CHRONIC COMPLAINTS

 
I'm in bed, in an extremely uncomfortable position - with a laptop, a portable fan, and Bosco the cat.

My ailments haven't abated.
In plain English, I feel like shit. 
Painfully swollen knee. Extremely painful hip. Painful back.
I suspect a slipped disk.
I've opted for considering the lesser of all the possible back maladies.

Been this way for nearly a week . Can't bend my left leg at all , which drastically limits the things I can do.
I can hobble into the kitchen, but can only stand for a few minutes. And I can't sit because I can't bend my leg. 

Preparing a decent meal is impossible. For the past five days I've been existing on hamburgers. Cook it in a skillet, plop it in a bun with a slice of tomato, and eat while leaning on the kitchen counter. Then hobble back to bed.

I'm now out of hamburgers. Tomorrow it's tuna. Or mackerel.

And, of course, it's the hottest week of the year. In the 90's with jungle humidity. The insects are ecstatic: meticulously organized armies of gnats, flies, wasps, and mosquitoes.

I sure as hell could use some mosquito netting. My bedroom has the seedy and unregulated atmosphere of a Bangkok brothel.

How do you know what a Bangkok brothel is like, Jon?

I'm only imagining. Trust me - I'm as innocent and pure as a hermetically sealed condom.

Being confined to bed with no satisfying diversions is infuriatingly maddening. I had grandiose plans of painting my bedroom, repainting the porches, finally renovating the two bathrooms, and fixing things up around here.

Instead, I'm a bed-ridden cripple with no discernible possibility of recovery.

Why don't you go to a doctor, Jon?

Hey, Kemosabe - I can't walk, and my swollen knee and petrified leg makes it completely impossible to put on a pair of pants.

If I felt good enough to go to a doctor, I wouldn't need one.

Besides, I've never been a doctor groupie.
I'm not gonna pay some condescending quack who'll dispense pain pills and tell me to rest and apply ice. Or take 300 unnecessary x rays.

If my ailments don't improve by next week, I'm going to panic. I need to go to town.

Yesterday I paid some bills electronically (which I don't like to do - too much online information).
Usually I pay the bills when I'm in town. Or mail them.

I have a helluva lot more complaints - and even more ailments - but I'll keep them to myself.

If I bitch too much my charm and desirability will wane - as inconceivable as it might sound.

Note:
I've been reading your blogs, but haven't felt like leaving comments. I'm not in a congenial mood.

WHAT, MORE? 

I just went in the kitchen to get a drink. When I crawled back into bed a gnat flew in my mouth!! I tried to cough it up but swallowed it!!!

Oh well, that's not the worst thing I ever swallowed......

STORMY

 Photos by Jon

I won't mention the unrelenting agony that I went through with my back recently. For four days I couldn't walk or even stand. The pain was so excruciating that I thought I'd have to call an ambulance.

I won't mention the boring details. It's a herniated disc compounded by several spinal fractures that never healed properly. I keep re-injuring old injuries. Over and over and over.....

I finally gritted my teeth, tried to get some much-needed rest, and said "The hell with everything." (I was MUCH more graphic than that, but I'm giving you the Disney version).

Yesterday I was finally able to stand on my feet and walk - not without difficulty, and not without the help of a makeshift cane and some frighteningly out-dated aspirin.

I don't like to complain. I'm not a sissy. Whining and bitching is extremely unbecoming. I clumsily plod onward-  - between frequent curses and sheer determination - knowing that if I ever drop dead out here, no one would find my body for a dozen years. At least.

But no need to worry, boys and girls. I'm here to talk about stormy weather. Several severe storms swept through the Tennessee boonies late yesterday afternoon and early evening.

Despite being crippled and unrelentingly despondent, I grabbed my El Cheapo camera and hobbled outside to document the excitement.

The following photos were taken by me on Wednesday (which, I'm assuming, was yesterday).

Actually, the day began beautifully and the sun made a rare morning appearance.

 A few of the trees are blossoming, but the wildly fluctuating temperatures haven't been helpful. It's 80 degrees one day and 40 the next. More frost is predicted tomorrow night.

 By late afternoon we were under a Tornado Watch and clouds were gathering (this is the view from the front porch).

 There was a tornadic storm to the west and it got extremely dark. Soon the first storm arrived with a torrential downpour and fierce winds.

 The first storm ended with an eerie glimpse of sun rays.

The second storm, just before sunset, was much more dramatic and beautiful. These photos don't do it justice.

 I hobbled out the back door and climbed up the steep embankment at the edge of the forest to take these pics. There was lots of lightning.

Overlooking my house.

