SKUNK DRUNK AND OFFENSIVELY SWEATY

I drove to town today and decided that I should probably write about it before the booze and the golden memories wear off.

I'm not really drunk. I simply had a couple beers for courage before I hit the dangerous, winding, narrow, treacherous mountain roads. Okay, I had three beers. Then I took some generous swigs of a daytime liquid cold medicine. Then I took an aspirin. And a few more swigs of beer.

That curious concoction is Minor League compared to the dangerous stuff I used to mix together when I was a kid in California. I'm older now and more conservative.

Anyway, I got up at 8:00 am but wasn't ready to leave until around 11:00. I didn't know what to wear. All my jeans are embarrassingly dirty. Well, all except for my black jeans (which look clean when they're dirty) but I don't wear black on hot days - not even to funerals. So I reluctantly wore my old army pants. And an old army shirt. And my old boots. And an ancient cowboy hat.

If there was a death penalty for beginning sentences with conjunctions, I'd be pushing up daisies right now.

Since I had on old army clothes I decided to wear my dog tags. They were a perfect accessory for my Redneck meets Hicksville attire.

The fantastic thing about living in rural Tennessee is that no matter how outrageously bad you look everyone else looks even worse. This feeds my ego. 

If you think driving the dangerous, winding, narrow, treacherous mountain road is bad - try doing it when your back is screamingly painful and it's 95 degrees. And the air conditioner in your car doesn't work.

Then compound that agony with having four gigantic plastic bags of putrid garbage in the back seat. The stench induced hallucinations that would have impressed Timothy Leary. My first stop is always the City Dump. I think it's properly called Garbage Central or some such thing.

Garbage collectors don't make visitations to rural mountain areas so I have to tote my own trash to town. It's a necessary humiliation.

They're no longer called garbage collectors, Jon. They're now Sanitation Coordination Engineers.

I don't know whether today was a holiday, or if Tennesseans simply take the day off when the temperature is over 90, but I never saw it so crowded in town. There are usually about 150 freakin' people in town. Today there must have been 200,000. It looked like Atlantic City on the 4th of July. I can't figure what the hell was going on. 
Moonshine convention, maybe?

There were even lines of vehicles at the service station when I got gas (that's petrol, for those of you in Yorkshire).

After I went to the bank, I had to drive to two places to pay my utility and water bills.

Why don't you simply pay your bills online, Jon?

Because I savor the adrenaline rush and profound anxiety that I get when driving to town. I used to pay my bills online when I lived in Texas. It was too easy.

Is this post getting annoyingly long? It's never my intention to ply you with too much of a good thing. Or to annoy you in the process of doing it.

I haven't even got to the grocery shopping part yet. Or the beer part. There's only one place in town that sells beer and their prices are outrageous. Taking advantage of desperate, pathetic alcoholics is beyond sinful.

Well, I got the three essentials that I always need: cat litter, toilet paper, and beer. And enough groceries to last nearly a month. I really wanted to get ice cream but it would have dissolved on the drive home. Instead I got yogurt. The great thing about yogurt is that if it goes bad you can't tell.

You could always bring an ice chest and put your ice cream in there, Jon.

Hey, I'm not the fancy type. Who the hell do you think I am - Martha Stewart?

It was so hot and dry today that it felt like Death Valley (I've been there and thought I'd mention it to impress you). It hasn't rained here in two days which is considered a drought. On the way home, my contact lenses dried out and got incredibly blurry. I could hardly see as I screeched around dangerous curves at 80 MPH.  

Jon, you're reckless, childish,  incorrigible, and a menace to society.

And that's on a good day. You wouldn't want to see me when I'm bad. You forgot to mention that I'm cute.

BTW, what does "incorrigible" mean?  



My other blog is simply an extension of myself, intended to perplex you. Here's the link:
http://cabinetofcurioustreasures.blogspot.com  

 

OUT OF CHARACTER

 Slippery Slopes

I initially didn't think anyone would warm up to my previous post about Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. I was delightfully surprised that some people actually enjoyed it. Muchas gracias por tu amabilidad.

Perhaps I should do more historic posts. My blog is usually a shining example of valueless fluff. It often encompasses the mundane and very often embraces the nonsensical:  beer rants, photos of my forest-engulfed property or my rambunctious cats.

For variety I very often enjoy writing about my past - because it was so unique, colorful, and interesting ( a few miserable  spoilsports vehemently disagree).

I tend to shy away from writing about  deeply personal problems or health issues. These subjects inevitably evoke yawns of indifference and/or groans of displeasure. Nobody gives a royal crap about your health.

Today I'm going to step out of character (hence the title) and do some bitching and complaining. This would be a good time for the super-sensitive to leave the room.

Wow! The room is almost empty! My power of persuasion is impressive.

In several previous blog posts I've casually mentioned my back pain and also my "laziness" about doing things around the house. I never mentioned, however, the extent or seriousness of my back injuries - - or the fact that it is the sole reason I haven't been doing much physical work. 

Here's where it gets boring.

It all started about twenty years ago when I had a terrific fall. While carrying a heavy vacuum cleaner, I slipped and fell down a flight of stairs. I landed directly on my lower spine and sustained compression fractures. It never healed properly and as a result I had numbness and tingling in my legs for years.

Fast forward to 2014 when I moved to Tennessee. 

I live on treacherous mountainous terrain and have had several nasty falls since I've been here. The two worst falls happened during the winter of 2015. 

In the middle of a very frigid night, one of the water pipes froze and burst. I had to run outside to shut off the main water valve - which is annoyingly far away down the mountain slope.

Just as I got to the shut-off valve I slipped on the ice, flew through the air, and landed directly on my lower spine. The pain was so bad that I couldn't move for ten minutes. Rather than freeze to death on a slab of ice, I finally opted to crawl back up the slope to the house on my hands and knees.

I could hardly walk because of the ice injury, but literally forced myself to do work around here. About three weeks later I was outside in a snowstorm and....you guessed it.... fell on the ice again - directly on my lower spine again. This time, after the initial impact of falling, I slid down a steep embankment and smashed into the side of the house. I had internal bleeding for a week.

I deluded myself into thinking that these back injuries had eventually healed - until about two months ago when I suddenly began getting excruciating pain in my spine, lower back, and legs. It was so bad that there was no way I could possibly walk. It took me half an hour just to roll out of bed, and then I had to literally drag myself in agony across the floor. 
I was doing a bad imitation of Blanche in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Being a devout masochist, I endured this torture for several weeks - with the hope that I'd either die or eventually improve.

I eventually improved, but not nearly enough to dance the mambo or sing praises to Asclepius. It still takes about an hour before I'm able to navigate in the morning. Walking is difficult. And my posture is noticeably askew. Among other things.

As if this weren't enough, I've been getting vicious attacks of PVC's (premature ventricular contractions of the heart). I've had them for years and mine are usually induced by lack of sleep and stress. For me, magnesium supplements help immensely.

So, what was the purpose of this extremely unpleasant post? Only to proclaim that things aren't perfect up here in the realms of Eden. 
And I haven't even revealed half of my problems.

I don't want sympathy or advice. I simply felt an unwholesome need to rant. 

And I have to drive into town tomorrow. That should be fun. It's going to be 90 degrees, so I hope to get an early start.
For me, "early" means noon.