it. I lived such a chaotic, adventurous, tragic, comic and outrageous life for 60 years that the rest was needed. I haven't missed work at all. Don't know if I'll ever want to go back to office politics and dealing with people I don't even want to know.
I just struggled through the first major illness and hospitalization of my life, not to mention two surgeries. Life narrowed down to babysitting the grandkids, heading home for dinner, taking the opiate pain meds and sleeping until the next morning. Another more serious surgery coming up in a month or so with a month long recovery period afterward.
Rainy day here in the mountains. Windows encircle my front room. They're all open. It's as if I'm sitting out in the woods in the middle of the rain.
It's time for a serious clean out of the house. Time to throw a lot of stuff away.
I was invited to a benefit for a musician (I'll call him "Joe") who I've known for decades here in Woodstock. The pitch was that musicians should band together to help him because he has no health insurance and he's been through a bout of bad health. So have I.
I found this pic of this very nice jewelry piece at the Soul Jewelry Store.
Years ago, I attended almost all of these types of benefits. Back then I was hustling CDs and personal appearances as a solo performer or as a leader of a band. But, I let all that go a few decades ago, so I seldom do attend such benefits anymore.
The request to help out Joe baffled me. I had assumed that he had long exited the scene and found a job, as I had. Joe certainly never had any prospect of, as they say, "making it big" in the music biz. His highest rank in the biz was playing rhythm guitar in cover bands that gigged in local bars. So far as I know, he's never written a song, issued a CD or played in a serious venue.
Back in the late 70s until the mid 80s, I was doing pretty well in the local and regional music scene. My recordings were very well received in the press and played here and there on the radio, and I got a lot of critical acclaim. Even a few TV appearances. My picture was in all the papers and I gigged regularly. I even did some very highly publicized opening acts for a few big time acts.
And I still wasn't making any money!
This state of affairs is pretty common in the music biz.
So, I got the hell out of the serious pursuit of fame and fortune in the music biz. I returned to school to get an advanced degree in tech so that I could provide for my family. Even Myrna's urging to take the music biz seriously again didn't move me, much to her chagrin.
As a result, I have some retirement savings, Social Security benefits, a pension and I own my house outright. Had I continued on the course Joe took, I'd be a beggar too. As it is, the deductible on my Social Security Supplemental policy for the hospital visits I just endured will take quite a chunk out of my savings.
Music biz martyrs like Joe are a dime a dozen in Woodstock. He evidently never learned a trade or found a job that paid benefits and promised a pension. There are a thousand twists on this story of music biz martyrdom. Some guys had a hit single at age 18 and have lived in poverty the rest of their lives struggling to write and record that next hit that never comes. Others are political activists who play the lefty propaganda circuit and never make any money.
I didn't attend Joe's benefit. I was surprised that I felt more than a little pissy about being asked to pony up for his bills. Why should I? He made the decision to live in poverty and to never learn a trade. I swallowed my pride and ate shit. (I also enjoyed a family life that I would have sacrificed had I continued to chase fame.)
I guess helping him out in some way would have been the Christian thing to do. But, really, I don't give a damn.
When I lived in San Francisco, in my early 20s, I read almost everything Henry Miller wrote. Of course, I read him for the sex. Who doesn't? I was living on the bum... working a part time job and the rent was all of $150 a month... unbelievable, huh? I spent many brilliant afternoons in North Beach reading in the Caffe Trieste and sipping cappuccinos. Last week, I bought two obscure Miller books on Amazon, both from his Book of Friends series.
The price for each of these books was about 4 bucks. Amazon sourced them second hand from a couple of libraries. They are in remarkably good shape and free from marginal notations. The shipping cost more than the books.
I am moving, in retirement, backward to a life similar that how I lived in college and in the years before I had children and a serious job... except that I'm no longer obsessed with chasing after pussy!
Reading a real book, after years of reading almost exclusive on an electronic tablet, is quite a different experience. Better of worse? I haven't decided. The backlighting of a tablet strains my eyes. The paper in old books is a dull yellow.
For the past 25 years, I've been reading technical stuff and the short postings that are common on weblogs and online news sites. 500 words seems to be the optimum length in the electronic medium. I usually aim for that in my weblog posts.
Miller was deliberately verbose. Conversations between his characters run on for pages. He develops thoughts over the length of an entire book. Although both the Book of Friends tomes are short, each is a far more developed intellectual thread than I am now accustomed to reading.
The subject matter of Miller's books is precisely what the titles say... remembrances of his men friends and of riding his bicycle, both important subjects. I've always had one or two close male friends, usually guys with whom I play music or ride bike. (Sometimes both.) In fact, just last night I took a 10 mile bike ride with Big Joe, my longtime lead guitar player friend. We stopped for dinner in the diner afterward.
