Dig We Must

Years ago, there was a Bugs Bunny cartoon in which Yosemite Sam was stranded on a desert island. It showed him feasting on a wide range dishes, all consisting of coconuts prepared every way you could imagine. Eventually he pushed them all aside and said, in a snarling drawl, "I...hates...coconuts." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw4LxSb42MU)

Yesterday morning the snow stopped. We were lucky here, about 10". A lot of places along the east coast got much more. Pretty, white snow everywhere you looked, the stuff of snowmen and strong forts for blissful snowball fights. And with my shovel and ice scraper, I felt a great kinship to the image of Yosemite Sam with his knife and fork. I...hates...snow.

It was important to get the shoveling done right, and on-time. My wife was coming home from the rehab center by ambulette around mid-morning, a few days earlier than we'd thought at first, and to ensure her safety as she was brought in, the driveway, sidewalk, and porch stairs needed to be more than shoveled the usual way; they needed to be pristine. (Fortunately - and unlike her transfer from the hospital - we actually had a couple of days advance notice of her release. This made it possible for me to make sure I was home, and that she wouldn't have to be left in the yard or delivered to a neighbor's house till I got back.)

My first task was making sure I wasn't awakened at 5 am by some shovel-toting local youth, looking to ring my doorbell before all the other shovel-toting local youths. (Initiative is a fine thing, just not when it involves ringing my doorbell while I'm in a deep sleep.) With the snow still falling the night before, I'd put a big marker-on-poster-board sign on my front door: "Please do not ring bell. We'll shovel ourselves. Thanks." It worked better than the small, cute snowman signs I'd printed on the computer for other snowfalls. Subtlety, which I was not in the mood for anyway, is not the language of Jersey City youth.

Dividing the project into tasks, ordered by priority, I fortified myself with a cup of hot coffee and began. My thoughts wandered - that torch-is-passed-to-a-new-generation thing of shoveling the same driveway my father shoveled; feeling grateful to have a driveway to shovel in the first place, and the strength to do it; suddenly seeing a possible ulterior motive in my sons' decision to dorm at school instead of living at home. A few thoughts about feeling ready for the task despite having recently turned 50, and about all the people each year who feel ready for the task despite having recently turned 50 and end up keeling over next to their shovels anyway. Eventually the shoveling was done, and after a little clean-up work with the mysterious dark brown ice-melt chemical stuff, we were ambulette-ready.

Much of the living room is currently taken up by the pull-out sofa we're camping out on while my wife completes her recovery, so there was no room for the tree and no time for other decorating this year. Still, fashioning a make-shift table-top tree from the top section of our artificial tree - selecting only ornaments than won't break if (and, by "if," I mean "when") they're knocked off by Willie and Lilly - and putting up a couple of representative decorations, I managed to get something up as a nice surprise for her arrival. Christmas albums (nothing like some Clancy Brothers followed by Motown) on the cd-player - and finding out the cd player doesn't play cd's very well anymore - completed the setting.

Waiting at the front door, sipping a hot chocolate while watching my neighbors still shoveling, was pure, smug wonderfulness.

Happy to say, everything went according to plan, which is something of a rarity around here. Normalcy is never possible this time of year anyway, but at least we can start the process of getting a little back.

My sincere good wishes to all for a fine Christmas and a good, healthy New Year.


Unrelated Item: Just wanted to say...

A quick note on the sudden passing of Brittany Murphy. A few years ago, I was walking past the Ed Sullivan Theater as she was leaving after taping an appearance on David Letterman. I had never heard of her, but the crowd she drew caught my attention, and out of curiosity I watched a while as she interacted with them. There was the usual celebrity-in-a-hurry thing, and her handlers were trying to get her into the waiting Escalade. What I still remember is how, in spite of the pressure to rush away, she patiently made it a point to take time for the children who were there: posing for some pictures, smiling and talking for a moment with them, etc. It was easy to see it meant the world to these kids, and her warmth struck me as genuine. It was very classy, and totally charming.

