Gluttony

I've got a pain in my ass.

Literally.

When I was a child, one winter they plowed the street I lived on and it left a huge snow mound in the middle of our cul de sac. Well, huge in relation to a skinny boy in the fourth grade. And I had a great time climbing to the top and leaping off, sliding down the sides.

It started getting late. I realized I should head home for dinner. One more jump, just one more leap before I had to abandon the fun.

I landed, straddling something hard and frozen. The pain and shock knocked the wind out of me. It shot up my spine. Breathing hurt. Trying to stand was impossible. I have trouble still finding the right words to describe what it felt like but try to imagine pain so bad that it feels like everything above the waist is being driven away from everything below the waist. And remember what I just wrote about having trouble breathing? So I couldn't make enough noise to yell for help.

What could I do? I could crawl. Combat crawl that is, on just my elbows and forearms. Forget using my legs. I mean I could feel my feet and legs and all. But my spine hurt so anything that required using it or my legs was out of the question. And my house was the distance equivalent of a city block and a half away.

I crawled across the frozen road till I got to yards and then I crawled through snow. I can't remember how long till I could put weight on my knees, let alone get through the front door.

It was bad but for some reason my parents didn't take me to get x-rayed till the next morning. At the time I was told the x-rays were negative for a break, just a really bad bruise. I sat on foam padding for days. If I wasn't already developing a reputation for being a freak this might have hurt my social standing.

This summer the pain came back. A few days have been bad and sometimes when I sit on the wrong type of seat or in the wrong position it comes back. Never as painful as that first time but a nuisance. So Wife finally talked me in to getting it checked out.

New x-ray revealed that all those years ago I didn't bruise it after all. I broke it. Not that they could have done anything really back then besides hope for the best. There is a small piece in my tailbone not connected to anything anymore. I'll probably develop arthritis in it as I get older. I could get surgery to have it removed. Which would take a long time to heal up.

But the fun thing is it is not bad enough to really demand that path. It is just going to be this thing that I have for the rest of my life. Unless it gets worse. Most days it doesn't bother me. Till I get reminded. Because I sat wrong.

Do you realize how much time we spend sitting?

Pimping my wife

Wife has a side business making hoola hoops. She got a nice write up in the weekly city paper.

I'm just so excited and happy for her. I have nothing snarky to add.

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a professor

Wife's most recent description of me:

"You are a prodigiously hairy man."

She went on to ask what it is like to be so hairy.

Most of the time it is a lot of fun. But some days it is itchy. And it takes work.

To tell the truth there are days I wish I could shave it all off for a while and keep it clean. Lot less work. Clean shaven also makes me look even younger than I already do (last week someone told me they thought my age is ten years younger than it actually is). Much better than looking 10 years older than I am.

But the secret shame is I have a skin condition* that gives me dry patches in the mustache region. Most of the time it is not too bad but when it flares up it's a little gross. Mustache hair covers it easily. So shave and risk it or stay in a constant state of fuzz. Pretty easy choice.

*The weird thing is my skin condition is mostly seen in infants and senior citizens. I'm a genetic anomaly. I'm also really lazy about going to the doctor unless it involves bleeding that won't stop or coma-like conditions. So getting to the dermatologist just isn't a priority. Maybe I'll try after the semester ends.

What must the neighbors think?

Yes, yes, I'm back after family visiting. Blog post to follow on that one. But in the mean time, here's a little New Year Day story for you.

Wife took Dog out for a last pee before bed. And then came back in very upset. It seemed Dog found something interesting to smell. A dead rat. It's the second one that has been found in our back yard in the last few weeks. And might explain the sounds of cat screaming we heard earlier.

This is understandably upsetting and gross. We don't want Dog trying to play with it again and it would probably be best if it wasn't left out to attract flies or other critters. I go out and get the shovel.

A quick survey makes me realize that the front yard by the street has ample light and very soft sandy soil to dig in. So I carry the corpse up there and find a decent spot to go to work. One shallow grave later and the rat is hopefully entombed. A quick pat down of the dirt and I look up to see a middle age African American woman walking down the street.

"Happy new year" she says. I respond in kind. It was very neighborly. But part of me does wonder what she was thinking to see some tattooed guy digging a hole in the middle of the night.

The new scooter

Notice the nice cast on Wife. No, it is not a result of a riding accident. Yes, she is not wearing a helmet but we are only riding 2 blocks and my top speed was 15 mph.

It is capable of going much faster.....

Just letting you know

Classes start tomorrow. I don't have any wacky stories or snarky comments to make yet. Just letting you know that those sort of things will be coming soon. Because it is just a matter or time till some student says or does something too amusing or shocking to not share.

In other news, Wife goes in for another surgery on her ankle tomorrow bright and early. So I have to have her there about 4 hours before my classes start. Thank goodness first day is mostly about reading the syllabus and setting the ground floor for what comes in the next class. Because I will NOT be at my best tomorrow. Let's just hope that this surgery finally finishes the work on her ankle. Now they think she might have a cyst where she just had surgery. It will be nice to see what goes wrong next.

