Before heading into work this morning I had to make a stop at the Salt Lake City Airport to do some phone stuff. I generally dislike driving to the airport, but by staying away from the terminals I was able to have a fairly nice visit.  No crowds, no deadlines, and very few people on the road at that hour made for a nice morning – it was something different and I was getting paid after all.

As I left the Airport and began driving eastward toward Salt Lake, I could not help but notice the wonderful sunrise that was just beginning in earnest.  The upper level whisps of cloud were stained and saturated in pumpkin orange while the lower level clouds were thicker and darker against the impossibly orange sky.  The scene was one that could never be captured by camera because of the dynamic nature – the high clouds were rushing eastward while the lower clouds were taking a more leisurely route to the north-east – and thus the scene was changing faster than the eye could take it in.

This scene needed no accompaniment, but Richard Wagner’s Overture to the Flying Dutchman was playing in the car and it fit so well with the mood of the sky that I let it continue playing.  I believe that I will never hear that music again without thinking of a sunrise.

With ghostly-themed music and an orange sky, I was well treated on this Halloween.

My face has become a barometer for stress and fatigue and just as a barometer goes down with bad weather, so does my face.  Today I feel the stress in my sagging muscles of my face but I can not account for all the stress I am feeling.

Yes, I had a project designed and ordered when it was torn from me and re-done by a supervisor who ordered something that is not working.  That would not be so bad but everyone assumes it was my work now that it keeps breaking.  I place about 30% of my stress on this.  It would be more if it were actually my work, but as it is I don’t even have the access to fix it.

The only other unusual stressor from work is a lady in purchasing that is poking and prodding at another project that was designed, quoted, and even approved.  I don’t worry so much about this because I know she won’t find anything.  She is just wasting her time and mine but I do need the product now – trying to make do with what I have only increases my work load – and the frustration of the people requesting a product I can no longer deliver.  I would give 10% to this – an inconvenience really.

From the home side, there are the constant background stressors like kids, finances, health issues, and the regular dad stuff.  Really, how much stress can this provide when Carol is so good at taking care of it?  Things have been very stressful for her this past week, but I only get what tips over the top – maybe another 10%

So you can see that I can only explain away about half of the agitation that I am feeling but it is beginning to take a toll on me.  I felt earlier today as if I was only one unreasonable demand on my time away from walking out of here forever.  This, of course would be a foolish reaction because I need the flexibility to come in to work at 9:30 after dropping the kids to school and you don’t often find that at a new job.  After 13 years with the same company I don’t have to prove that I am a good employee or that they are going to get their money’s worth from me so I am stuck here by circumstance.

Somewhere I have a huge bucket of stress and that bucket is leaking.  Unfortunately the bucket is well camouflaged.  I need to find it because I feel very much like someone who has been up for two days and is keeping going only by sucking in vast quantities of caffeine. 

Yep, that describes my physical state pretty well.  I wish it were just sleep because I would know how to fix that.

   *  *

I don’t often whistle; I am not among the annoying group of people who insist on hearing themselves constantly – as if they might cease to exist if they ever went quiet. I am quite comfortable, even when in silence. 

I never need to hail a cab, I don’t work with dogs, I have a beautiful wife that loves me and never understood the need to whistle at women anyway, and I don’t have time for sporting events.  Why would I whistle at all?  Whistling is a skill that I spent hours developing as a young boy, and that skill somehow helps define my masculinity.  Real men know how to whistle after all.  Really masculine men know how to whistle well.

I feel I am less of a man since the palsy because I can’t whistle anymore.   My face has almost completely recovered, but my lips are still a little lazy and I can’t purse them tight enough to make any more than a strange windy hiss when I attempt a whistle.  The fact that I can not whistle has made the act of whistling an important one and several times a day I find myself trying to make my lips pucker enough to get a noise.  It remains an annoying proof that I am still broken.

It is an interesting reaction, to worry so much about a skill that should mean nothing, but it defines the way I work fairly well.  In the midst of palsy I said that if I could just speak normally I would be happy.  When speech came back, I looked for a symmetrical smile.  When that was well on its way to completion, I realized that I had lost my whistle and suddenly that loss was almost equal in importance to speech or appearance.  I seem never to fully arrive. 

I hope I get my whistle back; I want to find out what the next layer of concern for my recovery is!

  *  *

I have come to have the opinion that my life is better for the unexpected variety it provides.  I try to look forward to the unknown and the unexpected and I get a lot of practice with this!  My planning rarely gets beyond ‘tentative’ anymore, but despite the sudden and continual shifting, the important things continue to get done.

I thought it was important to go get a trailer full of wood this past weekend; with three fireplaces and a long winter ahead, and the knowledge that the first real snow of winter will close down the access to the property, last weekend seemed the best and only chance.  It turns out that it was not as important to get wood as I thought and when Carol’s ex did not come get his children Friday night as planned, and then did not come get them at 10:00 Saturday morning under the new plan, nor at noon under the revised new plan, or at 2:00pm as scheduled under the advanced revised new plan, I recognized that my being home to provide stability for the kids was more important than getting wood.