No doubt we'll be hearing and reading a lot about her death. When a 32 year old woman suddenly dies of apparent cardiac arrest, there's a good chance some of that will not be kind. For whatever it's worth, I thought what I saw was worth a mention.

Updating the Updated Update

A man died and found himself at the entrance to hell. He tried to explain to the Associate Devil on duty that it surely was a mistake and he didn't belong there, but the AD, having heard it all before, wasn't impressed. Because of the man's persistence, however, the AD did offer the man the chance to choose what job he would be given. Seeing this was the best offer he was going to get, the man agreed. They walked down a long hallway and came to three doors.

Opening the first door, the man saw hoards of pained, sweaty men shoveling coal into the fires of hell. He surely didn't want that.

Behind the second door, he saw even larger hoards of even sweatier men mining the coal that would be used for the fires. He didn't want that either.

Behind the third door, the man saw a small group of men and women. They were standing knee deep in mud*, drinking coffee and talking. This looked odd to the man, but it seemed preferable to either of the other two rooms. The man chose the third room.

"Are you sure?," the Associate Devil asked. "Once you're in, I can't change the assignment." The man assured him he was certain this is the room he wanted.

After the AD left, the man looked around to find someone to get him a cup of coffee. As he was looking around, another Associate Devil came in and cracked a whip. "Coffee break's over," he said. "Back on your heads."

* Not the substance in the original version of this story, but one more suitable for a general readership

A few moments to do some long-overdue catching up.

Between the last post and this one, my wife got out of the hospital and into a local rehab center. There are many challenges, and progress is coming a little bit at a time - getting up, walking, sitting back down, building up lower and upper body strength, tolerating the food. (The food reminds me of another old story, the one about two old women in the dining room at a resort in the Catskills. The first one says, "The food here is really terrible." The second says, "Yes, and such small portions.") This is tentatively to go on till about 12/31. Ouch. There's some comfort knowing they're giving her recovery the time it needs, but still...

There's little chance any Christmas decorating will happen this year. I was able to find the treasured Chanukah menorah - a years-ago gift from my grandmother - just in time for last night's first candle. In a nod to my childhood, a practice I find myself taking comfort in these days (including treating myself to a jar of Ovaltine at the supermarket the other day), I went to the yarmulkah drawer (yes, I have a yarmulkah drawer) and selected the one I used to wear in Hebrew school in the early 70's, the burgundy velour one with silver-colored trim. (Hey, I did say it was from the early 70's. Just because I wasn't old enough to have long sideburns didn't mean I couldn't participate in that era's fashion absurdities somehow.) Back to the menorah: usually my wife selects the different color candles to use each night and, after I say the prayers and light the center shamus candle, my wife uses it to light the remaining candles. Last night, of course, I was on my own. (Our other custom is that, on the last night of Chanukah, my sons say the prayers. As they're bapitized Presbyterians whose Hebrew vocabulary is pretty much limited to "oy vey," this is usually an interesting experience for all.)

In the meantime, we keep things going: handling phone calls (no mean feat considering I don't usually answer the phone at home); checking e-mails for my wife (no mean feat considering the literally hundreds of store-spam e-mails she gets); responding to selected e-mails on her behalf (no mean feat considering the number of people I'm responding to that I either don't know or don't like); going through paper mail; making sure she has clean laundry; and whatever else needs to be done. It's all about the to-do list.

Speaking of the to-do list, I just looked at the time. Coffee break's over, back on my head.

Unrelated Item: So When Did He Find Time for Golf?

As with previous celebrity news circuses, it's not my intention to devote a lot of pixels to Tiger Woods. Given the current high number of Google searches on Tiger Woods' name, I realize I could probably improve traffic to this site by writing about Tiger Woods, mentioning Tiger Woods this and Tiger Woods that. I just believe the problems Tiger Woods is currently experiencing are things Tiger Woods should be discussing with his wife and that, as an adult, Tiger Woods doesn't need our help dealing with all the headlines that mention "Tiger Woods." The journalistic integrity of this space is not going to be compromised by constant mentions of Tiger Woods, no matter how many search engine hits would send new readers anytime someone does a search for Tiger Woods or anything relating to Tiger Woods.

