ROW 80 POST 36 – HAVE A GUMBY CHRISTMAS AND SUNDAY CHECK-IN

That there pageanty thing I played viola for, that I was telling you all about with my various stand partners who had various colorful pasts/conditions/neuroses and whatevers, in my last post, could not hold candles to the goings-on on the stage of the Christmas Pageant at the Nativity Church. This is the place where art and sense and any shreds of sanity left went and died. The Creche was laid out in lurid colors and raucous smells, of the pine and incense and maybe myrrh varieties, with spaceships and whooshing sounds. The 3 Wise men were Wookies and Baby Jesus was R2D2. Okay, I made up that last part, but you get the idea. The damned thing was gaudy as hell on a bicycle.

Courtesy of www.ckelleyread.blogspot.com

This actually looks like some shit they would do on Runescape, but it would have totally worked at a Nativity Pageant.

Frosty the Snowman went on a diet and they never did have enough black felt for his eye-holes. When we played that song, it looked like “Frosty the Serial-Killer” cavorting on stage, which always gave me a frisson of fear; that blank look, knife-slash for a mouth. Then, my better sense would go, “yeah, a Nativity gig,” and I’d hear my best bud, Spenser, laughing his ass off behind me on principal cello. It was THAT kind of gig, and it paid very well, too. Plus, it was right here in Tampa. No 8-hour frantic road trip to the next Jesus Job.

When we got to Elvis’ “Blue Christmas” 2 helpful elves would scamper out onto stage and slap mutton-chops with Velcro on Frosty’s face. We’d take bets on whether they’d get near mutton-chop acreage and not Frosty’s forehead. They never missed. I guess that would have been another song. Once applied, we had “Abraham Lincoln Serial-Killer Snowman.” Eek! But in all the years, I could never understand why Fros-tay wasn’t fat. Guess he couldn’t cut down all those boss moves we all do here in Tampa.

Of course, we had several tree-related songs. Which brings me to something I’m very thankful for indeed. This church, as huge as it is, has a normal auditorium, with a stage and apron down in front. Consequently, the orchestra sits on the floor, directly in front of the audience. On this stage, there are always poinsettias in pots that line the front, not an opera-type set up, with a movable pit, so the orchestra is in firing-range of objects being flung from the stage.

During one of the innumerable tree-related songs that Nativity seems to love and that go on and on and on, people come out in these giant trees. One person per tree and the trees look like giant Gumby trees; children cavort around between these trees and create more mayhem. There are four of them and they come out and sway and leap around to the music we play and they knock the poinsettias off into the orchestra. One year a flung poinsettia hit a violinist in the head. I can’t stand her. She’s such a bitch, but she’s got a nice violin. I sat by the audience, so I have a nice view of all this derangement. Once one of the trees fell down during all of this swaying and dancing and Spenser had to catch Wolf when I started to slip out of my chair laughing. It’s THAT kind of gig.

Imagine this as Christmas trees. Or not.

Whatever it was, when the Church itself stopped presenting the pageants, I was sad. That was one of the year’s highlights. In a world filled with gigs and insanity, New York Gilbert and Sullivan, (NYGASP) Opera Tampa, Styx, Alan Parsons Project, Manhattan Transfer, Johnny Mathis, Bernadette Peters, Steve and Eydie, Frank Sinatra Jr., Bobby Vinton, Anne Murray, Southwest Florida Symphony, Birmingham Symphony, and so many others I’m forgetting; oh, but who could forget the "Channeling Elvis Tour," where we played with the Jordanaires and Elvis on a HUGE-ASS SCREEN! (his followers a book in themselves,) it says something when people, musicians say to one another, “when’s the Nativity gig?” It was always something ridiculous and you were guaranteed at least one gut-buster a night, and no one died, cared or got hurt over it. You can’t ask for much more purity in life than that, methinks.

Well, check in Sunday, and it’s been awhile. It’s a new month. I totally crashed on NaNoWriMo. I started at the beginning and about November 20, 2012, I figured where I should have started which was pretty much towards the end. So, instead of scrapping and being frozen, revamp. But the other revelatory action that has paid off in spades; it is possible to not go 110 mph all the time and be happy with that. If I post 2 or 3 times a week, that’s okay for now.

Thanksgiving night I had one of those episodes that most closely resembles one of my psychotic breaks. This was after 2 days of tearing around like a bat out of hell. My body feels it and my mind rebels. My brain just simply refuses to go any faster after a sprint like that. What I did before, is not happening now. The good thing is that I have my paperwork for Medicare and so now, I have a new agency to fuck with, not just the State of Florida.

