How to Maintain a Happy Home (a 12-step program in disguise)

Live in the present.

Plan for the future.

Take care of the past.

Hold those you love close.

Let them know they’re loved.

Forgive.

Forget.

Allow others to be the flawed human being that you are.

Be.

Don’t just exist.

Never forget where you came from.

Live.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Winter in central Texas means two things: erratic weather with temperature swings of 30 degrees or more in a few hours along with unexpected ice storms and cedar pollen. I’m not sure which is the more difficult to live with. The first makes my bones hurt in ways they don’t usually, and the second leaves me sneezing, sniffling and draining with itchy, watery eyes that aren’t much good for anything.

Yesterday at 2 p.m., it was warm enough that I was a little too warm in short sleeves. Mid-to-upper seventies. When I left the office at 5 p.m., it was cold, with fierce winds howling out of the north and west. The direction changed so quickly and frequently that I couldn’t get used to being barraged from one direction before another took over.

By 8 or so, we had sleet and rain, and by midnight, snow. The temperature hovered around freezing from about 9 on. Not cold enough to mess up the roads, but just cold and wet enough to be miserable.

And then there’s that other misery of central Texas winters: cedar fever. A particular variety of cedar that thrives here and surrounds us for a hundred miles or more and creates a vicious pollen in huge quantities. Image cedar trees enveloped in clouds of orange dust, emitting huge plumes of it when the wind is blowing enough to stir it up.

Cold weather triggers its release, and we got the first of it today. A mild dose, for sure, because it usually takes a couple or three cold days for it to get into high production, but we have them coming up over the next few days. Tomorrow, the temperature supposed to go from 28 overnight to 60 at some point. And more of the same the rest of the week and weekend.

I don’t much care for cold weather, especially the wet, blustery kind we’ve had the last couple of days. And I don’t care at all for swollen, dripping eyes and a scratchy, itchy throat.

Austin is an urban paradise, except when it isn’t. Personally, I favor a giant dome with filtered air and climate control over the entire city. Just the city, though. The suburbanites can fend for themselves.

As it is, I’ll tough it out, yet again. Keep my supply of tissues and antihistamines up to date. Wear warm clothes and dig out a scarf from where-ever we put them last spring.

Then, I'll start over again.

Waiting to Pee

It started at 4 o’clock this morning when both of our alarms went off at almost the same second. That’s not a good time for me. When I was younger and just getting home at 4 a.m., I handled early hours much better. And it’s infinitely easier to go to bed at 4 in the morning after a night of doing things that I’m not going to talk about (I have a constitutional right to not incriminate myself) than it is to get up at that un-Godly hour after a boring and blissful evening sitting at home.

When we did get on the road, I remembered yet again why I don’t drive at night. Between the time the sun goes down and comes up again, I have little to no depth-perception. The road in front of me curves where there are no curves and narrows where it does not. The normal optical tricks of perspective multiply exponentially to the point that I can’t tell where the road goes until I get there.

Road signs might as well not exist. I can’t read them until it’s too late to take the right exit. Sometimes I can’t read them at all.

So I missed the exit to the hospital because the sign identifying the street was only 2 or 3 seconds away from the last chance to take it.

I took the next exit, made a left, then another into a McDonalds’ parking lot with the intent of cutting through back to the highway. Turns out the street I had landed on was one-way, going away from where I needed to get.

On the other side of the parking lot, the street was one-way going the direction I needed, but it was divided by a barrier. The part I could get on didn’t go where I was headed. I didn’t even realize it was one-way until I pulled out onto it going the wrong direction.

A quick right turn put me back on a two way street. So down the way, past the original one-way street that had landed me in traffic-planning hell to a funeral home parking lot where I could turn around and go back down the same two-way street to get on the one-way street that finally took me to the highway.

All of this in the dark at 6 a.m. on 4 ½ hours sleep with bad eyes.

We made it to the hospital on time, and even had enough leeway for one final cigarette (for Shannon at least) until we went in. (The only benefit of getting there so early in the morning is that I didn’t have to park four blocks away. I got what someone I know calls “rock-star parking”.)

After checking in at the out-patient surgery desk on time at 6:30, we waited. They had given us one of those buzzing-flashy coaster things that some restaurants use to tell you when you table is ready, and as people trickled in, everyone’s coaster went off but ours. When it went off we were supposed to go through the “authorized personnel only” doors to see what was next.

Kind of like a game show.

We waited 45 minutes, and finally got our chance to go through the magic doors.

Our coaster flashed and buzzed, so we went in to sign waivers that pretty much said that they were not responsible for anything. That was what was behind the magic door.

That done, they whisked Shannon away for pre-op, told me to wait until my coaster did its thing again, then go through first set of magic doors to a second glass door. “Follow the red line. Push the silver button on the wall, and the door will open. It’ll be 10-20 minutes. Just depends on him.”

2 hours and 15 minutes later, they finally summoned me. The hold up was that Shannon couldn’t pee. He’d been trying for 2 hours, but with no liquids since midnight, he didn’t have anything to contribute. The anesthesiologist wanted a tox screen before he put him under, just to be sure that Shannon hadn’t been out the night before snorting coke, smoking crack or shooting up heroin. I assured them that he had not.