Last night I was looking forward to an early evening, and perhaps a chance to finish No God But God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, but found instead that my priority was reading with five children who found themselves unready for bed.  I spent an hour reading Charlotte’s Web, and when the book was finished and the kids were still clamoring for more, I began The Hobbit.  I was not sure, since I sit outside the doorway to the bedrooms of the four youngest when I read, if the book would hold any interest for these ages, but they have all seen the animated movie of the book and they are able to follow.  I am ready for something with a bit more meat than any of our recent books – Little House on the Prairie, Bed-knob and Broomstick and the like.  I found out that our Third Grader has been going to school and taking the reading test for the books I have been reading to him, and I am not sure that it should count.  At least reading The Hobbit will keep him from this as he is unlikely to find a comprehension test for it.  If he does, his teacher is sure to question his taking it.

 I try to make it a priority to read for myself  a little every night, and thanks to a first edition club I am part of, I have had many wonderful (and autographed) new and exciting books to read.  I am falling behind a little in my reading, but skipping The Garden of Last Days has caught me up a little. 

I have enjoyed reading this last book No God but God.  It has built upon – although occasionally contradicting – a foundational understanding of Islam that was laid by countless hours of discussion with my personal tutor in Middle Eastern Studies, Fares.  (Fares, you will be glad to know that when the book deviates from the belief you have shared, I assume your insight better reflects the pure Islamic religion.)  I find that I am excited for bed time and an opportunity to turn a few pages under the warm light of the bedside lamp, but I rarely get the chance that I anticipate.  Last night it was only wiggly teeth, but with two children suffering, it was enough to keep me from my book until long after everyone else was asleep.

Last night the important things were done, it is just that sleep was not important.

*  *

In Utah we have two seasons of blooming:  There is the traditional spring bloom of leaves and flowers where you wake up one morning to find winter gone and flowers everywhere, and then there is the autumn bloom of color.  Sometime this past week the autumn bloom happened and everything decided to turn colors.  Carol walked out the front door and asked “When did the trees in the front yard change?  Were they like that yesterday?”  I assured her that they were just the same as yesterday and the day before, but then on my way to work today I noticed the hillsides are covered with autumn and somehow this transformation took place without me really noticing. 

I read a study once that spoke of the way our eyes work and the finding was that most of what we ‘see’ is just replayed from memory.  Our brain catalogs information and replays what it expects to see rather than processing new information.  When you get in the car to drive, your brain knows what the dashboard should look like so it never processes the input for that – and this is why you suddenly look down and notice you are out of gas.  Carol knew what the trees should look like and so her brain did not process the changes to the trees until some critical mass in change was reached and she really saw the trees as they currently were.  I know what the mountains look like so my brain just filled them in with cached information until something started a more careful processing.  I am sure that this is why fingerprints suddenly appear in the hundreds when I am cleaning too.  I am also sure that this is why I can’t find my car keys when they are right in front of me – but not where I expect them.

Having a case of Bell’s Palsy has changed the way I view some things about health appearance, and especially about thought.  It was a minor thing indeed, but enough to set my mind working on issues that I have never before stopped to question.  I can better understand the frustration that might come from having an active brain that can not communicate with the body.  I think I can also better understand how often our brains give us bad information about the world around us because of the way they have been wired in the past.

I have come to realize that I am often lazy, but I believe that our brains are even more careful with their energy.  I believe that rather than process everything as an individual occurrence, our brains cheat and do only the minimum required to provide a result that is plausible.  I hear a voice and my brain immediately categorizes that voice as angry, happy, or sad without doing a full audit of what the voice really represents.  My brain seems happy just getting close to the right answer.

I can see that this would come in handy at times – when attacked by a mountain lion it is not important to know the color of its eyes so the fact that my brain just sticks in a random rendering of a cat to allow me to make choices based on the immediate and incomplete data available.  At other times it works to my disadvantage: I certainly could make better decisions if I took more time before deciding how someone else was feeling.  Sometimes my simple brain plugs in threats that don’t exist.

Maybe I got the brain of… of Abby somebody… Abby Normal.  I’m almost sure that was the name.  (“Are you saying that I put an abnormal brain into a seven and a half foot long, 55 inch wide Gorilla?”   I can’t think of a brain without thinking of Dr. Fronkensteen and that should in and of its self provide proof that I am normal.  “For what we are about to see next, we must enter quietly into the realm of genius.”) 

I prefer, however, to imagine that my brain is just as good as any other.

   *  *

I am in a surly mood today but I don’t know why I should be.  Life is good and yet I found myself laying on the horn when some idiot merged in front of me.  It is autumn, my favorite time of year, and yet everything grates on my tender nerves.  I look at this list of things to do today and I know I need to get out and get them done but instead I sit here and tap my foot in frustration, but with frustration with what?

I have heaps of inconsequential concerns shifting around my feet but I have learned that as long as I keep shifting my feet, I don’t sink too deeply.  Most of the concerns are things that I am powerless to fix, others are disappointments.  Still other concerns are for things that might happen but probably won’t – in fact, half the pile is probably of this nature.

I am glad to have this big, complex brain that can imagine so much but it would be nice to shut it off as well.  Today I would like to live life as a dog lives and just go from one thing to the next as it comes up.  Nothing productive would get done, but I would not much care, would I?  Today I find myself envious of a dog that is totally satisfied with having a rug to lie on and a toy to chew.

Perhaps I am trapped by having too many things.

   *  *

Autumn has begun in the mountains behind the house and I am glad to see it finally show up.  There were no signs of autumn on the grouse hunt of a couple weeks ago and no indication that the summer-like heat was ready to give way either.  I remember from biology that it is often the shortening days that first trigger color changes in leaves, and cold weather crystallizing sugars that finalizes it.  The trees – at least the native ones – know that it is time to prepare for winter.  The animals are probably enjoying an extended opportunity to grow fat in the warmth of this harvest season.