All that said, a couple of thoughts do come to mind:

1. Given the countless women, paid and unpaid, that we are now told he was, um, "with," I'm dismayed by his behavior, but impressed by his stamina. I guess the age-old question of whether golfers are athletes has finally been settled.

2. I am hoping - really, deeply hoping - that 2010 is the year Tiger Woods appears on David Letterman. How unspeakably cool would that be?

The New York Experience

Still reeling from Oprah announcing the end of her show (ok, it's not for another two years and the announcement was actually that she was going to be announcing it the next day which I would have taken to be the same as announcing it but what do I know?), it turns out my wife didn't get out of the hospital after all on Friday; in fact, she didn't even get out of the recovery room until late afternoon. (No room at the inn, that sort of thing. I suppose one of the downsides of a hospital that focuses on joint surgery is that people don't die there and free up rooms as frequently.) It's looking like she'll be in through the weekend, with some time at a rehab facility after that. (That last part remains to be confirmed.) My heartfelt thanks for all the wonderful expressions of support.

It's an interesting trip to the hospital, which is located on 70th Street, about as far to the east in Manhattan as you can go. (Let's put it this way; take two steps in the wrong direction and you're in the East River, dodging tugboats, barges, and the occasional Circle Line tour boat.) Since the train from NJ puts me at 33rd Street at about the mid-point of Manhattan's east-to-west span, it's about a two and a half mile travel distance from there to the hospital. For the trip there and back, I decided to walk rather than take the subway; something about walking has always made it possible for me to think, relax, create and energize in ways that just don't happen at any other time. It's surely better than other ways I've tried. Experience has shown me there are no answers at the bottom of a box of oreos.

Every city has its character, of course, and its characters, but even when you've commuted to New York City nearly every day for over thirty years, there's still so much to see on a walk like that. The autograph shop on West 57th with the most amazingly cool things in the window. The cross-dressing guy in a see-through outfit (or maybe it was just a zombie trying to meet someone special) walking along Third Avenue. In the mid-forties, the theater district, I noticed a restaurant that advertises it's been providing the finest Cuban cuisine since 1963, and thought, yeah, I'll bet in 1963 Cuban cuisine was just a great business to be in.

At 34th Street, Herald Square, Macy's is in full swing in its preparation for Christmas and the Thanksgiving Day Parade/world's largest infomercial. Every year, they put up fantastically involved window displays along the Broadway side. Tourists flock to see them, and even jaded New Yorkers have been known to stop for a moment and look. (Not for too long, of course. Got somewhere to be, you know, though we're not always quite sure where that is and have to think of it along the way.)

Anyway, for folks not expecting to be in New York City this holiday season, a brief glimpse of what you'll see as you pass the windows. (This year's theme is Letters to Santa, with the windows showing the path letters take as they are handled in the North Pole.) These are strictly camera-phone videos, about five seconds each, and not broadcast quality. But I thought they had a New York flavor and would be kind of fun to post anyway. As for me, well, I'd better get back to my research; a man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's an oreo for?

Game Day

Just a short update on today's surgery.

Happy to say it went well. It turns out the tendon didn't actually sever; it just came disconnected from the knee bone. We'll find out in the morning, but it looks like my wife will be able to come home from the hospital on Friday. Still to be determined is what approach we'll be taking in the weeks ahead - physical therapy, rehab, etc. - and for how long.

If every you need joint surgery of any kind, we can give a strong recommendation to the high-level professionals of The Hospital for Special Surgeries in NYC. Every detail is checked and rechecked to make sure everything is done right. And rather than having to spend an hour searching the hospital for someone, anyone, when you need something, we had an on-going parade of hospital staff checking on what we needed before we needed it. The surgical waiting area is a large atrium with a great view of the East River. And most importantly, they provide coffee at no cost.

