Monday, January 9, 2012

I'm Baaaaaaaaaaack!

    Well, here it is: the second day of the second week of my sixtieth year on this planet. Just so you’re not confused, I began the aforementioned sixtieth year in the first day of 2012; the day in which I, by no small coincidence, registered fifty-nine full years during which I satisfied all the major requirements of completion while simultaneously launching my quest to complete the sixtieth year. My ‘Certificate of Completion’ is, presumably, in the mail.

It would have been far less confusing to the reader id I’d just taken care of all these little administrative details on the calendar date actually set aside for such nonsense, but there you have it. The combination of my being who I am superimposed over the circumstance of you being who you are, and, well, let’s just face it.  If you’re not at least marginally lost or confused at this point, I’m doing something horribly wrong.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to go all Frank Pickle on you. Oh, just Google it – it will take far less of your valuable time. (I wonder when and how the proper noun ‘Google’ became the action verb ‘google’ and how and when society as a whole began to use them synonymously and interchangeably for ‘look it up’?)

I am too far into this to get away with ‘long story, short’ so I won’t even try.

On 20th December, my fifty-ninth year only eleven days from completion, I had round two of carpel tunnel surgery on my left hand (round one having been completed sometime during my thirty-second year).  To make it more interesting, they also rerouted the nerve trunk that normally resides comfortably between my left elbow and ulnar.  It is a condition known as ‘Cubital Tunnel Entrapment’ (not to be confused with digging out of Colditz with Dicky Attenborough or stealing fine objects de art with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones).

The procedure seem to be successful, although I am still at the recovery stage.  Physical Therapy for the left elbow and hand are still five weeks down the road.  Slightly less if I drive,

The wrist part of the procedure was a snap.  The Cubital Tunnel release part has left my arm still swollen, bruised, and the icebreaker for many a conversation with total strangers in the checkout line. “What’s the other guy look like?” (who said the other guy was a guy?). “That’ll teach you to mouth off to your wife.” (probable not).  That sort of thing.  The elbow, while no longer in excruciating pain from simply bending or extending it now just hurts all the time, but especially during that gap when the pain meds wear off and when I can take my next one, and even that is getting better.  I still have a rotator cuff repair on the same arm to undergo, but probably not for 6 months at least.

Now I said all that to say this.  Herein is my excuse for not writing a BLOG, Review, new bit of poetry or work on editing my latest novel length WIP.  My left hand was useless after a minute of typing, and trying it one handed required far too much effort.  Toss in Bowl season (The BCS has very nearly succeeded in completely destroying the tradition of College Bowl season) NFL playoff’s (where almost a rookie Tim Tebow made a laughing stock of the NFL’s best defense and the Hero of Steel Town ‘Little Ben’ and the start of Laugh-In 2012 (the Republican Presidential race), and there you have it.  Plus, I see no reason to make people suffer through things like my obscure observations during Holiday season.  Of course, on the other hand I’ve never let that stop me before.

Did I mention that this entire treatise was originally a monologue for Charlie Sheen to do on Two and a Half Men before CBS replaced him with Regis Philbin (or was that Demi Moore?)?  Anyway, at the last minute, CBS scrubbed the idea because Sheen was the only guy on the set who understood it.  And he was sober!  Frankly, that scares me too.

So, all things being equal, happy trails. And remember, no matter how bad things look, God is still in control, not Barry Soetoro.

P.S. – A recent scientific discovery suggests that the reason the Mayan Calendar has the world ending in December, 2012, is that the guy chiseling the tablet ran out of room.  Just a thought.

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