ROW 80 WEDNESDAY CHECK IN - "NOT-PD" AWARENESS MONTH

Sometimes, we have to listen to our hearts

Okay, so here we are, day 7 of NaNoWriMo and Day "I Forget" of #ROW80. I have just discovered that today is the 7^th day of “Parkinson’s Awareness” month, which I knew nothing about. Because?

I’ve been having one hell of a writer’s block for NaNoWriMo. I know what I need to say, but it’s so goddamned painful, I can’t get there from here.

I’ve also been busy talking to national desks about All Things Political, here in Florida. Said ‘desks’ will remain unnamed for the time being; it seems someone has paid attention to my rantin’ and reasonin’ and I am going to be talking about it post-event, whatever said ‘event’ may be. Jeeze, now I sound like I have a tin foil hat and am channeling aliens on my fillings. Rest assured, I am not. It has to do with a petition I horked up like a hairball and some First Amendment gobbledy-gook trampling I whined about.

But, mainly, where we are is? I am having problems and maybe this is just my inner cry-baby, AGAIN! Like, when is it not? I hurt, I have pain. Yeah, we all do. I feel stupid and shitty and lower than low even talking about this. I’ve had and am having, really the most fabulous life, in spite of my start in life and is spite of the shit I brought down on my own head. I really can’t complain. So now, here I am, whining. Doesn’t it just drive you mad?

So, let me try and put it in non-whine terms. There’s lots of ow. Odd ow; sharp and bizarre, like a thousand and one little imps with pointy implements all over my body and in my organs. All of them, including eyes, ears, ear canals, brains, throat, gums, anyplace that has nerve endings. ANY place. I cannot emphasize that enough. Go wild with your imagination. And not just pains. Different sensations, too. Cold, hot, electricity. Everything, except? Nothing. There are times I’m NOT aware of some of the sensations, if I’m directed distracted (another thing I do; word substitution) by something else, or misdirected. Along with all of this is just plain numbness or tingling. If I injure myself, as I did when I burnt my hand on the grill, another part of my hand hurt, not the burnt part. Confused, much? So, I’m describing physical sensations, not whining here.

Lumped in with the physical, but a cross-over to the mental, are sensory inputs. My hearing is completely fucked up. I have always had absolute pitch and I trained my pitch memory in school. 35 years making a living in music has provided an ear that is more a pain in the ass than a gift. The worst thing in the world is listening to music that is out of tune; even a little bit. The basses in the open here are sharp and the tempo at the beginning is a bit fast (a minor quibble) and beside the point. I can’t understand certain things said or written.

Either words sound muffled and rushed; indistinct and slurred, or they have no meaning when I read them and I must read them again, sometimes several times to make sense of them. Sometimes I must ask people to repeat themselves, to the point where I’m embarrassed, or feel brain-damaged when they repeat ever… so… slow… ly. Gah!

So, ears, skin, they no work like they did. Check. Howz about time? Aah, yes, the old sense of time. Wait. Wait, wait. Sense of time is not a physical sense. So, sense of touch, check. Sense of hearing, oh yes. Did I mention the jungle that is constant in my head? The hooting and hollering? Check. Reminds me of the time I worked the swing shift at IBM. There were only about 20 of us at the time and we were scattered around this huge room in a cube farm.

One dead Friday night, around 11 o’clockish, someone hooted. Someone else, way on the other side of the room “awk-awk,” “eek-eek’ed” in return. Pretty soon, it sounded like a Tarzan movie set. I was, as I always seemed to be in these things, the one responsible engineer, on a call, trying to explain, to the caller why it sounded as if we were in the midst of a Jack Hanna extravaganza. I never muted these calls. Whoever had to listen to my calls for Quality Assurance deserved it. Anyway, I have all of that without the break-fix. Just the sound effects. They come and go.

All of this writin’ and rememberin’ is my way of sayin’ I’m tired. I’m tired and I’m sick and I cannot concentrate with the flair and fervor that I used to display. What took me 45 minutes to do, is now taking me 2 days and endless re-writes and backing ups and editings. I hate it. I have lost my lightning-in-a-bottle pizzazz when writing. Maybe, I never had it and I’m only fooling myself. I think not; I know myself pretty well. But, I’m beginning to hate writing and that is scaring me. So, for now, I will write as it “strikes” me. I will still follow and cheer on and participate in every other way. Admittedly, it hasn’t been much of late. But it’s because of “this,” whatever “this” is. I will still play around in SDBN (Now With Added Moms,) too. I love this, I just don’t want to start hating it and I want to do quality, not quantity.