 This looks similar to my header photo. It's a view of the same trees that were blossoming in the photos I took in the morning.

The temperature has dropped drastically (again) and today (Thursday) is raining, windy, and freezing.

I just deleted a few photos because there were too many.

LIKE A RUNAWAY SLED

My front yard property on Monday,

after the first snowfall

I felt really rotten this morning.

How rotten did you feel, Jon?

I felt like Ethan Frome after his last sleigh ride with Mattie. A free-fall with a crash.

Wow. Elaborate.

My day was off to a bad start even before I got out of bed. My eleven-month-old kitty Scruffy always wakes me up. She climbs up on the bed headboard and jumps on me. Today, she climbed up on the headboard and......sneezed on me. Right in the face. A liberal shower of feline germs.

I'm talking abundant liberal. Not politics liberal.

I grabbed my cell phone and snapped this photo just before she sneezed. It's not upside down. That's exactly how she looked from my vantage point.

Get a kitten, they said.
It'll be fun, they said.

Yesterday, I somehow threw my back out of whack. As I was crawling out of bed this morning the spasms were so bad that I fell flat on the floor. 

To compound matters, I've been having severe - and I mean severe - pain in my toes.
Yes, you heard it correctly. Toes. All ten of them.

Heck, the last time I ever had pain in my toes, it was because somebody had been biting them. No need to panic, it happened long ago when I was young and soused.
This time, to my knowledge, no teeth were involved. 

I was in such agonizing pain from my back and toes that I couldn't get up off the floor. As I was crawling towards the bedroom door - wondering how I was going to wash my face - Scruffy suddenly decided to play. She grabbed one of my bare feet and dug ALL of her sharp claws into it - relentlessly hanging on as I crawled. My screams of agony echoed through the mountains......and it's rumored that they were heard in Nashville.

After I recovered enough to resume thinking, I realized that my toes hurt because I had been wearing two pairs of tight socks to keep my feet warm.
The socks must have completely cut off the circulation. Fortunately my toes didn't turn black and drop off.

So how are you doing now, Jon?

I'm still limping, but I'm wearing looser socks.

You're weird, Jon.

Weird, but immensely entertaining.

My yard on Monday during the first snowfall

as seen from my back porch

The cold weather is the Big News (capitalized for emphasis). I'm a Tennessee virgin. I honestly hadn't expected the winters here to be so harsh.

Let's see. It snowed on Monday, I think. And Tuesday, I think. And this morning for sure. Eight inch accumulation.The high temperature today was a brisk 16.

Tonight (it's only 8:00 p.m. as I'm writing this) the temperature is supposed to plummet to minus 15. I said minus. That's cold enough to kill a penguin. Or Al Gore. Aw, settle down. I couldn't resist.

Hey, I'm writing this humorous stuff while I'm in an incredibly bad mood. Could you imagine how funny I'd be if I actually felt good?

View from my office window

(one of the spare bedrooms)

This frigid weather is definitely impeding all my activities. I'm not complaining. I've lived through winters far worse than this. I'm just stating a fact. I can't unpack any of the things in the garage. It's so cold out there that I can only tolerate it for a minute. Or less.

Late last night I ran out of kitty litter. Not for me. For the cats. Fortunately I had another big bag, but I'd left it out in the car. And I had to force myself to go out and get it.

The eight inches of snow had turned into solid ice. My entire property is on a steep mountainside. I immediately slipped on the ice and slid all the way down to my car. In retrospect, that's probably how I hurt my back.

If the car wasn't there to break my slide, I would have undoubtedly ended up in Kentucky. The door on my car was frozen shut and I literally had to pry it open, using my fingernails to crack the ice. By then my fingers, toes, and family jewels were completely numb. I honestly couldn't feel my balls for several hours.

Don't try to visualize this. It will corrupt you.

Carrying a 50 lb. bag of kitty litter back up to the house while walking on ice wasn't easy.
I only had two thoughts:

1. God, please don't let me fall again.

2. Those damn cats shit more than I do!

Bosco and Scruffy

looking at the snow from kitchen window

Note:
Ever since I started this new blog Lone Wolf Concerto I've noticed that readership is sparse and seems to be dwindling rapidly. Many (but not all) of my faithful friends who used to read Lone Star Concerto have vanished.

 I've thought about abandoning this blog, but I'm addicted to it. I enjoy distributing my thoughts for public consumption - whether the public is there or not. Most of all I enjoy entertaining myself.

Rose from Canada (Life After Fifty) told me that she's been having an enormous amount of trouble leaving comments on my blog. I haven't had any other complaints about this. I checked the settings and they seem to be okay.