On taking a more active part in the Pandemic

By Bobby Neal Winters

Last Saturday morning at 5AM, I awoke to the sounds of my better half throwing up.  Only someone who had been married to this particular woman would’ve recognized it for what it was.  It sounded like tablespoons of gravel being thrown into the toilet.  When I throw up, it sounds like a tyrannosaurus rex is trying to mate with an electrical transformer.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine. Nothing wrong with me,” came the reply.

By 9AM our daughters had convinced her to take the COVID test.

POSITIVE.

She moved into a spare bedroom to try to save me, but it was to no avail.

I was okay on Sunday.  I woke up fine on Monday.  I took my walk before it got hot. I stopped and talked to people while maintaining social distance. But before I had finished my two-mile round, I noticed a tickling in my bronchial tubes.

I returned home.  Ate my breakfast.  Took a COVID test.

POSITIVE.

Well, I am healthy, I say to myself.  I’ve been inoculated and I was boosted only seven months ago.  I will be fine.

No.

I have a superpower when it comes to detecting whether I have a virus.  It is my spine.  Whenever I have a virus or am vaccinated against one, I have aches between every single vertebrae in my spine.

That started coming on in the afternoon.  It was unmistakable from the very beginning and it increased throughout the day.

Monday night was bad.

Not only every vertebrae of my spine, but every joint in my body, every part of my body that had ever encountered anything harder than a blade of grass, ached.

I was wracked with chills even though we were in the middle of a heat-wave.

Then, in the dead of the night, our cat Mischief came and put her nose against mine.

She was checking whether or not I was still breathing.  She wanted to know if I was dead or not.  I very consciously, with whatever life was still in me, exhaled into her nostrils.  I wanted her to know that I was alive so that she wouldn’t begin to feed on the soft parts of my body.

I knew I couldn’t fight her off.

That same night, she had performed the same proof-of-life test with my wife.

Mischief must’ve been hungry.

Monday night was the worst night.  

Things got rapidly better after that.  

We had been given the advice from a family friend to get paxlovid, which is an antiviral.  I’d tried to do this on Saturday, but you need a prescription.  Well, we got prescriptions on Monday.  After the night of hell, we turned the corner.  It’s been a week and we don’t feel any worse than is consistent with six decades of life.

I would like to give the credit to paxlovid, but scientifically I can’t.  I am pretty sure it was part of it, but we are both quite healthy to begin with; we’ve both been inoculated and boosted (probably should’ve gotten that second booster).

So our quick bounce back was probably from a combination of things.  

But I am going to give at least some credit to paxlovid.

That having been said, let it be known that paxlovid imparts a characteristic taste to your mouth.  I cannot describe it accurately using vocabulary consistent with the standards of a family newspaper, but you get the idea.

Nothing is free in this world but the grace of God.

So for us COVID was like a bad case of the flu.  We will still be getting vaccinated as recommended.  We will still wear the masks when needed.

Getting out of bed is a privilege; health is a privilege; life is a privilege.

AMEN.

And, Mischief, I’ve got an eye on you.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )

Journey to the Seventh Planet

By Bobby Neal Winters

Interstate 44 claws its way through the state of Missouri. You really have to experience it to understand.  It’s not that it's not pretty.  The scenery is quite pretty.  One would have to have a heart made of stone to not be affected by the scenic beauty...at first.

As you drive along after first entering Missouri, you say, “What a pretty little hollow nestled among the scenic hills.”

But something happens to you after you do that twenty times over the course of an hour.  Hearts made of flesh do turn to stone; hearts already of stone turn to diamond.

And depending upon how far you go and how fast you drive, you might be doing that for six hours.

The way they put it in Latin is: “Iter facimus.” The word “iter” means journey and “facimus” means we make. So a journey is like breakfast or a house.  It is something that you put together.

Driving across Missouri, there is the piece from Joplin to Springfield; then Springfield to Rolla; then Rolla to Saint Louis.