I always rush autumn because it is my favorite season.  Autumn is the fat season when food comes easy.  So far I have not wowed my wife with my hunting or fishing skills, but that does not mean that the food is not there, just that I have not had time to go look for it.  The duck hunt begins Saturday morning at 8:00am but I won’t be there to greet it this year because of other obligations.  I am sure the ducks won’t miss me at all (although it is guaranteed that I would miss many of them if I were to go).  I will keep talking about hunting and listening to the loving teasing about me being ALL talk.

I understand that there will be a cooling for a couple of days this weekend but that it won’t last and I will seize the moment and build a fire at the first opportunity.  We had one earlier this year when it was dark and rainy (although not cold enough to warrant one).  I love fires.  This year promises to be a good one because I have a new wife to share a warm fire with, if I can only get some firewood set aside.

Did I mention that this new house has three fireplaces?  Unfortunately none are in the master bedroom, but perhaps we can figure out how to get a gas insert installed up there someday.  Three fireplaces... I bet heaven has three fireplaces too.

GASP -- what if all the fires are down the other way?  Oh well, my fate was probably decided long ago; I wonder if they will let me poke the logs in the furnaces.

Did I mention that I love fires?  Did I mention that I love autumn?

I have a lot to look forward to.

    *  *

I had an employee review today.  These used to be horrible, but that was back when I had a horrible boss.  Today’s was nice. 

One thing that the company does with reviews these days is send out an e-mail asking for input from co-workers and other managers – people that might have had dealings with me in the past year.  One of the comments received was this:  “Mike can be warm and helpful and funny – or he can be surly and obstinate and frustrating.  I have noticed that my recent interactions with him have been of the first type.”

Boy does this ever describe me accurately.  I think my mother, my wife, and certainly my children would agree that this is definitely me.  I am glad that recently I have been warm, helpful and funny.  It must be because I am happy.

   *  *

I have always been the warm one: in college I always seemed warmer than the girls I dated, and when I married I had to get used to being used as a foot heater.  I imagined that my body was strong and capable of surviving in the cold because of this and I was perhaps a bit proud.  I remember how uncomfortable it was to have someone sucking the warmth from me, but I remember that it also felt good to be caring for someone else by sharing my heat.  I can even remember mentally tabulating being warm as an asset that women might find attractive  about me - it was a very short list.

Then came the dry time when my Ex had no interest in me and quit even touching me.  This season lasted for about 5 years while I was working out the terms of divorce and was determined not to begin any move toward dating until the divorce was final.  I had permission from my Ex to date, but it was not her permission I needed and God let me know that this is what he wanted from me.  During this long period of time I had no reference point to judge my heater by and I assumed it was still working as ever.

I guess I could go back into my chart at the donor center where I donated blood regularly and see if they keep temperature information.  Somewhere there might be over 200 regular recordings of my body temperature and I could perhaps trend it and see if I am warmer or colder now.  All I know is that in recent memory my body temperature has been about 1 degree below average.  It was still in the range considered normal so I had no problem donating.  I never wondered if I had lost my heat but that is probably a very good thing because with such a short list of assets, the thought of losing one might have been devastating.

You can tell that my body temperature has been much on my mind lately, but such things should be expected from a newly wed who is still discovering new things every day.  You see, I just realized that with Carol I am the cold one.  I have noticed it only peripherally before this, but early this morning it became clear when Carol scooted over and wrapped herself around my sleeping body.

“Why are you always so cold?” she wondered in a drowsy, half asleep voice that indicated she really did not expect an answer.  I was happy not to answer because although I recognized that my skin was very chilled, I was blissful as her body heat began to chase the cold away.  It was like a warm blanket – fresh from the dryer – being tossed over me… no, it was even better.  I was quickly back to sleep and slept better for being warmed. 

I feel some loss of masculinity for not being the warmer of the two of us; for taking her warmth instead of providing my warmth to her.  I recognize this feeling and then I try to file it away because there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.  Besides, it feels nice.  Right now I am happy being a girly-man (think Hans and Franz from SNL) and I will just go on letting Carol warm me.

    *  *

My job is often tedious.  I believe that part of this is a result of my having done the same basic thing now for… 16?  18?  for too many years to count.  It is rare that anything really exciting comes my way and when it does it is most often a serious problem needing immediate resolution.  I don’t really get to enjoy these times much, at least until they are over but then fatigue generally mutes the enjoyment I might otherwise feel at a job well done.

For this reason, I try to enjoy the little things as much as possible.  Today was such an occasion:  For years we have provided hold music from a CD player that I wired into the phone system by splicing a set of headphones.  It works, but CD players are not meant to spin constantly and forever so we have been replacing them every year or so.  Today we went hi-tech and I put in place… get this… an MP3 Player!

Not that it was difficult, but it provided a moment of doing something new and different, even if that different was only ripping the old and worn CD’s and putting them on the MP3 player.  Oh, I also got to preview all the tracks to make sure that the classical music was traditional enough for our corporate image.  It is interesting that the music I was supplied by the man who is taking the reins of this company next July did not pass the test because it was just too – energetic.  Client Services will thank me for not getting callers blood moving when they have hold times of two or three minutes.