My life is now quiet and leisurely. I'm hardly ever in a hurry and I have no deadlines to meet. I even drive in a different way... old man driving. If somebody else is pushy and in a hurry, I let him have his way. If you've ever driven in New York City on a daily basis, you know that this is a radical change. Drivers fight like morons for every inch, battle constantly for position and toot the horn in your back at every light and stop sign.
Driving in that atmosphere makes you constantly anxious and pissed off. That's in the past for me.
I play classical and sacred music much more often than popular music now. Classical and sacred music are also more long form and contemplative than popular music. My car radio is always tuned to Sirius XM's classical station and I'm hearing pieces I haven't listened to in 40 years.
This changes the texture of my life very significantly, too.
My babysitting duties will lighten up quite a bit in a couple of months. My daughter is a public school teacher and she'll have the summer off. Life will be very quiet. I'll have two and a half months to read, to contemplate and to garden.
I'm a quiet old guy living a slow and peaceful life.
Got my bike back from the shop, fully tuned up and ready to go yesterday. I celebrated by taking one of my routine routes through the Catskills, a 10 mile ride that begins at Cooper Lake. What a relief to be back outdoors! Reminded me of this book by Henry Miller, my favorite writer.
Not the sort of book you think of when you think of Miller, right? As the cover shows, this is the second volume of his Book of Friends. The titles of both books pretty accurately describe the contents. Both books are remarkably cheap at Amazon. I ordered them as I was writing this post.
Haven't read either of these books since I was on the bum as a kid in San Francisco. I sat in the coffee houses and read for hours. My favorite coffee house was the Caffe Trieste in North Beach.
I have a lot of books on tap right now. Including, an Audiobooks version of Suleiman the Magnificent!
Anyway, the crickets are beginning to chirp and the geese were honking fiercely overhead as I biked through the mountains. Bicycling outdoors is so much more interesting than wanking away on the stationary bike at the gym.
Don't know how many springs I have remaining. Must get the most out of each one.
My bicycle is four or five years old. The guys at the shop told me that I will either need major repairs or a new bike by the end of this season. The gears and chain are wearing out. A new bicycle costs about $700, a pretty hefty bite for a retiree on a fixed income.
A cold spell is setting in, so I won't be able to ride a lot for a week or so. But, I'll be back to my daily routine of riding 15 to 20 miles as soon as a warm weather arrives.
Back in the day when Myrna was still in this vale of tears, back when we had two big incomes and a doorman apartment in Manhattan, we commonly threw down 100 bucks apiece for dinner ("Like it was nothing!" as they say in my hometown) in a new and interesting restaurant. Those days are long gone. Now, I'm an old widowed grandpa living on a retirement budget. My everyday dress is sweats.
So, it's a pretty big deal that I'm going out to dinner at a swanky restaurant this weekend. Dinner and dancing! And the invitation says to "Dress to Impress!"
In true retired grandpa fashion, I'm not picking up the tab. No, I was invited out for the 40th birthday bash of the groom at a wedding I attended last fall. (I think of the couple who got married as "kids," because they are the age of my daughters.)
So, I'll wipe off the grandbaby puke, doff the sweats for one night and put on the Ritz to the best of my ability... which is... well, moderate. My waistline has expanded and the old suits don't fit. So the best I can do is a nice blue blazer and slacks. With the Magic Waistband.
I'll even wear the Jerry Garcia red tie I bought in Philadelphia oh so long ago when I visited Myrna in the hotel she stayed in on a business trip. Her law firm always put her up in a 5 star hotel.
Don't know if I'll ever see that kind of luxury again. Oh, well... I got plenty of that back in the days of wine and roses.
This weekend's go out reminds me of an Alberta Hunter tune that Myrna and I sang together, that really expresses the breathless drama that Myrna loved... "Darktown Strutters' Ball."
Ain't that elegant? (I confess. I do miss so much being called "honey" all the time!)
The "Darktown" part of that song is precious, isn't it? The concept of the tune is totally out of whack with today's PC stupidity. Many a night, Myrna and I did take the taxi up to Darktown, that is to say Harlem, to go to one of our favorite blues and jazz clubs on 125th St.
The black men dressed up in their best suits with two-tone shoes. The black women dressed in their Sunday finest, including those huge black hats with the netting and birds on top. It was like being in a Thin Man movie. My late wife was named after Myrna Loy, a huge Hollywood movie startlet much loved in the Philippines.
Life has changed. It always does. I can never understand the people who talk about how they are politically advanced critters because they embrace change. What the hell choice do we have but to embrace change? It's coming whether or not we want it, and we don't necessarily dictate what that change will be.
Myrna loved drama, excitement, wild nights out on the town and putting on the Ritz. That was a wild and beautiful part of my life. There are some stories I could tell... I don't know if I ever will.