The Romans were onto something.  Chopping a trip into pieces gives you hope. Hope will keep you alive.  The folks in Missouri have caught onto that.  The way they have done it, makes me proud to be an American.

As you penetrate more deeply into Missouri and the density of the pretty hills that separate the gorgeous hollows numbs the beauty-perceiving portions of your brain, your eyes begin to wander to the billboards.  The billboards highlight roadside attractions: There are scenic wonders and shopping opportunities ahead.  These billboards are more densely packed than even the hills and hollows.

The scenic wonders are understandable. Given the beauty of the hills and hollows that you can see for free from the interstate itself, you might wonder about the beauty of whatever they are trying to lure you off the beaten path to pay money to see.

However, there is something beyond that.  It is something that highlights the economic genius of the people of Missouri: The Uranus Fudge Factory.

If you’ve not gotten the joke, maybe it’s because it’s been a long time since you were 12. Maybe you’ve always been emotionally mature. Maybe you don’t pronounce “Uranus” with the stress on the second syllable. You really need that long “a” sound there.

The first time you see a billboard for the Uranus Fudge Factory, you think: Seriously, that’s pretty tacky.  You think: I would never stop there. What’s wrong with people who stop at a place like that?  

Then you think, people who are traveling with children who are old enough to read but still immature enough to think this is funny probably do.

Then the miles pass.  The hills and hollows add up.  They blunt your aesthetic senses. Your mind becomes as numb as your back, as backside, as...Uranus. 

You become curious.

I do want credit for waiting until our return journey before yielding to my curiosity and taking the exit to Uranus, Missouri in order to visit “The Uranus Fudge Factory.”

I will admit one thing.  I only thought that what I read on the billboards was tacky.  For true tackiness, one must enter the Fudge Factory.  The tackiness is palpable.  The tackiness has been monetized.

It’s for this last bit that I am going to tip my hat to those entrepreneurs in Uranus, Missouri.  Nature didn’t give them anything much to distinguish them from any other exit on Interstate 44. (Though I would say they probably go back to the heyday of Route 66.) 

The only distinguishing asset they had was someone naming their community with a moniker that can be pronounced in such a way as to make a middle-schooler snicker.  If life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. If it gives you a goofy-sounding name, you go around the corner to where fudge is made.

We stopped.  We bought fudge.  It’s a done thing that we now won’t have to do again.  But that’s what we’d said before.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )

July and the Memory of Kamikaze June Bugs

 July and the Memory of Kamikaze June Bugs

By Bobby Neal Winters

We are embedded in nature. It surrounds us; it flows within us; it is our friend; it is our enemy; we are subject to it.

I’ve bounced back from my hernia surgery.  Yesterday, which was the one week anniversary of “the repair,” I walked my full walk. I’d been sneaking up on it for a few days and I am gradually healed.

Those of you who work downtown and sometimes watch me as I walk by will not have seen me because I was walking before 6 in the morning.

Some may ask why one would do that?  These would be people who are not living in Kansas right now.  

It got up to 99 degrees yesterday.  Worse is forecast for next week.  It is July; it is Kansas; suck it up, Buttercup.

When I was walking, the temperature was still only in the low 70s. It was lovely.

There are a few others out at the same time.  Not many, but a few.  The occasional runner; the dog walkers of the world dutifully scooping poop; and the gardeners, watering their gardens.

It’s hot; it’s been dry too.  A few mornings ago I got up to walk and it was darker than usual.  No stars.  Mysterious flashes of light to the north. It took a while for my brain to process the clues: Lightening.  Was it going to rain?

The answer was yes, but not in a meaningful way.  It did make the day cooler though. Grace but not as much as we would like.

I’ve not mowed since the middle of June.  If I tried to mow my front yard, I'd have to use GPS to keep from getting lost in it.  