I have recently come a bit farther in the whole “family saga and what do I think” thing, and as wonderful as I think my mother was, I think she wasn’t in many ways, if you get my drift. That’s my bale to tote and I’ll deal with it. I am not feeling bipolar-y in the psychotic break sense, just depressed. I’ll get over it. Depression is nothing new for me. I’ve dealt with it since I was 16. As long as I don’t stay up for a month and try to drink the Dawn dish soap, I’m good. I think sometimes, we need these little setbacks.

JC is 65 and we just got through what could have been a major health problem. He’s diabetic and he had an infection that ran “hot.” Within 24 hours, his right leg from just above his knee, down to his ankle was  swollen and infected. We initially thought it was due to our new Perm-a-Kitty scratching him; but no. She was the hero. He had and infection from the colonoscopy he had done at the local Medical School last June. They were a bit “rough.” WTF?!?!? Probably bumped something. When kitty kneaded his knee, extant infection, spread like wildfire. Of course, get the medical community to admit that. I have promised this man, that after all of his crappy, horrible life, he will end it in light and laughter, or I will make him wish he were dead, so I need to keep that promise. He’s doing ever so much better, but of course, I have to think up ways to keep him amused. I love him beyond reason. He’s a wonder

The other thing? I need to get a handle on this “PD or not-PD,” so to that end, I am going to be hangin’ with my PD buddies, and trying to support some of the stuff that’s going on. There are studies and I think if I push hard enough, through folks like Jim Adams and his wife, Penny Adams. They are founders of  P.A.N.D.A,, a new group that helps people with PD and other movement disorders. Israel Robledo, YumaBev, Parkinson’s Humor, Parkinson’s National Awareness Month and countless other groups and studies. Maybe one of these groups will listen to me. God knows I would love to participate in one of these Motor Disorder studies, preferably with a psychological, musical slant. 

I’d be a veritable Petri dish of interesting finds. I’m just tired of fighting ever-increasing symptoms and trying to keep abreast with everyone else, with all that's going on. It may not seem much, but let's face it. I'm getting old and I'm frayed around the edges, and probably in the middle, too, if we're honest. My sugar gets out of control and I have seizures now. Those are new. I won't get Medicare until March of next year. Just got the paperwork and entered the last 4 numbers of my SSN for my DOB. I believe in saving time. I'm a dumbass. Shit, now I have to interact with an actual person.

So, look at it this way; this isn’t goodbye, this is see ya… less. I hate indecisiveness. Asperger Syndrome, along with some type of stupid Spock bullshit; ain’t no cure for me.

P.S. I've just been informed by Penny Adams that this is Alzheimers/Dementia and Diabetes Awareness month; my bad. Still ain't no cure. I'm sure I have one of the 3.

#ROW80 POST 20 WEDNESDAY CHECK IN - ON ALL HALLOWS EVE

Good times! Good times!

Not appropriately dire enough. It is actually the day before NaNoWriMo commences. So be it. I feel as though I were in a confessional. “Father Angus, it has been 15 days since my last confession, blah, blah, blah.” Due to the fact that I have not written an organized thought since our last #ROW80 check in, unless we included SDBN (Now With Added Moms) which can be viewed here. Although, this may count as more of a PSA and less as an organized thought Maybe this qualifies more appropriately as an A. A.  meeting, sort of...

“Hello, my name is Viola and I am an alcoholic. It’s been 2 years and 4 months since my last drink. I’m slipping into that trend of taking other people’s inventory and forgetting to take my own. Y’know, Step 10? I’ve been down the road where I made amends to everyone and felt better. Steps 8 and 9 and if I left anybody out, I’m really sorry, but I forget a lot…

“About step 7? I’m humble about things, well shortcomings, not about violas and playing them. But yeah, other stuff, yes, I need to be humble about my short and getting ever shorter temper, although this praying to whomever, or whatever, or timeever, whom is out there and hears all this nonsense, you’re doing a Hell of a job because I have patience upon patience when I need it for poor JC. He’s had that vicious, stealthy infection from a few months back. If our new kitty hadn’t just nicked him he’d probably have been very sick indeed. I know I’m digressing. But could you ease up on JC? He’s had a rotten, rotten life. He never knew his real dad. His step father was horrible to him. It was William Faulkner in East Texas.