I can look back now in wonder and gratitude, instead of aching and crying because she is gone.
And, it's out this weekend for another chapter. It's not like old times. It never is.
Like everybody else, I'm addicted to Facebook. Yeah, I do some of that stupid political ranting and arguing. But, something else goes on there, too. I've met so many remarkable, urbane, literature and accomplished men.
I found some of the male correspondents on FB so interesting that I've gone out of the way to meet them.
In the past year, I've lunched with a freelance tech writer in Austin, TX, hung out at Panera on a couple of occasions with a genius movie investor and former national security expert, and enjoyed Thai food with a math professor and ardent men's rights advocate.
Talking with these men, learning about their lives and simply experiencing their personalities has confirmed again for me something my late wife, Myrna, worked very hard to teach me.
The contemporary rap against men is plain stupid. Just about every man I meet is doing his damnedest to live in accordance with a deep sense of personal honor, and trying to the best of his ability to serve his family and his community. Learning this has changed the way I look at the world so dramatically.
Myrna's methods for teaching me were as unorthodox as her life experience. I keep struggling to tell her story, but I still do not know the way.
Free at last! Two and a half years into retirement... and I'm free at last!
No more dealing with HR dirtbag bureaucrats and their "niceness" and "fairness" obsession, which is to say, no more dealing with people like Althouse. Is there anything more suffocating and oppressive than her ultimate HR drone obsessions?
No more dealing with fags and fag hags and their wretched back stabbing weasels... like Meade. I can't be called down to the principal's office for refusing to kiss ass!
What a relief!
I'm free... free... of Althouse and Meade's dirtbag obsessions. They will have to pursue their great dream of pussifying and faggotizing men without me.
Until the pieces of shit in the nursing home get control of my body and I go to hell, I'm enjoying a period of freedom and sheer bliss.
I don't have to deal with assholes like Althouse and Meade any more!
I am an old bachelor. Not by choice. Widowed. Over time, the widowed thing fades away, and the bachelor thing prevails. I won't get married again. What's the point? I'm not going to be on this earth that much longer.
I have the freedom to do as I please. Could be dating a dozen women, but... that is completely incompatible with attaining peace of mind. Peace of mind is more important to me now than pussy.
I was married for over 30 years and widowed twice. What a thing, huh? And, now, I am facing old age and death alone. Ultimately, we must all walk that lonesome valley, but I did not foresee this thing happening to me.
There are so many lonely old ladies out there. That's just a numbers game. Men die off, on average, seven years earlier than women. Finding a man who's alive and healthy becomes a tough hack. I can easily see how a conniving old bachelor like me could be jumping from bed to bed. When I was young, that really appealed to me.
But, as I said, there's no peace of mind in living like that. The old ladies still get jealous and possessive, and they want a lot of attention. Accepting the best they're likely to get is not something women are good at.
What an odd status it is being an old bachelor! I think that the likely outcome over the next decade is that I will live in solitude and quiet... which is not so bad. I've had plenty of adventure and excitement.
Life is always surprising. At least, mine has always been surprising. Maybe something awaits me that I cannot imagine.
I attended a Latin, or Tridentine, Mass at St. Anthony's of Padua in Jersey City yesterday. The Mass was a beautiful work of art. A full choir, along with the priest, chanted the entire liturgy. Only the Gospel was given in English. This was my first Latin Mass in, probably, 45 years.
Mark Stahlman, a Facebook friend, invited me to attend. Mark is a Marshall McCluhan scholar.
St. Anthony's is all of four blocks from the house where Myrna and I lived as she was dying of cancer.
What did the Church gain by destroying its own tradition of the Latin Mass? Nothing, or so it appears to me. Every time the Church concedes to its critics that it must "reform" in order to be contemporary and relevant, the result is that more people leave the Church.
Mark's academic focus is on how media affects the Church. He divides the modern era into Radio, Television and Digital eras. The dominant media of each era shapes the assumptions of the listener/viewer/user about how the world works. The Church has consistently, according to Mark, failed to appreciate the impact of these different media eras on its faithful.
Vatican II, according to Mark, was the response of the Church to the Television era. The dominant message of that era was "Do your own thing." One of the primary reforms of Vatican II was dumping the Latin Mass in favor of Mass being given in the native tongue of the congregation.
The Latin Mass is a stunning work of art and dramatic theater when it is properly presented. Learning another language, even one no longer in use, is a great intellectual exercise. The Latin Mass sort of united the Church under the banner of "Roman." At the time of Vatican II, I was generally in favor of the "reforms," but the long term affect of those reforms seems to be entirely negative.
I'll be going back to St. Anthony's. I really enjoyed Latin Mass.
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