We did have a mast year in oak last year, so we’ve got a lot of little oak trees coming up that could stand a good trimming, but they are not uniform over the lawn. The rest of the lawn consists of short, dry brownish leaves that don’t reach up to the lawnmower blade.

The backyard, which has a different microclimate from the front yard, could be mowed. It would be possible to do it without losing your track, but you might get lost in the dust.

Someone out there has read this and said, “Well, what he needs to do is put in a sprinkler system. That would take care of his problems. The grass would grow and it would keep the dust down.” I can hear his voice in my head.  He sounds grumpy.

My reply to this would be, “You really don’t know me do you?  Haven’t you been paying attention? I said I’d not had to mow for a month.  That is what we call success!”

There is something to be said for living in harmony with nature.  Don’t get me wrong, I love air-conditioning.  I grew up without it, so I might even love it more than all of the rest of you together.  But we did live without it.  

We had swamp-coolers and electric fans.  We lived slower lives.  To say we surrendered to nature might be too much, but we gave nature its props. We spent our evenings sitting in puddles of our own sweat, trying to come into symbiosis with the June Bugs as they went kamikaze on the light fixtures.

When you live in this sort of harmony with nature, you learn to appreciate the small things: a cloud going over the sun; the shade of a tree; a breeze moving past you after you’ve worked up a sweat.

One day it will rain again.  The days will grow noticeably shorter and the night longer.  The winds will switch around to the north.  We will have wind, thunder, and lightning. And it will rain.

We will bless that day.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )

 

Self-Discovery and the Art of Installing Insulation

 Self-Discovering and the Art of Installing Insulation

By Bobby Neal Winters

I will turn 60 in October and I am still finding out who I am. I reread that sentence.  Maybe it should read, I am still becoming who I am.  Then I wonder if the second alternative has any content at all; aren’t we always becoming who we are?  But the first takes the stance that there is someone who I am and that life is the process of discovering it...

I need more tea.

I had surgery last Thursday as I write this, and I am writing on Monday instead of Saturday as is my usual habit.  My surgery wasn’t bad--I’ve had airplane flights that were worse--but I kind of lowered my energy level.

I’ve been told by my surgeon that I can do anything I want to do as long as it doesn’t require lifting more than 15 pounds for the next six weeks.  Writing? Of course! Walking? Certainly. Mowing the lawn? Yes, but not on hills.

Woodworking?

Okay, what part?  Cutting a single two-by-four with a miter saw is allowed.  Carrying around a four foot by eight foot piece of plywood is not.

Both of these activities are important to my woodworking now:  I’ve decided to turn my garage into a workshop. 

I’ve been using the empty house next door, but for various reasons it is not optimal.  It will cost less money and effort to make our garage into an acceptable shop than it would to do so to the house next door. 

It’s like “If you give a mouse a cookie” and turns into quite an exercise in planning.

<ITALICS>If you want to be warm while you do woodworking in winter, you need to install a heater in your shop.  If you install a heater, you’d better insulate so you aren’t just wasting money.  If you insulate, you’d better put up some interior panels to keep the insulation in.

If it is a workshop, the panels really should be OSB plywood.  And before you put that OSB up, you need to do any electrical wiring that needs to be done.  That means you’ll need to do the wiring for your heater.  Since the wiring for the heater is going to be 220volts, you will need to learn how to deal with your breaker box.</ITALICS>

The thing is, if I screw up while wiring 220 into the breaker box, my wife will have a nice workshop for her next husband.

I am seriously thinking of hiring an electrician to do that part, but quite frankly I  might have to kidnap one to get them out. 

All of that said, I’ve got some time off because of my surgery, but it’s kind of frustrating because I can’t do some of the things I’d really like to do.

I’ve changed quite a bit in the last twenty or thirty years.

There is a moment I remember when I was about thirty--maybe a little more, maybe a little let--and I was walking down First Street about half a block from my house.  This was before I’d started my daily regime of walking.  I was having trouble walking.  My legs were tired and I was winded.  The thought came upon me that if I didn’t do something, I would get to a point where I couldn’t walk.