“He had 4 bad marriages; his last wife was so evil and she and her sons wanted everything he had worked for. He’s a good man. Please, please stop tormenting him. It’s enough he has to put up with my ass.

One grizzled bat, “Betty,” with a really bad, bee-hive bun, interjects, with the voice of a chainsaw, puffing furiously on her Tiparillo and hacking, “Viola, are you going somewhere with this? We’ve heard from you before. You come in here, talking about how you were homeless and how you were in the hospital and in physical therapy for 6 months and you were put there by the brainless twit you lived with after 5 failed marriages. The brainless twit who had an anger management problem. How after 7 years of living with this dolt you managed to get yourself evicted and hospitalized, blah, blah, blah….” Hack, hack, argh.

Her lantern jaw is working furiously, underbite with 3 yellowed teeth, teetering. “And so, now, you’re with another loser. Someone who isn’t going to let you be you.” Air quotes. Now, it’s writing.”

I finally hold up my hand. “Who are you to be taking my inventory?” Betty says, “Isn’t that what you said you do?” I nod my head, “Yes, I did. But you didn’t let me finish, Betty. I hadn’t gotten to the part yet, where I mention that we go through that part where it’s ‘one day at a time?’ Sometimes, it’s 4 hours at a time, or 1 hour. Or maybe 4 minutes.” I look down. My hands are starting to shake, from the stress. I can feel the tremors in my thighs and upper arms. They will pass. I say, “I go back and continually question myself.” I look in her eyes. “You do too, we all do. That’s why we come here. We take the bus, we stumble down here in our walkers, use our canes. But we come. Because we don’t want to do what got us all screwed up anymore.”  Betty stands up, and holds out her arms. I walk over and punch her in the nose. 

Back in the mid-80s, I did a stint in A. A. for 1 year and didn’t drink at all for 14 years. During my 3^rd marriage to the estimable ‘Crapweasel’ (Bill) he told me he didn’t think I was an alcoholic. He also told me he didn’t believe in God or any form of a higher power. I call ‘bullshit’ on both counts. The exchange with Betty is made up of whole cloth, but I have either been in exchanges like this, or witnessed them around the table. A. A. is a wonderful organization. For someone who is sincere and earnest and just starting out it’s great. So, on to #ROW80 and NaNoWriMo tomorrow. Excited, I just hope we can all stay out of the hospital and the mental ward.

#ROW80 POST 17 Wednesday Check in - Tigers and Giants

Well, I wrote what I thought were 2 really killer posts, then I got to today and was supposed to write about goals. The goal fairy, alas, did not materialize, AGAIN. At least in one category, pulling together material for my self-published “biography.” That one’s just laying there like the proverbial lead balloon. NaNoWriMo is starting to germinate, already, though. Cool.

On the physical front, I’ve gained 5 lbs. up from 100 to 105. I must keep stuffing anything that doesn’t walk or isn’t all maggoty, down my craw. Still doing the weird sensory thing, and night terrors, odd perceptions, sleep-talking; a regular 3-ring circus. At least, I haven’t punched myself in the beezer. JC told me he had a dream once, where he ran into a tree. He woke up very abruptly, as he’d punched himself in the nose. 

There was that time I dreamed that JC took a stick and pushed my big toe straight up and it hit me under the chin. I woke up, hollering “Damn it! Don’t do that!” He’d skipped off out of the house and was all the way down at the Sweetbay market, so he didn’t hear me. Boy, does he move fast for a 65-year old man! On that note, I signed up for the National Parkinson's Foundation Webinar, so I have more information as ammo for that neuro Dr. If that doesn't work, I will tie his shoelaces together and steal all those rubber gloves. Hee.

Night terrors, or "sundowning" as it's now called. Whatever the term; it's dismaying. I always loved the night. I was a creature of it. My blue eyes worked better at night and it's certainly better for my skin. But lately I don’t. I’ve been fighting sleep and am back up to staying up to 4 am. I had started going to bed around 10 or 11 pm, but as my “PD or non-PD” symptoms have worsened, I hate the night, but perversely, I won’t sleep. I’m up until 4 am, all anxiety and rage. I have medicine to counteract all of those things, and will take it, and then, fight the sleep. This is stupid and dangerous; I fall asleep in my chair. 