So they gave up on the pee sample and took him on in for the main event. I asked the nurse how long would it be and did I have time to get something to eat. It was after 10, and I was starving.

She said they had him booked in the OR for an hour, so allow that, plus 30 minutes to one hour more. He was going to be taking a nap, and they can’t always predict how long it takes someone to wake up from one.

He got to take the nap that I desperately wanted, but I went in search of food, instead. And also ditched his clothes that they gave me in a plastic bag, his cane and coat in the car with rock-star parking so I wouldn’t have to tote them along with a tray when I finally found food.

The cafeteria at the VA’s hospital in Temple is okay, but nowhere as good as Seton’s in Austin, but much better than the Methodist Hospital in Memphis. Seton always has heart-healthy options, like baked chicken and fresh veggies. Methodist has over-cooked canned veggies, macaroni and cheese and fried whatever-you-want. The VA had a mixture: the option of a salad bar, sandwiches or fried chicken.

Being a dyed-in-the-wool Southern boy, I went for the fried chicken with fried potato wedges. (We call then Jo-Jo potatoes up north in the south. Not sure why, but the ones up there are better.) Not knowing when I’d have a chance to eat again, I went for the heartier meal.

(Rating hospital food must be a sign of aging, by the way. I've been around long enough to be able to do it.)

After eating, retrieving his clothes, cane and coat from the car, I went back upstairs to wait for my coaster to go off again. Wait and wait and wait.

2 hours later, the surgeon came out to tell me things went fine. Shannon was awake and alert. The doctor didn’t anticipate any problems. They would buzz and flash me back soon.

An hour later, the trusty coaster hailed me back behind the magic doors. He was fine, sitting up and eating a tuna fish sandwich. He was ready to go. As soon as he peed.

Three small sodas, three glasses of water and two containers of orange juice later, we were still waiting for his bladder to work. He doesn’t pee well on a good day, so having to pee behind a curtain with noise all around and someone waiting for it makes it almost impossible. But they wouldn’t let him go until he did.

I was ready to take the IV out myself, give him his clothes back and make a run for it.

Instead, I picked up his prescription from the pharmacy and got a big cup of iced-tea from the cafeteria. (He had fluids coming at him from everywhere, but I’d been sitting in a waiting room, parched and dry.)

In the end, we spent most of the day waiting for Shannon to pee.

We got back 11 hours after we got up.

All to get a small toe fixed.

Right now, there’s something that looks like a push-pin coming out of his second left one. The ice bag on his ankle (I don’t know why the ankle, but that’s where they said to put it) has to be taken off and put back on every 20 minutes. And he is to stay off his feet as much as possible.

Still, it was necessary. And I’ve come to expect that anything involving Shannon and hospitals will not be easy.

This time, I didn’t anticipate the source of the difficulty.

After all, who would have expected that it would take four hours for anybody to take a whiz?

Survive

Any number of people wouldn’t and don’t know why I love Shannon. He’s a fair amount older than me, has health problems and has been known to go crazy from time to time. I have to drive him to Temple every time he has to go to the VA hospital for routine stuff. It’s a 130 mile round trip, too far for him to do safely on his on.

All I have to say to people who question our relationship is “what planet are you from? Don't they make people who love each other where you came from?”

Those folks are focusing on the little things and not the big picture. Like the life we’ve lived together for somewhere between 8 and 9 years and continue to (The time frame's a little fuzzy as to when we actually committed) .

The big picture is coming home every day to someone who really wants to see me, and that I want to see, as well. Having common goals. Being there when the other needs picking up off the metaphorical floor yet again.

That metaphorical floor is not so much a solid surface as an abyss. A metaphorical one, but one that sometimes doesn’t seem to have a bottom.

He’s lost weight in some places and gained some in others. So have I.

We’ve both gotten older and changed shapes over the years, but one thing hasn’t changed: we take care of each other. He is my guard-rail on the edge of the abyss.

I’m his, too. And if he goes over it into never-land, I’ll be there to pull him out.

We’ve been through too much, me and the old man, to give up now. And it hasn’t been a leisurely stroll through an enchanted garden. At times, it has been nothing short of hell.

Dealing with serious mental illness takes a resolve and understanding I didn’t know I had before I had to deal with it.

It’s made me a stronger and better person, though.

I’m more patient than I ever have been and have enough perspective now to understand what’s important and what’s not. Watching someone writhe in mental anguish, tied to a hospital bed in ICU, not knowing who he is but is living inside a nightmare has a way of creating perspective.

Like Tammy Wynette, I stand by my man. Good, bad and worse. The “good” is great, the “bad” can be very nasty and the “worse” can be downright ugly. But without that commitment, nothing else really has any meaning. At least as far as defining a relationship is concerned.

I’m an aging, stubborn old coot. I take the bad with the good. That’s the only tenable position I think anyone can or should take.

And when things go bad, my motherly genes kick in. If that means I've have to go a couple of days without sleep because I have to, I will. If it means sitting in a hospital waiting room for hours, I will.

Any time I need reinforcements, I put Gloria Gaynor's “I Will Survive” on the play list.

What God can’t cure, disco can.