All too soon my chore was complete and I found myself back fixing phones, moving people from one cubicle to another - and then back again when they decided to re-re-re-arrange their seating... GRRRR.  More of the same.  Fix this, install that, repair his, move hers.  Audits, error logs, and placing orders just does not thrill me much.  It is almost a fourth of a mile from my desk to the room where the phone services come into the building so at least I get to walk a lot... good thing or I would be really, really fat by now.  With eight kids you need a certain amount of weight to throw around, but I think I would easilly exceed this if I did not do so much walking.

Different is good.  Carol spends every morning getting kids off to school except the one day a week she works.  For this day, getting the kids ready and to school is entirely my responsibility and I enjoy it.  There were ample events that might have set me off this morning – spilt milk, lost backpacks, slow walkers – normal things that take on a sudden urgency as I realize the time, but these problems were enough different from my day-to-day routine that I enjoyed managing them.

I hope Carol enjoys her days at work in the same way I enjoy my mornings at home.

    *  *

I guess I have control issues.  This is something that I would never have imagined, but it is true.  Where another’s control issues might be related to getting other people to do what they want, mine are more personal:  I still can’t control half of my face.  Talk about issues!

I guess that being in ‘the club’ of control freaks makes it perfectly OK for me to speak about other people and their control issues… right?  I would never think of telling jokes about Jews (unless I were to first convert), but since I am on the inside of this one myself, it is OK to talk about control freaks and the stupid things they say and do.  Right?

I am not going to do it.  I could write a thesis about my recent run in with a control freak but it would do no good, make me feel no better, and some control freak would just make me take it down anyway.  Let me just say that control freaks really bug me.

Anyone who has been reading this (and recently I have picked up some new regular readers despite my inconsistency with writing) will know that three days after Carol and I got married I woke with Bell’s Palsy and the left side of my face completely unresponsive. 

OK – Let me stop right here and address that thought:  I know what you are all thinking because I hear it loud and clear every day.  Even when you say nothing, I can tell by the smirks and pregnant pauses in the conversation that you are thinking that my palsy is somehow related to being newlywed.  Remember, I had been married only three days so there was nothing crazy going on; popular opinion at work would have you believe that Carol and I invented something so crazy and wild that my broken face was a result.  If you are reading here only in the hope that I will let something slip about this magical new thing, you are wasting your time:  Neither of us is that creative.

It does not matter much what the cause was (I have become convinced that it was stress although I did not recognize that I was feeling stress at the time), I have been suffering through patiently even when the only signs of any progress were subtle – an eye closing all the way or a tear forming.  Sometimes people would comment that I looked better – or that my face did not sag as much anyway – but these people most often saw me in the morning hours while I was fresh.  The sag increases with fatigue (and with stress).  It has been a painful experience, both physically and emotionally.

Friday evening was the first Symphony of the year.  I had full season tickets last year, and I got them specifically to force myself to find a date with someone who appreciated music every week or two.  I really did not get to invite that many women to the symphony before I settled comfortably on the one I married.  When I settled on Carol, I changed the remainder of the tickets for the season from Saturday performances to Friday to make Church easier Sunday morning.  When I did this, the seats were different for every event and we had a chance to explore the Symphony hall and see where we wanted to sit.  The request I made for tickets back two rows and closer to the center were ignored and I have the same seats as last year.  They are not bad seats and they have the added appeal of being the seats where Carol and I started out.  I think I will keep them.

For the first symphony this year, they chose two Beethoven works – Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major and the Ninth Symphony.  I greatly enjoyed the Piano Concerto – the soloist was Garrick Ohlsson – but the Ninth left me wanting a little; it seemed… It seemed mechanical:  all the parts were there, and all the parts went off on time and on pitch, but it lacked the power to move me in the way I had expected.  It will never be a performance you see available for purchase because it has been done so much better by many others.

While I sat through the hour-long performance of the Ninth, I tried very hard to get some response from my broken face.  I used the beat of the music – live music has a force to move that recorded music lacks – and tried to get my face to respond.  I asked Carol if she could see any movement and she said she could not.  It did not matter, I was sure I could finally feel something small tugging at muscles that have been flaccid for so long. 

Sunday I had improved enough that Carol could see some small movement when I really, really tried hard, and today the muscles are responding in ever increasing vigor.  It is slow progress, but any progress is welcome.  I would really like to get over my personal control issues even if it means having to keep to myself all of my scorn and mockery of those for who control issues remain.

   *  *

It is raining and it is a wonderful rain.  It is the kid of rain that comes slowly – first a sprinkle and gradually works its way into a real rain.  It is also the kind of rain that comes straight down without even a breeze to disturb it.  In short, it is the perfect rain for open windows.

I like rain and I still remember with fondness the warm summer rains in central Florida.  Those rains were perfect for being out in because although you got wet quickly enough, you never really got cold.  I miss rains like that.  Our summer rain is too infrequent for my taste, and now the seasons have turned from summer to autumn.  The calendar may not show it, but the rains speak loudly of the change:  a walk in the rain today would quickly become uncomfortable because of the chill air.

I sat by the window this morning while the last of the kids got ready for me to take them to school and I watched and listened to the rain.  I had a Cabela’s magazine open in front of me, but I could not tell you what section was open because the rain held me captive.  I did not want to leave but I had duties and responsibilities.  This does not mean that I was not tempted to return home after letting the last of the children off to school and it was only my overly sensitive feeling of moral duty that kept me from calling in sick today.

Well, I could not very well call in sick without being sick, although I did call in once telling my boss that I was having trouble with my eyes and just could not see the point of coming in to work that day.  I had to repeat myself twice, but once he caught on he laughed and wished me well.  I think my current boss would have responded this way as well despite the short hours I worked trying to recover quickly from the palsy – for all the good that did me.

Days like today don’t come very often.  I hope doing the right thing was the best choice today.

   *  *

September is here and I find myself in various stages of readiness:  I love the fresh peaches of September, and the gardens overflowing with vegetables too.  I also love the beginning of the hunting season with Dove and Grouse signaling the start.  September also has some of the best fishing of the year, but I am totally unprepared to take advantage of this.  I am not ready to let go of summer even though I am glad that we are past the summer heat and the high energy bills that come from trying to cool a house.  September means that snowfall is only two months away and I don’t even know if I still have a shovel. 

I am seriously conflicted about September, but at least my angst came a little later this year than in previous ones.  Every year, the end of summer brings a feeling of loss for all the activities that I did not complete.  Perhaps the regrets came a little later because I actually did quite a bit!

I bought a new house.

I got married.

I got myself five more kids.

I took the family of 10 to California for vacation (driving).

I made it up to the property twice – once with my three children and once with Carol’s five.

I took the eight kids camping.

I was able to go fishing from the canoe twice and river fishing twice as well.

I have been out shooting guns a few times.

I have been able to watch the kids find peace in their new environments.

I found a 12 passenger van to carry us all in so we don’t have to take two cars.

The yard at the new house has not looked this good in a long time – despite all the toys everywhere.

That is really quite a list.  There are plenty of things that I wish I had been able to add to that list, and these undone things are the cause of the morose feelings of this time of year, but I can be proud of the things that I was able to finish.  I have long believed that you can tell a person’s true priorities by the things they actually accomplish – to say this a different way, the important things always get done.  This year I can be satisfied with the things that were done and the priorities that they spotlight.

Those things that were left undone this summer were really not priorities, despite the joy I would have found doing them.  It has been a good year.

I was forwarded an e-mail yesterday that had me laughing.  Maybe you have seen this before, but if not, you will see it here.  This first e-mail is a note from a man explaining to his ex-wife why he could not take his kids during his weekend:

I would like to be, but I do not have enough money..

I have not been able to eat for a day or two, fortunately some people share.

Had 10 dollars, but I dropped in on the floor and lost it..

So I have been fasting again..

I have to find a way to eat first..

cheers,

  -Ben

Hopefully my mother will send me some money.

This is the reply Ben received back:

Ben,

McDonalds is hiring -- and they give employee discounts for food.  Check it out -- they even have schedules for people who can't get out of bed until noon.

But then again, it is easier to beg mommy for money. 

I see lots of people with fewer prospects than you have - no skills, no education - and most of them are managing to provide for themselves and their family: you can't even provide for yourself. 

I met (John Wayne) the other day when I was out getting shoes for your son - I never imagined that (John Wayne) would be doing so much better than you at this point:  He has a car, a house, a job, and he was going to get a burger with his son so he obviously had at least ten dollars.

When I tuck your children into bed tonight, I will tell them that you love them.  I won't tell them that you just don't love them enough to get a job that would allow you to see them, but they will eventually figure that out for themselves.

Eric

Now that I have had more time to think about this, it is not funny anymore.  Ben is obviously broken.  Somewhere he has a fundamental illness that is affecting his ability to function and that is not funny.  Perhaps originally the humor I saw in this came from the fact that Ben is so unaware of his being broken that he believes his decisions are rational, but that is not funny either.  In fact, it is becoming depressing to continue to think about this at all.

Another thought I have been rolling down the steep slopes of my mind to see where it goes or what it will bowl over is this:  How often our best intentions end up being something other than what is needed!  I won’t say how I know this – obviously I live a Brady Bunch life where Carol and Mike never are misunderstood and never disappoint – but I learned it somewhere on TV. 

Take for instance a man who comes home from work to find that his wife is not feeling well.  If this man were to immediately go to work and make every effort to insure that his wife could just tune-out and get the rest she needed, he might find that his efforts were misinterpreted as being uninterested in her.  The man might feel that he is giving the greatest service and the greatest benefit while his wife becomes more and more convinced that he has no interest in her well being at all.  If the man could just put down the mop and recognize that the kids won’t actually eat each other despite their animal behavior, he might recognize that what his wife really wants is just some attention from him.

Nope, I don’t have any problems like that.  I am so glad I am not broken.

    *  *

My old blog is dead, but I sometimes miss it.  I spent years developing it and I formed an attachment to it over those years.  I was once featured on the week of Father’s day and even had a link to my blog from the MSN home page.  That was my 15 minutes.  I did not make Time’s list, but you can’t have everything, and I am certain this is something I would rather not have been given.

You might think that I could just continue the old blog in a new location – I certainly believed this.  Reality has proven this a difficult task and this blog has languished.  I don’t know where to put the blame – it may be that I lack time, it may be that I lack the emotional push, it may be that this blog is under surveillance – but I can see, or rather, I can feel the results.  My writing has suffered.

It seems that I have 34 regular readers – I don’t know who they are but one of the stat counters I use consistently reports 34 return visitors (except on weekends – but you can be forgiven for that since I don’t write on weekends).  Who ever you are, I appreciate your patients.  I wish I could promise thrilling content that will eventually reward your dedication, but I can’t.  Still, where ever you are, I wish to thank you for being my silent cheer leaders.  Perhaps someday I will have 300+ readers a day again, and that certainly provides a certain amount of motivation to write, but if I reach such levels of readership, you who are regulars will be the reason.

So, what do I give the 34 readers?  What can I say today that will make it worth their click to my site.  I hope that each of them has a bookmark set to save them the trouble of typing in the address.  When I look at the map of their registered ISPs, I notice that the majority live east of the Mississippi river, although the west coast also has a fairly healthy contingent as well.  There is also someone in eastern Australia, someone in India, and a fairly frequent visitor from Africa (but not frequent enough to show up on the map today and I would hate to try to remember where they were from for fear of alienating them forever – I know how strong national pride is over there).  Maybe part of my continuing problem is that I don’t really know who I am writing to yet…  I will think about that some more.

Monday saw our family invited to the block party that has been celebrated on the last Monday of August for over ten years now.  We went (since it was right next door it was easy to go and we would have been harder to avoid it than to go).  I had the kids help me drag up the grill from the back yard, Carol made a wonderful bow-tie pasta and spinach/mushroom/olive/feta cheese salad, and of course I made ice cream.  It was a wonderful gathering of good people who raved about my ice cream and Carol’s salad.

I found it interesting that everyone at the party said that they were so happy to have kids on the block again.  I counted the children in attendance, and there were exactly nine.  When eight of them came from our house, you can see that the demographics of the neighborhood shift more toward the retired end of the scale than what ever part of the scale I represent.  On the plus side, the neighbors treat us as a bit of a novelty and the children have learned which houses give candy and which give tomatoes, but all the houses seem to want to give something.

We had to leave the party a little earlier than I would have liked, but some of the 9 children there started having a water fight, and three of the nine have ‘rules of cleanliness’ that include bathing at least once a day every day.  I have a hard time with the bathing every single day because my nose smells a hot, sweaty kid that has been playing on the lawn where another nose smells something vile.  It is easier to bathe them every single night than to hear complaints about how badly they reek.  Cindy tells me that when she is not with me she needs to bathe both before going horseback riding and after she gets home: I am glad that I have not yet been expected to hold to that standard!  It reminds me a bit of my childhood friend whose mother ironed everything that came out of the dryer – socks and underwear included – and I knew that lady was just crazy.  The interesting thing is that I quickly cave to these demands that I can’t understand or accept – even when it means that we have to leave the party early.

Recently stress has been building up on several fronts and I have been trying to notice where I stand up strong and when I crumble and cave like a poorly baked brick.  I would like to understand if I am a man or a mouse, but all I have been able to determine for sure is that it depends on who is hunting me.

I think I will live longer, and better, if I allow myself to act the mouse sometimes – at least when Carol is not around to see it; I still have to pretend to be all man when I am around her.

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Carol told me Friday evening that she wanted me out of the house. 

OK, did you panic like my fishing buddy’s wife did?  She thought Carol wanted me out of the house permanently, but actually she only wanted me to get out and do something for myself; she wanted me out of the house, but in a good way.  I am glad that she pushed me to leave because there were certainly plenty of things that really needed doing.  I often put the things I want to do to at the bottom of the pile and I imagine myself a better person for it.  Carol really meant it when she said she wanted me out of the house, and further she told me that when I came home I was not to fix the sprinklers or to mow the lawn.  I should listen to my health-care-professional when she tells me to do something… as it was I listened only to half of what she said. 

I called Sheriff Taylor and I told him that he would be doing me a real favor if he would go fishing with me.  It took a bit of talking, but in the end he agreed (it really did not take much talking).  We had a separate impetus for going other than Carol looking after my health and that is that the rules for fishing in Mayberry have recently changed:  Where before land owners claimed ownership for streams and rivers running through their property, now all waters are open for fishing, hunting, hiking, boating – anything that uses the water that runs over private land is allowed as long as you stay in the water.  This is bad news for land owners who kept the rivers running over their land as their private fishing preserve, but it is wonderful news for people like me who don’t own river land but who salivate as we drive past the beautiful waters that until last week were closed to us.

Rivers in Mayberry are relatively small – you can’t fit a big river on a stage I guess.  Regardless of their size, they still hold fish.  I fished a lot more in past years than I have recently because the demands of life keep crowding out leisure activities, and I found Saturday that I was not alone in this because the last time Sheriff Taylor went fishing was three years ago and was with me.  Both of us were a bit rusty.

Despite being rusty my casting was a thing of beauty.  I did not loose a fly to a snag all day and I was often able to drop my fly right up against the bank and in the corners created by logs, rocks or bushes.  If you can’t tell, I was pleased with the way I was casting despite the time off from fishing.  Setting a hook is another story and I am not very pleased with my ability at this.  I fished dry-fly at first because that is my favorite kind of fishing (it takes a better cast to make a dry fly look good to a fish), but it was not very productive with the heat we have been having, so I reluctantly switched to a set of nymphs.  When you are fishing with a strike indicator and two separate hooks on your line your cast often becomes more of a lob.  Since the hooks sink and bounce against the rocks as they drift downstream, a delicate cast where the fly drifts softly to the surface is not needed.  To me, wet-fly is just not as much fun.  That is not to say it is any easier than dry, and it will take me a while to re-learn what makes a fish look different than when the hooks bouncing over rocks.  I missed several opportunities because I was out of practice.  On the occasions when I was actually able to get a fish on, I suffered miserably from silly mistakes that allowed each and every fish to escape.  Again part of this comes from being unsure of what is happening down under the water – retrieving a fly requires a different movement from the pole than setting a hook does, and retrieving when a fish has a hook in his mouth results in a hook that is not set well, while setting a hook when no fish is there results in tangled lines.