JC says he woke up and I was talking to “Angel” the vampire with a soul, on my computer monitor and was dead asleep. Wearing headphones. JC told me to go to bed; I took off my headphones and went to bed. Gah! New plan. Take the stuff for anxiety, then take the sleep stuff when I lay down. And LAY DOWN, for God’s sake at a decent hour, not 12 days later. That’s what got my happy ass committed last time.

Anyway, it’s Viola v. Viola. Sorta. My FB friend, Viola Weinberg Spencer writes poetry, which you can read here. She is a huge San Francisco Giants fan, and she lives in Northern California. Being ViolaFury, and from Detroit, we’re both excited Violas! Viola is an elegant and wonderful lady. She’s classy and everything I am not. I love her to death. Imagine my surprise and delight to discover that she is a Giants fan and adores baseball.

I also have a Runescape friend named Steve. In game, he’s SergioRomeo. Steve has been a very committed GAINTS fan since I’ve known him, for over 5 years. He’s a GAINTS fan. We’re all GAINTS fans in our Clan. The reason we’re so, is because our Clan founder was dyslexic or couldn’t type and he said “GO GAINTS!” one year. The CC exploded, with lots of disrespectful: “way to go, it’s G-I-A-N-T-S, JZ! Ha Ha”… “Jeeze, my dog could type better than that.”

The ribbing was tame because 1) JZ, our founder, though young, was respected and very dignified and 2) there was a censor, and there was no swearing or anything sexual allowed, because 10 year olds might be offended. The fact that you were supposed to be at least 13 to play was lost on the Gower brothers (creators of RS) but hey, that’s RS.

Whoever wins the World Series is okay with me. In the Spirit of Competition, if I want to douse this in the fabled Gabe Zaldivar of b/r lame-sauce, I could say “Go Tigers.” How about “Go Giants.” I really don’t care. A repeat for the Giants is good. The 1984 Tigers are legendary. Jim Leland, if he wins with the Tigers, will have repeated with the Tigers what Sparky Anderson did with the Tigers in 1984, by winning a World Series Title in both the NL and AL. That’s synchronicity, right there. That’s cool. My late father was a huge Giants fan, as are my dear friends. It’s all good. This is heaven; some competitor I am.

2012 SF Giants Clinch the NLC Pennant, beating the SL Cardinals. 

#ROW80 POST 15 – LET THAT BE YOUR LAST BATTLEFIELD

Apologies to “Star Trek,” the Original series for stealing a season three title. This was a Very Special Episode of Space Racism is Bad and falls under the heading of it’s so bad, it’s good. Thanks to the A.V. Club for reminding me how much I thought it was so important when I was 12.

Okay, during tonight's debate, I had one of my apoplexies brought on by laughter. We were reading the Twitter feed hashtag #fakedebate, mostly for @chuckwendig, Check out his website, terribleminds. Chuck is a terrific writer and funny as hell. I can spend hours and hours wandering around there. I've learned lots, but mostly just laughed. You can kind of tell I haven't really applied too much of his wonderful advice. Maybe NaNo will change that. 

Anyway, yes, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." A few things happened. First, from the Rhomboid, we got the something something something garble about some kind of von Clausewitzian philosophy about diplomacy by any means blabberian thing from Romney alá bayonets and horses and marches to the sea via Georgia or Iran or Syria or Mars.

Romney: "We used to have reed vessels, but we have less of them now, less of them at any time, since 1349. We have fewer planes now, than at any time since 1947.” Or maybe it was the Civil War. Yeah, the Civil War Airplane Collection, now at the Smithsonian. I can dig that.

Me, thinking “I know that’s correct, because that’s when the Army-Air Force dropped the Army-hyphen.”  I know that we also have 

Romney: “Bargle Army, blabber less than during the Punic Wars blah blah. Siege engines, Greek fire… Roman galleys! Triremes!”

I’m thinking… Frankly, I'd tuned out...  When Mr. Obama started to talk, I perked up. The President unloaded with this, and I'm giving you MY patented confuse-a-what impression:

President Obama: " ‘We also have fewer horses and bayonets’. We have these floaty things with big platforms on top. Planes land on them. We also have these ships… (pauses for effect, in his patented way) they go underwater.”

The President gestured with his hands, mimicking something going underwater, much like, oh, I don’t know… a submarine?

I almost fell out of my chair. Then, Twitter exploded. It always does; with this:

What passed for political discourse on Twitter during the debate. Oh, look! There's @YumaBev She just had DBS!

Fuckwhistle? So, of course, I laughed even harder. I'm going to use "fuckwhistle" every chance I get. Fuckwhistle, fuckwhistle fuckwhistle. Okay, enough. I don't want to upset my Dads and Moms. My “PD or not-PD” has been very bad of late. It didn’t help that at the first of the month, all of my hopes were shattered by the specialists I was depending on to help me manage my symptoms. So, I can laugh myself into apoplexy pretty easily; it’s just that much more exciting! And it was fucking hysteria. I’m sorry, that shit right there was a riot. (All of it moves too fast for me to reply, but I sure can laugh.)

So, we moved on. JC and his commentary weren’t helping. Romney continued to dig himself into a giant hole. I think he was aiming for  the other side of the planet. By the time we got to I WAS BORN IN DETROIT, MEXICO, JC had about worn himself out guffawing. I looked at him, shrugged my shoulders and on we went with gabbagool and propaganda. I never know what in the hell I’m hearing anyway. Everything’s at high alert because of my blindness, coupled with my DEFCON5 brain and hooting ears, so I try to pretend that everything’s normal. When I think no one’s looking, I run back and fact-check everything. So, I didn’t realize that we had a huge boner here, until just NOW. Oops.

I do not understand his focus on Russia. Oh wait, yes I do. He, under the auspices of Bain Capital, either helped or encouraged Investment Cartels to underwrite and fund loans to Russia and then sell the paper before the true worth could be realized. I don’t understand it completely; I’m not an economist. I took 2 years of Russian in college, and because I studied it during the USSR and was considered a closed economy, I took a  course in Russian economics; one of my electives.

What Bain Capital did was during a time of great peril for a fledgling democracy, and damn, if a fucking bunch of Capitalists didn’t screw it up. The Commies may have been right. I found a bit of insight into why Russia has the President it does now, when I read a couple of articles. The one was about 2 Russian billionaires, one with ties to Putin. The other is by David Stockman, called “David Stockman v. Bain Capital.” Lots of dots are connected for me, just with those 2 articles and what little rudimentary knowledge I bring to it from university.

Lots of dots are connected for me, just with those 2 articles. Then, after Mittens said what he said? Kept jabbering like a cold warrior about Russia... He’s dangerous. I mean, really dangerous. I also, am no fan of the Israeli PM. Bibi was never moderate. He hates the Arab world with an Old Testament kind of Zionist hatred. He is scary, and I’m not too sure the Knesset is wild about him, either.

Bob Schieffer jumps in… and asks Mitt: “If your good friend Bibi called and said he sent fighters to bomb Iran, what would you do?” I love how Bob Schieffer does this kind of thing; and does it well. He’s an excellent moderator and he’s no dummy.

Mitt proceeds to jabber and wander and hypothesize and say, “I’m not going there” in 50 Shades of Nothing. Then after Mittens meandered around, I blipped out and did the 1,000 yard stare and thought… “This asshole is dangerous. I mean, really really, dangerous. I also am no fan of the Israeli PM. Bibi was never moderate.” What I said to JC was, “Pink socks!” So, moving along out of Boreville. We get back to DETROIT, MEXICO.

Apparently, DETROIT, MEXICO is an INDUSTRY. It is going to be LIQUIDATED. Gosh, I didn’t realize you could annihilate an entire INDUSTRY! But oh wait! Mitt never said that! No, never, never never never never never! Never, so there. But he didn’t like it when President Junior Bush wrote a check and he told him not to. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. President Junior Bush wrote the fucking check, anyway. Garble garble, blah-di-blah. zzzzzzzz.

No, President Junior Bush. This isn't a check for the Detroit, Industry, which I am totally, totally, totally, totally against. This is a baby.

President Obama jumps in and says something that makes sense. They actually say some stuff about how this was all great and wonderful and the debates are all over and la-di-da-de-da-di-da. Jesus, I’m glad they’re over. I already voted, but the Mittster is horrid. Now, we have the election. Twitter will explode again. That’s the bright spot here, folksve the election. Twitter will explode again. That’s the bright spot here, folks!

#ROW80 POST 13 SUNDAY CHECK IN – DYSTONIC DISAMBIGUITY, OR JUST SAY IT ALREADY

Arresting title, isn’t it? I had my first experience with dystonia in my right hand the other day. Dystonia is just a fancy, schmancy word for “cramping” up. But if this is a cramp, it’s an odd one. It’s more like “ball o’ fingers.” Anyway, it went away and life went on. It always seems to do that.

I’ve decided that if I’m going to do this writing thing, I’m going to go whole hog. This dipping a toe in, and then waiting around to see if anyone notices, or goes into a lather, or the world melts, before dipping in another toe is ridiculous. I never really did that as a musician. I just went out and flopped gloriously for a while. I failed auditions right and left and worked at stupid jobs. I played half-assed gigs and started getting better gigs through word of mouth. Better playing and not being so green helped a lot, too. I ripped and snorted my way through the musical world and had a grand time.

After I went back to school for computer science, and was applying for jobs, I received job rejections, due to my lack of experience in the field. Rather than worry about that, I threw my c.v. and GPA and all that good shit out on the Florida jobs network, packed up my wondrous viola, "Wolf" and went on a tour with some half-assed orchestra for a few weeks to make money.

When I came home from the tour, I found out that I had a response from IBM. I interviewed; they hired. I went to work. For the next 3 years, I worked for them. Sometimes in-house; sometimes from the road. Sometimes from my own single-wide. I helped a guy rebuild his utterly hosed O/S2 system on his ThinkPad 360 once. I remember pacing back and forth in my living room, watching the clock; it was 6 am. He had an entire hard drive’s worth of contracts worth millions. I had a plane to catch to Atlanta at 11 AM. This was before anyone saved anything on remote servers. We still had the portable hard drives that smoked and caught fire. Guess what happened to his backed up data? So, we were able to fix his badly scrambled OS/2 system, which was good for our in-house support team. It helped that I knew the difference between system file and a text file. I also knew not to erase my hard drive which is more than I can say for MS Engineer Dave who did that very thing at Verizon. Oops.

Anyway, with all that in mind, instead of just dipping in one or two more toes, I’ve decided to put myself out there and go for it. If we’re going to write, let’s not pussy-foot around. Let’s just get it over with, kind of like when you decided you no longer wanted to be a virgin and any old dick would do. Well, not quite like that. Good thing my folks are not still alive to see that one. Who am I kidding? I really hate ambiguity, almost as much as I hate obfuscation. Yet, sometimes, as much as I try to clarify something, or cut to the chase, or get to the point, I end up with such a tortured phrase, that when I do go back and read it, it either a) means nothing, or b) means something else. The worst of all possible worlds is c) d) and e) ad infinitum, where you return to it, repeatedly and it means something entirely different in a Rashomon-like way, every time! Argh!

So, with no further ado, I have decided at the urging of the lovely and extremely talented Jade Kerrion the author of "Perfection Unleashed" to participate in NaNoWriMo. This NaNoWriMo is a National Writing challenge where one writes 50,000 words in a month, that will, hopefully, turn into a novel when I am all done polishing and waxing. How insane am I? Well, that is a question. Since I am the one who stayed up all of February of this year and was Baker Acted for most of March, which by the way, I remember almost none if, with the ironic exception of St Patrick’s Day, and the last part of March, I guess on that count, I’m fairly qualified. Judging by my past life’s history? I’d say it might be business as usual and a good move for me.

I’ve certainly made some progress in this whole write-o-sphere:

1. 2^nd ROW80 (could be posting more) 

2. Editing essays from past (no, future, Duh) posts Homeless Chronicles in Tampa

3. Start planning out word count for NaNoWriMo

4. Bone up on my "Perfection Unleashed" portion of Jade's Blog Tour! Yes! For January 2, 2013. I am very excited about this. Further updates forthcoming for this portion. She along with, Jess Witkins' Happiness Project are also GoodReads friends, too. As is Amberr Meadows at Like a Bump on a Blog. 

On that note, does anything ever have a completely non-complicated acronym or just words anymore? This whole “PD non-PD” thing is driving me even more batshit. I may as well be typing with my elbows anyway. Dystonia = cramps. Dementia, Delirium = crazy (bipolar.) Tremors = shakes. Enough. Pictures say a thousand words. 

Smooth, even strokes when I move quickly. No tremors.

I slowed my movements down about 10X, you can see the "tremors."

They are not constant. This was done at about 6 pm.

Post 14 is going to be a very special post for a very, very dear friend in memory to another dear person who died recently. You will understand more why this hits close to home after the post. This will be in honor of someone close to me for someone close to my friend. I didn't know this young man, but that is not the point. I still grieve.