So I started walking every day.  I started with a short walk and gradually added to it.  Now I do two miles a day and it is a rare day when I don’t.

And I’ve learned to like it.  I look forward to it.

The woodworking has been the same. I found a tablesaw and in learning how to use it, I’ve reorganized large portions of my life.  It is work; it is a lot of work.  It is expensive; at times very expensive. 

But it is good for me. Knowing how to do something makes me better.  Makes me more useful to my family. 

Being useful is important.  That seems to be a part of who I am.  The need to be of use is strong.  It probably explains why I’ve allowed myself to be used at times.  That’s okay; a part of the journey of self-discovery.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )

 

 Learning a New Word

By Bobby Neal Winters

Every morning, and I mean every morning, I spend some quality time with Duolingo working on my Spanish.  Lately, I’ve been working on Latin, French, and Italian too, all after my morning Wordle game. It helps me get my brain started since my doctor took me off coffee.

Anyway, I like words and I fancy that I have a good vocabulary, but this week I learned a new word and not from either Wordle or Duolingo.  That word is “inguinal.” 

The doctors and nurses who are reading this already know where this is heading.  That is because ‘inguinal” is an adjective used to identify different kinds of hernias, and it is the kind of hernia that I’ve just discovered that I have.

In my family, the word we used to refer to inguinal hernia was simply “hernia.” My dad had a hernia; my grandfather had a hernia; my great grandfather had had a hernia.  There is probably a string of these that goes back to someone in a tribe exiting sub saharan Africa, tens of thousands of years ago.

For those of you who are luckily innocent of all this, an inguinal hernia is a place where the muscle in the abdominal cavity has given way and allows the large intestines to bulge through.  I saw a bulge; I went to my doctor; he sent me to a surgeon; the surgeon has set up an appointment.

This provides an interesting setting to talk about progress in medical science.  

I mentioned my great grandfather.  He’d had a hernia. In his day, he just let it go.  I suppose he may have dealt with it by laying down and letting his intestines roll back into his body or giving them a little help. He may have had a truss which is a device I will discuss later. But for him surgery was not really an option.

His hernia eventually became strangulated.  That is to say, it got stuck in his abominable wall and the blood supply got cut off.  In his case, the intestine became gangrenous and he died in agony.

Here we come to the device I mentioned earlier: the truss.  The truss is a device designed to push your intestines back into your abdomen where they belong.  Both my grandfather and my father had them.  My brother and I used to find them in grandpa and dad’s respective rooms among their clothing and play with them.  We thought they were just a different kind of clothing that you wore when you grew up.  

We were told, to stop playing with them we would be wearing our own soon enough.

My grandfather was able to use a truss and get by with that and being careful.  He avoided dying in agony of a gangrenous strangulated hernia.  The bar for success was set realistically in my family.

Dad had had surgery twice to repair his hernia.  The first time in 1945 and the second in the late 1970s. 

I can be exact about the first because that was when Dad was drafted into the war.  In a story he told with some frequency, they diagnosed his hernia when he took his physical: the old cliche “turn your head and cough.”

At that time, in his words, “They did not let my feet touch the ground for a month.”  Recovery was brutal.  Because of this, when the hernia recurred, he just got himself a truss, and put off surgery as long as he could: the late 1970s.

When his surgery was done then, he was operated on in the morning and was walking around the hospital halls that afternoon.

Press fast-forward 50 years.  

We now have laparoscopic surgery.  You go in in the morning, make small incisions, and operate through small pieces of pipe while looking at everything through cameras on TV screens like a video game.  Then you go home that very same day.

It’s like medicine has learned something in the last 80 years.

So I am going to have some downtime, but not too far down or for too long.  I will still be able to do Wordle, Duolingo, and to write.  And now I know a new word.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )