Ponderings and Musings

Earl and I have always had an open and honest relationship. For the last nearly 21 years we’ve had thousands of discussions. A small minority of them have been heated, the vast majority of them were peppered with laughter and once in a while I’m good from a really good spit take. For example, we were talking about taking a vacation to Disneyland Paris sometime in the future. I mentioned that I needed to brush up on my French and should look into Berlitz or something. He said that I don’t have the attention span to listen to Rosemary’s Baby. 

It took me a few moments and lots of laughter for us to both realize that he meant Rosetta Stone. 

Since the beginning of this surgical journey back at the end of January, my diet has had to hover in the bland zone, especially since the latest surgery at the beginning of the month. With Earl retired, he’s been experimenting in the kitchen a lot more. We’ve started supper in the dining room again instead of eating a fast paced meal at the kitchen table or in front of the television. The meals have been wonderful and I’m lucky man to be married to a man that was able to retire at his age.

The best part of sitting in the dining room eating supper is the after dinner conversation. After we’ve both finished eating we actually sit and talk for a good 10-15 minutes before getting up and clearing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen. I know it’s a really small thing, but it’s small part of what I’ve always dreamed of having in my perfect world. Growing up we had pleasant enough family meals, sometimes in the dining room, sometimes in the kitchen, but my Dad would hastily depart the table when he was done eating. My mom would ask him to sit down and talk but that wasn’t really his thing. He wasn’t mean about it or anything, it’s just that my Dad would rather be sitting in his chair reading a book or magazine or something. Couple the rule of “no politics, no religion, no sex” discussion at the dinner table with the quick exit by my Dad and it’s small wonder that I didn’t really know how the world worked until I was out on my own.

Since the election fiasco of 2000 I’ve tried really hard to be aware of what’s going on in the world of American politics and the world in general. I know just enough to be loud and not sound like a complete fool when I go on one of my rants and a lot of that can be attributed to conversations that Earl and I enjoy after dinner. When Jamie is home, he sits and chats as well.  The conversation occasionally goes off the rails but it’s good to sit down and have family dinner time, whether it’s the two of us or the three of us.

Perhaps more folks should get back in the habit of sitting down for dinner time and having a conversation. Maybe folks would be more interested in what’s going on around them if they talked to the folks around them.

I think it’s been around 10 years since my grandmother’s piano made its way to our home. As a kid I always loved it when she played the piano and would let me (and/or my cousins) play the piano from time to time. Once when my sister and I were staying at my grandparents’ house while my mom and dad were on vacation, I was playing the piano rather loudly. My grandfather came over, put his hands on the piano and said in his typical voice, “Do you know what the word ‘refrain’ means?” He then closed the lid over the keys and that was that for the rest of the evening.

Beyond my love for music and my amateurish abilities at being able to play piano, one of the things I love about having the piano is that it still smells as it did when I was a kid. I don’t know if the piano smells like the 1959 mid-century house it used to live in or if the house smelled like the piano, but the scent lingers on and it makes me smile from time to time. 

The piano is a 1949 Gulbransen, so I’m assuming it was in the original farm house that my grandfather tore down to build the mid-century modern house he had custom designed and then built in 1958-1959. There was a special spot designed for the piano in the living room. As the estate was being settled after his passing, I couldn’t bring myself to go into the house with the piano (and other things) missing. I didn’t want to put dents in my memories of that house and that home. My sister and I were the lucky grandchildren that lived next door; I would visit Grandma Wing every day after elementary school and watch “Bewitched” and “I Dream of Jeannie” after she watched her stories while baking or cooking or doing other housework. She sometimes saved the ironing so she could iron while watching TV with me.

I tell Earl that if we had the money we would build a mid-century style home based on those custom plans, with a couple of modifications (vault the living room ceiling, make the dining room bigger). To this day I am absolutely in love with the design of that house. 

But in the meanwhile, I’ll make music and revel in the memories.

I have never made it a secret that I look up to Steve Jobs. Yeah, he was a bit crass and he might have improved on ideas that he got from others, but the man had a vision, more importantly he had a set of standards and expectations but most importantly, he did everything in his power to make all of those things come together.

This is one of the reason that I am an Apple fanboy. In a way I can’t believe that I am saying this, because I’ve toyed with many operating systems over the years. I was a Linux evangelist for a while. At one point I had used every iteration of Windows starting with Windows/286 in the mid 1980s right up until Windows 8.1. (I’ve toyed with Windows 10 a bit, it’s good but it still underwhelms me).

I could never get into Mac OS before Mac OS X (later MacOS came around), but ever since that day I bought Earl one of those pedestal iMacs, I’ve been hooked.