I also have a long post about buying and selling scooters this summer. It was a saga and deserves full treatment.

So provided Hannah doesn't wash us away, (or Ike. Or Josephine.) then there should be some level of increase in my posting. Hopefully. Got to love those news reports though. "This storm could kill everyone, including the unborn. Or maybe it will miss us. Or maybe just rain overnight. But if this storm doesn't kill you, the next one will. Or your neighbors."

They sky is falling, the sky is, oh wait,

So a tree fell on us. Sort of. Friday morning we're sleeping relatively peacefully unaware that the power went out for five whole minutes. Crash!

"What was that?"

"I don't know." I look out the window. "Huh, can't see anything. Wait, it looks like a few branches broke off the tree and landed on the roof. Nothing too bad." And since said roof is not over our portion of the house we went back to sleep.

Later Wife walked the dog and came in. "You know that crash? It wasn't just those branches. A tree hit the house."

I put on a hat and braved the wind and rain to investigate. In fact there was what appeared to be a tree in the driveway. And a large dent in the roof. Quick call to the landlord to let him know what was going on.

Later I went back out to check some more. It wasn't a tree but it was a very large branch off of a very nasty looking tree. I had worried before that it might go down in big winds and was partially right. The people who had lived in that section of the house had moved out towards the beginning of the month so they had avoided a disaster. Especially since they used to park their car right where the branch landed. And where they used to let their tiny dog pee.

Actually, we were extremely lucky. Sure it rained for two days straight and had big wind gusts. And parts of town did get flooded. Some folks even had big time boat damage and loss. But our town survived pretty well compared to the rest of the state. Heck, we only had some brownouts and got to sit around watching team handball without feeling guilt for not leaving the couch. (On a side note I have come to love team handball. Perhaps it deserves its own post).

Course now we're making sure to upgrade our insurance in case next time isn't so mild. Nothing like spending money that you don't have to protect against something that might or might not happen. If I were the landlord though I would look in to getting rid of that tree no matter how cool and Southern Gothic it looks.

Pretty happy about this

I know I don't post often enough but this one is kind of important. Friday was Wife and my nine year wedding anniversary. Can't be bad.

I'm hoping for many, many more years of these.

Family

You know that crazy lady who talks to strangers in the line at the grocery store? Or in the laundromat?

I'm married to her.

Wife has this tendency to make comments to folks she doesn't know. Many times, it is unintentionally the wrong thing.

Case in point, we had to do laundry this weekend. And we're nearly done when this Hispanic gentleman walks to a dryer near the ones we're using and starts taking his clothes out. Wife starts talking to him, saying "Show me your grill."

Hispanic guy looks confused. Wife starts pointing to her teeth and keeps saying, "Your grill. Show me your grill." She's doing this in a friendly manner. Hispanic guy doesn't understand and is smiling politely but you can see the look of fear in his eyes.

As quick as I can I try to get to her. To stop her. And I say quietly, "Honey, he doesn't have a grill, he has dental work cause his teeth are messed up."

By the time I get there she has realized this too. Now, this is not an isolated incident. In her defense it's remnants of her time as a polite southerner. And often she does strike up a nice brief conversation with someone that leaves both her and them smiling. Just as often she keeps the conversation going a little too long or she puts her foot in her mouth, to use a cliche.

Also in the interest of full disclosure I hate talking to strangers and most of the time don't want them talking to me. Sure, I'll often try to be polite, but as I've established in previous posts, I'm a jerk. And where I come usually we don't mess around in other people's business and don't want them messing around in ours.

What makes Wife's behavior that much odder is that she talks to strangers but hates a large chunk of the people she knows well. Go figure.

Me, I think you save a lot of time if you just avoid people from the start. That way you don't have to invest the effort later to pretend to be nice to them.

Why Wife and I are different people

So I've been browsing various forums cause I'm thinking of buying a 200 cc GT or a Vespa S and want to get a good deal on one used if I can find one.

And while I've been looking I've noticed that a lot of people are trying to dump 50 cc ET 2s and LX50s. If I tried I could probably find one for around 1500 bucks. Maybe less if I tried. Obviously I don't want one of these but I've got a spare 150 leader engine that I picked up cheap for a project and even though I'm not doing that project I kept the engine as a spare just in case. It's pretty complete, even has the rear wheel and wouldn't take a whole lot to just bolt it into a new frame.

So I'm thinking it might not be a bad idea to pick up one of these cheap 50 cc bikes and swap out the engine for my spare. I can sell the 50 cc engine to cover the costs of getting the local scooter shop to help me make sure the wiring is done right and maybe even pick up a few bucks on top of that. Then I sell the Fly 150 or the new
Frankenstein bike and make a few bucks on that deal and still have a 150 cc bike.

So I mention this bit of brilliance to Wife and her response is "You already have a 150 cc scooter. I don't see why you would want to do this."

And I realize if I have to explain she's just not going to understand.