Time for some sleep.

A Temporary Set-Back, I Assure You

Surgery is set for this Thursday.

Surgery...say what?

Flashback to November 5. My wife had been out of the immobilizer for a couple of weeks, making nice progress, faithfully doing her exercises and gaining a bit of strength. She was even starting to walk some. At first, walking required the therapist's help but she soon progressed to making it around the therapy room with the therapist nearby and a husband moving the wheelchair close behind. (I'm not sure if pushing the wheelchair really did anything for my wife, but it did give me something to do, like those toy car dashboards parents put on their young children's strollers, and for all I know that may have been the real purpose.)

With victory near, my wife was determined to overcome whatever residual fears remained about walking with no one's help. Waiting for me to get home to take her to physical therapy, she decided to try some unmonitored practice and surprise me. It went well up until the last attempt before I got home; a small turn didn't work and she went down.

I'd called a few minutes from home to tell her I would be there shortly - no answer. I was a little concerned about that, but there are many reasons that could happen and almost all of them are not problematic. When I got to the house and saw the back window was dark, my spidey-sense was tingling - it's funny how you can sometimes sense when something's not right before you actually know anything for sure. My first words yelled across the house to wherever she was: "Are you ok?" Her response: "Not really." She was on the floor, in a good deal of pain. Her efforts to surprise me worked, just not as planned.

By then, of course, we knew the drill; this time we even had an immobilizer for the trip to the Emergency Room. (And, of course, we had my really cool leg support wheelchair attachment.) X-rays there, follow-up orthopedist visit, MRI to follow up the follow-up visit, orthopedist visit to follow-up the MRI that followed-up the orthopedist visit that followed up the trip to the ER, and countless follow-up phone calls from well-meaning family and friends who each know the best doctor/hospital/procedure for us to follow-up with, and it comes down to this: the knee isn't refractured, but the tendon that connects the quadricep muscle to the knee cap snapped. (Normally - pardon the high-level technical medical terminology - the thigh bone's connected to the knee bone, and the knee bone's connected to the shin bone. Well, right now, they're not.)

The plan now - after follow-up visits to our regular doctors to clear my wife for surgery - is for the orthopedist (the one from the second orthopedic follow-up) to go in with a large, sterile sewing machine and give the tendon a basting stitch. The surgeon is very optimistic.

Not to worry - as things progress, I'll follow up.

Kodak Moment

No, this is not my cats' idea of dressing up as illegal immigrants in a car trunk for Halloween. Nor is it a nostalgic attempt to relive their pre-birth experience. You see, this morning was the annual "bring Willie and Lilly to the vet" ordeal.

It's amazing how two college educated adults can spend days planning to out-think two animals with brains the size of a walnut, and only partially succeed. Regardless of what other steps we take, and regardless of the fact that they only see the carriers once a year, at first glimpse of them the cats go into evasive maneuvers that would make a fighter jet pilot envious. (Contrast this to their daddy, who has people in his office that he's seen daily for years and whose names he still can't remember.)

We know to close off all the best escape routes upstairs. (If they get under a bed you might as well cancel the vet appointment.) I thought I'd be cool and leave only the bathroom door open, since it's a dead end and if they ran there their furry little butts would be mine.) Unfortunately, they figured that out a lot faster than I did. Consistent with their personalities, Willie tried to muscle his way out of the problem, and it didn't take very long at all before he was in his carrier. Lilly may be smaller than Willie, but it seems that the human world is not the only one in which girls are smarter than boys.

Lilly didn't outrun me. She out-thought me. After nearly an hour of searching there was no sign of her. I was actually getting worried; we'll never know for sure, but I strongly suspect it was trying to shimmy out of a too-tight spot that led to Skids' life-ending injury a little over two years ago. Then I thought of one more place to look. We have a large sideboard cabinet that comes all the way down to the floor in the front, but that has a small opening in the back; sure enough, I turned the flashlight there and a little pink nose was staring back at me. It meant moving the side-board and several other pieces of furniture, but after a sword dance that included chasing, hissing (by both of us) and other elements of a good western's barroom brawl, eventually she was cornered on the stairs and tried to run past me. Game over.

Frustrated and sweaty, I told my wife I'd caught them both, and cautioned her that if ever I was looking for her, she was never to hide under the furniture. Having put up with this kind of thing nearly every day for the past 27 years, she agreed and went back to watching the weekend edition of the Today Show.

Back to the photo. We finally got to the vet and I pried Willie from his carrier - first you can't get them in, then you can't get them out. I opened the door of Lilly's to get her and before I could stop him Willie scooted past me and into it. There were now two cats - one a little over 13 pounds, the other a little over nine pounds - packed into a carrier that was originally purchased for my previous 5 and a half pound cat. I think I saw this in a Marx Brothers movie once.




I Like Left-Overs But...
It's after 6:00 pm and I've had exactly three trick-or-treaters. (Based on previous years' turnouts, I'm prepared for 200.) If things don't pick up, this week at work I'll be brown bagging Sugar Daddy sandwiches with a side of Swedish Fish.

Back in the Saddle

This past week was my second back at work after four or five weeks - I don't even remember anymore - on Family Medical Leave. It felt good to get back. Everything was right where I left it (which is mostly a good thing, but not entirely), no major disasters on my projects, my building pass still worked, and so far I've still got that rested-and-ready feeling. Structure, like anything else, is good if kept in moderation.

We're still fitting physical therapy into the schedule. If it's ok with some insurance company clerks who've never met my wife and whose medical background consists of putting a band-aid on their Winnie the Pooh doll's boo-boo at the age of four, we'll continue for the next couple of weeks. Progress is slower than my wife would like, but it's there. She's back to feeding the cats (so they don't have to like me any more if they don't want to), and doing most of the cooking again. (I did get to make a decent beef goulash with spaetzle and ginger-glazed carrots last night. At least I think that's what spaetzle is supposed to taste like.)

That ginger-glazed carrot recipe is interesting. It's from Alton Brown on www.foodnetwork.com, and uses ginger ale as the main element for the glaze. (It does benefit from an extra pinch of ginger, but the ginger ale gives it a better flavor than you might expect.) I never envisioned myself using ginger ale as an ingredient, but when you've got hungry mouths to feed you learn to relax certain standards. I've found this to be particularly true when one of the hungry mouths is your own. I draw the line at ketchup-as-ingredient, though. At least for now.

One final food note: this past week a chef originally from Jersey City (and a graduate of the county-run culinary school where I've gotten to take some weekend adult-ed classes) beat Morimoto on Iron Chef America. Most significantly, despite his Jersey City/Hudson County background, he appears to have won without any payoffs, threats or back-room deals. There's hope for us yet.

Why Bees Are Disappearing

The other day I was in the yard watching three bees working my basil plant. Basil is mostly leafy, of course, but if you let it overgrow a bit the branches grow small, pretty white flowers. The bees were sticking their faces into the flowers, doing whatever it is they do, and moving on to the next flower. A moment later another bee would come to the same flower, stick his face in, and do the same thing. Then the third. It got me thinking: is that sanitary? What if one of those bees has a cold? Maybe if we had some teeny-tiny surgical masks...

With Friends Like These...

It amazes me to think back at how hard it used to be to turn down Friend Requests on Facebook. It's a networking site, for goodness sake. Just because someone doesn't know me or any of the other 1500 friends in their friend list, or their profiles are offensive (defined here as expressing views different from mine) or not even in English, is no reason to risk offending them. But like learning to throw paper junkmail out unopened, it's something that gets easier every time you do it, and you'll get to wondering why it was ever hard in the first place. Enough requests to play Mafia Wars will do that.

I did make a Facebook profile in connection with this journal, and if you are of a mind to take a look, it's found under the e-mail address, totallymentalben@ymail.com, with the name T.M. Ben. And I promise I won't turn down your Friend Request.