It just works. Notice that I didn’t say “It just works, most of the time” or “It just works some of the time.” Because even though some later iterations of MacOS and iOS have undergone some speed bumps in the quality control department, when you boil out the BS you’ll find that the offerings from Apple are still top in class.

People like to complain about the specs of new computers and how underpowered they are. Since the vast majority of computer users are using a web browser, a mail program, possibly a calendar and maybe a chat program of some sort, how much power do they really need? Do we need to fleece a 65 year old senior of their life savings for a computer with enough specs to render an animated film? No!

I’ve toyed with the idea of getting a Chromebook and storing all my stuff in the cloud. The NSA, the CIA and probably a whole bunch of other organizational alphabet soups are monitoring my behavior on the Internet at any given moment, why should I encourage them anymore by storing anything and everything I do in a web browser? There’s a certain amount of comfort in using a quality built laptop with a robust operating system to store my files. It’s taken me a little while to warm up to my latest MacBook Pro (which I purchased in July 2016 to replace its stolen older brother) but I love it. It works the way I want it to, it does what I want it to do and most importantly, it doesn’t create friction in my computing experience.

Working on a computer should be frictionless.

Folks at work are often surprised when I add features to the software that I write and maintain because I don’t provide documentation. I design and build software that doesn’t require a manual to operate it. If you need to refer to documentation to run a software program there’s a couple of things happening, namely, the software is poorly written and/or designed or the user is not educated enough to be embarking on the task to begin with. I believe in computer education. I believe in educating people to use computers safely. But more importantly I believe in making that education immersive. People learn best by doing, and a person should learn something every time they use a computer.

For much of his adult life, Steve Jobs asked himself one question on a regular basis: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” If the answer was “no” for too many days in a row, Steve knew that he had to change something about his life. I ask myself that question a lot. Am I happy guy? Am I happy with what I’m doing? Am I happy with where we live, with our opportunities?

My answers are almost always positive. I have the love of my life in my life and I have some extra love on top of that. I have a great group of friends. I fly airplanes, something that I’ve always dreamed of doing. And I love my job. I enjoy what I do, I work for what I believe is a great company and I believe that I am making a great contribution to the company I work for. There’s one sticking point that’s been bothering me but I’ll work through it.

My former manager sought me out for my position. When I accepted the position I insisted that I be able to use a Mac as my work computer. The company is a solid Microsoft shop. Working with Mac, and I’m not the only one in the company doing so, results in occasional shunning from new collaborate features the company is rolling out to its users. I work around them, I work through them, but that’s the part of me that doesn’t always get a positive answer when I ask myself if I’m completely happy. There’s too much friction in my computing experience at work and as I said before, I believe the working with tech should be as frictionless as possible. I know it’s of my own doing, using a Mac in a company that loves Microsoft, but nevertheless, I’m not alone and I believe that the powers that be should broaden their horizons and look at the entire wall, not just one picture.

Ever since my last surgery a couple of weeks ago I’ve decided to keep my blood pressure low by unbottling my feelings. Earl and I have had some lively discussions, mostly about politics. Some of the liveliness has been fueled by the good meds they had me on for a week or so, but it’s been good to feel engaged. Earl teaches me a lot. He’s the smarter man in the room. I learn from him every day. And the learning is frictionless. Except when I’m yelling with passion (not in anger).

I’m focused on living in the moment. Living for today. Unplugging and listening from time to time. Plugging in and sharing. Life is best when we know it’s finite for then when try to do as much as we can in the time that we have.

And we try to do it with as little friction as possible. Don’t be friction. Help the world glide and grow.

As I grow older and the current presidential administration dumpster fire grows stronger, I find that I’m asking myself everyday what I can do to make the world a better place, specifically when it comes to equal rights for all. I need to find sure footing on that path because right now it feels like American society is literally all over the map when it comes to beliefs, rights, religion, health care and honestly, common sense.  This “us versus them” mentality, much like two warring tribes on an episode of “Survivor”, is going to lead our nation further into chaos. Without strong leadership, which we absolutely do not have anywhere in Washington at this time, the chaos is just going to get worse.

What can I do to accentuate the compassion in our people again? Throwing pot loads of money to political parties is futile. The GOP is a bunch of spineless, worthless people. The Democrats are in such disarray that I don’t believe in them nor do I believe they even have a clear path to the bathroom, let alone scoring any sort of hits in 2018.

I want to move us from a bad place to a good place, or at least help the effort in giving the movement a good shove, but I don’t know where to even begin. Rant on Twitter? It’s an echo chamber. Rant on Facebook? Please, people just want to forget the outside world and see pictures of people smiling and posing to convey having a great time. Write on my blog? It’ll get easier once I’m off my surgery recovery meds, but it’s a start. I started writing for the Medium platform a couple of months ago but there’s so many voices screaming on that platform, and so many people joining in the predictable endless crusade of self promotion, I had no idea on how to get my voice heard in there.

I need to find a platform where I can speak my peace and be part of something. My husband says I do a lot just by being me, an openly gay middle-aged man living in a really red area of a blue state. It’s a start.

But I’m ready to go further.

The most painful part of this recovery from my surgery is my mouth. The site where they took the skin for the graft is about 6 cm by 2 cm and it’s along the left side of my jaw. I’m happy that it’s only 6 cm long; the doctor told of patients that had 20 or more centimeters of skin harvested from the inside of their mouth. I can’t image what that pain must have been like. 

The site is healing quickly, I can feel changes in every couple of hours, but it just hurts while it is doing so. My urologist said that the hardest days would be days four and five of the recovery and that’s where I am right now.

I was given a prescription for “Radiation Rinse”. I had no idea what that was when they first gave it to me in the hospital; I asked a nurse if that meant I was going to glow and she said yes. She was giving me the rinse at one in the morning and she didn’t seem to have a huge sense of humor. It was the only time I saw this particular nurse, the rest of that evening I was covered by the nurse Melissa. Melissa and I had a very nice chat; she had been working in the One-Day Surgery ward for over a year after 20 years elsewhere in the hospital. She always wanted to work with the patients undergoing surgeries similar to mine because she knew my doctor to be top in his field and she wanted to make sure that his patients were off and running on a good start for recovery. She was the nurse that told me that patients from all over the country sought out my urologist for repairs in that delicate region. She was also the nurse that told me about all of the gender reassignment surgeries that he had performed in the past couple of years. She wanted to be there for those patients as well, to make sure that they were off to a good start.

It turns out that there’s nothing radioactive about my “Radiation Rinse”, it’s actually a mixture of Maalox, Benadryl and Lidocane. It’s called a “Radiation Rinse” because cancer patients that have burned mouths from their chemotherapy treatments use this same mixture to alleviate the sores in their mouths. My graft site in my mouth is of a similar nature so I get to use the same stuff.

As I make my way through this recovery I can’t help but think about how fortunate I am to be going through to fairly well. I find strength from the strength one of my best friends has exhibited through his cancer treatments. I think of the soldiers that come home with missing limbs and other “modifications” to their body from war. Comparatively the healing from my procedure is a walk in the park.

I’m a lucky man. I never lose sight of that.

So I’m in the third day of recovery from my recent surgery and things are coming along. My jaw is still a little swollen and numb from where the doctors took skin from the inside of my mouth to be used for the graft. It’s healing well, it’s just going to take some time.

After the first surgery on January 28th I was told that I could take sponge baths and an infrequent shower, but only if I wrapped myself in Saran Wrap and didn’t let water hit any of the surgical area. When I was discharged from the hospital on Saturday I was told that I could resume regular showers again after 48 hours, so tonight I took my first real shower in over a month. I even took time to shave my head again and that did wonders for starting to feel normal. With the jaw being a little tender still I decided to have some scruff on the face for a few more days. I’m sure there won’t be complaints.

The doctor’s office called to follow up on my progress and to schedule my follow-up appointment, which is for the last week of March. I can go three weeks with having a tube coming out of my parts if in the end things are going to work like it should so I’m not complaining. I’m still on a bunch of meds until then, so driving is a no-no and I’m definitely not in any shape to fly an airplane. I knew this would be the case and that’s why the timing is planned as it is. I’ll be ready to be airborne when the nice weather hits for the year (right now Mother Nature is a little erratic).

Earl is doing a bang-up job as my nurse. I think he’s enjoying cooking bland meals for me to eat (no salty or spicy food while the donor site in my mouth heals) and he’s keeping all these meds on the appropriate schedule. He also tells me to stop running my tongue over the healing area in my mouth on a routine basis. It’s amazing how quickly the skin in your mouth heals. Right now it’s basically like having a 6 cm x 2 cm canker sore in there. I have a little numbness in my lip but that has slowly been subsiding.

This is one of the many occasions where working from home is a wonderful thing. I spent most of the day writing code and I think most of it made sense. It’s rare that I can write a script that works on the first try without any bugs but I was surprised when something worked as planned on the first draft this afternoon. Perhaps I should work under the influence of prescription meds all the time.

The name of the game is relaxation and healing and that’s what I intend on doing. I’m still following the news and catching up on television, but I’ve found myself unplugging from the world and just enjoying quiet and contemplation from time to time. When I was in the hospital they offered me the television on several occasions but I never turned it on, just listening to the world happen around me was enough.

Sometimes it’s the simple things that lend themselves to the best medicine.

I have a fairly old Twitter account. I was tweeting before the days of smartphones, when you would send a text message to a number and your tweet would appear. I’ve always enjoyed the concept of Twitter, a chronological, live feed of whoever had the same interests as you. It was a great way to hear what was happening in other parts of the world. Early on I realized it was excellent for finding out about news instantaneously.

Then something changed. Twitter became political. Twitter became about branding. Twitter ramped up the self promotion. Everyone was jumping on Twitter to add their voice to the chorus, to the screaming. Ever since the run up to and especially since the 2016 U.S. Elections, Twitter has become a swamp. A moat of a swamp around the dumpster fire that has overtaken Washington, D.C. The President of the United States, bless his heart, belches out tweets with regular irregularity, trying to distract the populace from the real travesty (his administration). Folks attack one another. People call each other names.

But the better thing about Twitter is that people also unite. Protests get organized. Voices are heard. Electronic chants are shared. And despite all the screaming and the name calling and the raging dumpster fire, Twitter gives people a voice. 

And voices deserve to be heard.

I keep thinking I’m going to work in negating my social media presence but those thoughts are folly. I have a voice. I want to tweet. I want my voice to be heard.

Even if it’s on the edge of a raging dumpster fire.

I am making a commitment to write at least one blog entry every day during the month of March. This little challenge is to write a blog entry with a bit of substance. I need to say something instead of just posting a photo or a music video or something. I feel like I need to continue to contribute to the ever shrinking blogosphere. Perhaps this challenge will spark a return of the blog as a form of electronic expression. Written prose fueled by thought is better than burping out 140 characters on Twitter or dropping an intentional short-fused bomb on Facebook.

The key to maintaining this blogging habit is to remain committed to the task. With my final surgery scheduled for Friday and spring just around the corner, I’m feeling like I’m in a “reboot” mood. It’s time to grab a hold of what’s left of 2017, take it by storm and mold it to what I wish it to be. 

I suppose there’s been a lot of people feeling political depression since the latter half of January when our new president (and I use that term loosely) took office and started treating the White House like a second rate Walmart. If you take a step back and assess the entire picture, you can totally see the ilk of Kellyanne Conway in sweat pants and smeared mascara making her way through the “family planning” aisle after midnight at your local Walmart. Just close your eyes and imagine it. It’s really not that hard?

I’m sorry for that picture.

Earl and I are currently sitting in our local Panera, our iPads with keyboards back to back. I have my back to the wall, something I always tend to do in public, which gives me a birds eye view of what’s happening in this little chestnut of a pastry shop with casual service and casual food. A worker just used a stepladder to climb up on the counter where food is served. She walked across the counter swiping at something near the ceiling before stepping back down in a bit of a ruckus. The food on the counter was unfazed. No worries.

This is substance? 

A couple of weeks ago the groundhog said we had six more weeks until spring. Apparently he looked the wrong way when he was looking for his shadow because Mother Nature has decided to bless us with unusually warm weather this week.

Getting out in the sunshine has been doing wonders for my psyche. I’ve been feeling kind of blah, which is typical for me for this time of year, and being between my two surgeries hasn’t really helped the situation. Luckily my second surgery is a week from Friday and then it’ll be just a few weeks of recovery before things should be normal again.

Stepping out onto the lawn today and not going up to my knees in snow in the latter half of February was very refreshing. I don’t see any signs of dandelions yet, not even the precocious ones, but they can’t be that far away.

Because of the beautiful weather I’m in the mood to look for bright spots and one of them is that as a result of the Trump Administration, we’ll probably be having shorter winters and less snowfall as time goes on. Hopefully I’ll be checked out before the rivers boil.

In the meanwhile I’m just going to enjoy the warmth and sunny skies.

I’m starting to really feel the effects of SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder. Every year I go into the winter determined to not feel the winter blues but sure enough we go with three straight weeks of grey skies and I start to bum out a little bit.

There is some sun today, and I feel a little brighter for it, though it is still 17ºF with a wind chill of 8ºF at the moment. This weekend is suppose to be up around 40 and I find this encouraging.

To help counter the winter blues I occasionally start marching around the United States via Google Maps and look at sunny landscapes of places I’d like to visit or visit again.

In 2003 I drove home from Emmetsburg, Iowa after completing a computer training class in that lovely part of the world. I remember driving across the Iowa-Minnesota border on Route 4 and so I just picked a random spot along that route to gaze at for a few moments. I could almost feel the sun and warm breezes on my face again. The smell of the surrounding farms brought a smile to my face.

Every little bit of something helps.