Despite my inability to land a single fish, I had a wonderful day out.  Sheriff Taylor was also having a frustrating time of things, so we left the river a little earlier than we might have if we had been better able to land fish.  I got home in plenty of time to mow lawns and fix sprinklers, or so I thought.

Living in Mayberry gives us opportunities that are in many ways unique, so Carol and I had a chance to go see the Osmond’s.  It has been long enough since our families competed in the ‘family entertainment’ market that I could actually enjoy seeing them together again.  Of course my sprinkler repair went long so Carol and I did not get to leave the house as early as we had hoped (and Carol was waiting for me), but traffic was light and we actually arrived early.  It was a wonderful evening, but a good portion of the enjoyment was a result of the company I was with.  Carol makes life fun.

        *   *

All is well.  I have not fallen off the face of the earth or decided the life of a recluse – living in a hole on the coast of the Monterey Bay – is the life for me.  Life has been busy and the Blog has suffered but it is my mantra “see to the important things first”.  The important things have been getting done.

The 10 of us had a wonderful vacation on the Monterey Bay that will be a memory generator for the rest of our lives.  This area is important to me because my Grandmother has a beach house there and I was excited to share this with my family.  I was prepared for a trip that was a lot of work for me and a lot of fun for the kids but the trip was better than I expected and the work required of me was less than I thought.

That does not mean that everything went smoothly or that there were not conflicts along the way because there were plenty.  It is funny that at 42 years old I can still behave badly but I occasionally prove that potential with action.  Fortunately I have a wife that loves me.  I find I can accept correction from her when I would not accept it from anyone else and I attribute this willingness to the knowledge of her love for me.  I have a temper that is still not completely tamed.

The beaches were wonderful, the weather pleasant, and everything was so green.  It was a treat to spend a week in that costal climate before returning to the dry summer heat of the desert.  My palsy seemed to respond well to the relaxing atmosphere and my palsied eye even made a few stray tears giving hope that I might truly be on the path to recovery.  My face drooped less, but I still had no muscular control of half of my face and fought a continual battle with dry eye and eye infection.  I can not think of a better place to spend time recovering. 

I am back to work this week, and some of the progress has been given back.  When I am at work I am working so I end up with a droopy face and an eyeball that is on fire from dryness.  Wearing a patch helps (I fit right in while wearing the patch on vacation – It is part of the Oakland Raiders costume), but when I wear the patch I get eye strain and headaches.  I find it is best to wear the patch for an hour or two and then remove it for a couple of hours.  This way I end up with a sore eye and a minor headache – the middle of the road so to speak.

    *  *

This palsy has interfered with my life far more than you might expect from something as simple as facial paralysis.  I mean, it is not like I lost an arm or a leg, but sometimes I feel like I might as well have.  I know that this is just silly-talk and that I am fortunate that nothing more serious happened to me but the selfishness within me sometimes looks at all I can’t do and screams “why me, why now?”  Yes, I am pathetic.

Our family experienced a new wrinkle this weekend when Carol came down with an infected tooth.  Friday evening the pain was incapacitating for her and that made it excruciating for me.  I frequently feel sympathy pains so watching her in such pain caused my brain to catalog the facial pain from my palsy as tooth pain as well.  This pain was even amplified from normal levels substantially as the evening went on.  I know it is all in my head, but that does not make the pain feel any less.  Yes, I am still pathetic.

It was selfishness, but I got a bit… well, angry describes it best, although I would prefer to call it frustration or concern, when I found that Carol was not treating the pain with any of the pain medication available to her.  For right or wrong, I practically insisted that she take something for the pain regardless of the side effects she would feel.  Up until that moment I had been very willing to let Carol manage her own body but I snapped when her decisions began affecting me.  Yes, more proof that I am pathetic.

Carol is now taking medication for the pain, and she is sleeping and resting much better than she was able to manage before.  I count this as a plus, but of course I will see it the way I want to – the way that makes my opinion the right one.  It turns out that her previous marriage was one in which she was constantly indoctrinated that any medication was a sign of weakness.  In her pain she reverted to what had been drilled into her for all those years and she felt that I would find her weak if she took medication.  I certainly don’t see that using modern medicine makes us any weaker than using any other modern convenience – we could all choose to walk instead of driving or flying too!  Is this view pathetic?

Later today Carol has an appointment to see Orin Scrivello, DDS.  You might remember him from  “Little Shop of Horrors”:  Steve Martin played him in the movie and did a fair job representing him.  When I first watched this movie with my children, they loved the songs and the idea, but they were concerned when Orin became plant food and I had to reassure them that Orin did not really die – it is just pretend.  Of course people don’t really die in the movies and so Orin is alive and well, and practicing his own brand of dentistry.  He was the only one available to see her on such short notice.

Until Carol recovers, I am doing a passable job keeping the home in order.  Carol always seems a bit on edge when allowing me to manage the household tasks but I can’t really tell if this is because she feels badly for giving me the extra work when I don’t feel well myself or if she just knows what kind of job I am going to do. 

I just try to remind her that there are times and seasons for everything:  Time to let me help and a season for fixing all the things I really screwed up trying to help.  It is really just pathetic.

*   *

The worst part of Bell’s Palsy is not making a funny face when you smile, nor is it not being able to drink from a drinking fountain.  The very worst part of Bell’s Palsy is the eye that does not close and will not make tears.  Even with the best care I can give, my eye quickly becomes fatigued, dry, and very red.  I have a patch I can wear and that helps a lot – especially when walking down long, air conditioned hallways, but the trade off is eye strain and a headache from using only one eye.  The eye strain is worst when I am working at a computer.

It seems, though, that the medications are having an effect:  My lips seem to have a little more feeling and everyone tells me that my mouth is not drooping quite so badly.  Of course this may have happened anyway – with or without the medication – but since there is no way to tell I will just say that the medication is working.  I wonder how far progressed I would be if I had started earlier…

One of the medications is a steroid and before I was given the package I had to first be lectured on the health concerns with taking steroids and warned that I might feel angry because of them.  I then had to sign a statement that I had been counseled about taking them.  I found it a little entertaining. 

I have since been waiting for the side effects to kick in but so far, nothing; at least nothing that they warned me about.  I definitely felt ‘out of sorts’ yesterday when I finally got home from work.  I offended Carol because when I came in Sam was screaming for no discernable reason other than perhaps because he liked to hear himself scream and I commented to Carol that his screaming was annoying.  Part of it was just that this Palsy has an effect of making me unable to determine volume intensity so screaming often sets my ear on fire, but beyond that I was just not feeling myself.  Carol took the kids to a movie to get them out of my way and I slept.

I slept for about 4 hours.  I awoke when Carol returned with the kids (still screaming, and still for no discernable reason) and felt really good.  I spent a lazy evening with the kids but Carol and I seemed out of step – probably because of what I said.  When evening came I could not sleep at all.  My body felt as if I had been given a mega-dose of caffeine and I could not relax it.  I tried everything I could think of but I could not sleep so I got to some good reading (Currently reading “City of Thieves” by David Benioff because I could not finish the “Enchantress of Florence” by Salman Rushdie), and even had several hours to write.

Yes, I said write.  Any reader of this blog (or my previous one) will know that I enjoy writing immensely and that I have always aspired to be an author.  Marriage suits me well because I have a wife that does more than just say “you should write” but one who actually goes out of her way to present me with opportunities to write.  I am not naive enough to believe that I will immediately sit down and write something worthy of publication, quit my day job, and live comfortably off the sale of a book, so I am writing because I have a story unraveling in my head and I need to see where it ends.  More than that, I write because it pleases me to.

Something has definitely changed my body clock – I have been up since 5:00 yesterday afternoon and I don’t feel the slightest bit like going to sleep.  My eye is going to force me to get some rest in the very near future, but I can’t promise that I will sleep.  I may, however, go home and write some more – except that I write on a computer and that hurts my eye… Maybe I will try paper just to see if that is any better.  If nothing else, I will relive the story in my mind in preparation for writing later.

I am working every day now, at least until I become tired or eye-strained.  Those who have had Bell’s Palsy question my intelligence for working at all but right now I am the only one who can do what needs to be done.  This coming year should see someone hired to take some of my responsibilities and to be a backup for me but for now I am alone.  I really don’t want this to take any longer than it needs to and I really don’t want to do any permanent nerve damage, but I am also committed to this company and to seeing that it continues to operate at its potential.  Hopefully I can find the right mix of work and rest.

   *  *

I had an MRI yesterday.  I can’t say that I enjoyed the experience at all but at least I don’t suffer from claustrophobia.  I went to an off-campus site for the MRI and not having to go to the hospital definitely reduced my stress level and increased the enjoyment of the experience – wait.  There was no joy…

I went to another doctor today because Annie was not in her office and I wanted to get the results of the MRI, and what I learned has me angrier with Annie than I was before.  It seems that Annie is developing quite a  reputation for really doing stupid things with the patients in her care and that I was only the most recent victim.  First, although I had all the classic symptoms of Bell’s Palsy, she did not start me on any medication that might have been beneficial – especially when given at the onset of the disease.  I am now taking an anti-viral to combat the probable cause and a steroid to help with nerve regeneration – both of these should have been started Saturday.  On top of that, it seems that ordering an MRI for Bell’s Palsy was unnecessary unless I had symptoms that strayed from the normal… I don’t.

Annie did provide a prescription for the head/ear pain that is typical for Bells, but I believe that this was only because of the insistence of my wife that she prescribe me something less powerful than the Lortab pills that are left over from a previous prescription.  That prescription is about all Annie did for me Saturday.

I found it interesting that the doctor I saw today was unfamiliar enough with Bell’s that she went to a reference to see what the dosing should be.  It is comforting when someone admits that they do not know all the answers.  I wonder if Annie is new enough at her profession that she just did not want to be seen as ignorant about something – this is the first time I have met this particular Annie so I can’t imagine that she was purposely out to delay my recovery.

I hate this ailment.  Rest is key to recovery so I am working with my boss to make sure that I don’t delay my recovery by working too much.  I really want to be normal again.  I get to wear a swank eye-patch now, but even that is not worth the inconvenience of not being able to eat soup or drink from a cup.

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