#ROW80 SUNDAY CHECK IN - POST 11 – RUNNING TO THE STORE, MCGYVER STYLE

As one of my readers pointed out recently, “I don't know that this qualifies as a check in,” therefore, you can certainly apply much the same to this post if not more. I must be a slow learner. I really try to write 750 words every day. I do, but they're usually comments, remarks to trolls, chat room conversations and I'm pretty sure all of that drivel is not going to add up to a lasting body of work. It's more like graffiti on the internet's bathroom walls, and usually not so polite.

I'm fairly certain this is NOT a contribution to Arts and Letters throughout the Ages.

Not to change the subject, but I hope these yahoos made some money from this post. I certainly didn't. "Playing the Violin, and How to Avoid It," was one of the funnier things I've written.

You can tell the folks at the Algonquin Round Table would have revoked my privileges, had they still been around and if I had ever graced their presence and this were 19__ whatever.

So, today, I had a mini-odyssey. There have been many changes here lately. Some good, some not so. With the death of Kevin, his ALF is finally keeping their residents close to home; it's just a shame someone had to die before they started doing their job. The new laundry is open, so we no longer look like refugees from the Eastern Front in WWII. The have installed a new Express bus line; the Green line and until June the 7^th, customers ride free. I was going to take advantage of this. We get paid tomorrow and our fridge turned up it's toes and died a slow and stinky death, so everything had to go.

We're replacing in stages, but we have to cut corners for a bit. I had a couple of prescriptions due today and I was going to take advantage of the freebie bus. Well, shit. The damn thing doesn't run on weekends, so I walked to the local Sweetbay, which is a mile. I can do this easily, in spite of all this hair-on-fire warnings about COPD, congestive heart failure, PD, blah, blah, blah. I am one strong, and tough ox. Seriously; even with the falling down and blindness. Seriously, I walk fast and easy and I can walk forever; it's probably metabolic or something. My knowledge of physical fitness is abysmal. Unfortunately, my dollar store shoe couldn't keep up, so I had to limp-hop across the HOTTER THAN HELL BLACKTOP.

How do you market this? Here they are in Pumpkin Gulag. They started out in the front of the store, scaring the bejesus out of the customers. I thought we'd wandered into Frankenstein's lab. They were a whopping 6 bucks a piece. They did not sell in time for Halloween. Over time, they kept moving farther and farther back, their prices dropping. First to 3.49 each, then the dollar you see here. They were so forlorn. I felt so sorry for them. Poor pink pumpkins. Jim, the produce guy and he of the shirt-and-tie now, said they just showed up on the truck and it fell to them to market them. People thought they were mutants. They tried to tie them in with "Breast Cancer" somehow, but that flopped. I was never sure if they meant, "these will give you breast cancer, or cure it, or we will donate to breast cancer." They ended up cutting one in half to show people they were "safe." I wonder what the geniuses at central distribution will send them this year.

Jim, the wonderful pink-pumpkin guy is now wearing a shirt and tie and works up front. I can think of no one better. He is an endless supply of enthusiasm and professionalism and one of my favorite go-to people, along with Casey, Paula and the Manager Josh Hamilton, who has known me from day one, when I went to the homeless shelter. Jim's solution, when I entered the store with my broken shoe, was to offer me a riding cart. I just looked at him. He said, “yeah, I didn't think you were going to go for that.” So, I shuffled off to the Pharmacy and got my prescriptions.

Sweetbay has just been bought out by Winn-Dixie, but the people at my store are going to stay. Yay!

I picked up the few other things we needed, and while I was in the line to pay, I had a brainstorm. I saw Jim and Josh and said “Hey, do you guys have any duct tape?” They looked at each other. “For my shoe.” I explained. Jim rustled some up and I took my stuff up to the front of the store and bent over. Here I am with my underpants hanging out, bent over. I stood up. “I am so going to end up on You Tube.” These guys have seen me playing “Air whackamole guitar” in the rice aisle. I was getting' down, lost in the moment, but got that eerie feeling you get when someone is looking at you, but you can't see them (I ignore cameras) and I turned around. This guy was standing behind me, grinning. I said, “Oh, I am so sorry.” He said, “I'm in no hurry. Party on.”

Wrong clan and wrong instrument and wrong number of people, but too cool to pass up. 

So now, I managed to get my foot up on the newspaper stand and wrap duct tape around it a few times and tear it off. “There! Now, I'll be able to get home, without dragging my foot like Igor, Dr. Frankenstein's assistant. Now, Jim you just keep being great.” Jim, ever the comedian, says, “First I have to start being great.” This is seriously the best grocery store, ever. Because the spice aisle is jointly run by the CIA and the KGB and the whole place treats all the bizarros with complete aplomb, I feel right at home. I took the regular bus home, and had to beat feet, to avoid one of the many neighborhood Lotharios. Ick. JC is watching the SyFy "Piranhaconda" movie. I can't miss that.

#ROW80 1ST QUARTER POST 2 – WITH NO PARTICULAR TOPIC IN MIND…

I have several things running through my mind, or maybe none. Today has been one of those days where I seem to have too much of something, or maybe nothing. Or if it’s something, it’s something that is so negligible in import as to be, well, negligible; minute. On the sub-atomic level. Actually, I haven’t been able to concentrate on one God-damned thing for more than 5 seconds all day. This is ADHD full out and rampant at its worst. This is about the time, the bipolar shift kicks in and I’m in that manic phase. It’s getting close to the one year anniversary of the Great, “Stay Up All of February & Have a Psychotic Break!” 

This year, I’m prepared. So, looking good with all my head meds and good vibes. This is also the same time after the psychotic break that I don’t remember along with the Bonus Mental Hospital Committal that my physical symptoms of “PD or non-PD, that is the question” (hear me, Tampa-USF-shrink-chuckleheads, hmmm?) began. They have trebled in severity since that time. The symptoms, not the chuckleheads. 

But, I’m doing great; I’m happy and I’m in a wonderful place. I have friends and I have a purpose in life. My purpose in life is to illuminate, rant, amuse and just be a general pain in the ass to whoever will be bothered to spend 5 minutes reading my blabberings. I stopped writing for a while, because, frankly, the tremors have gotten rough. Along with that, I have lots and lots of mental “fugue states” for want of a better term. I do have some dementia, too.

It makes writing a supreme pain in the ass and I was hating it. Just hating writing anything. It became this monumental struggle. What should take me 45 minutes, was taking me a day and a half. Without any type of diagnosis or treatment for neuro-muscular disorder, I can barely function at 1/10 speed. So, I pretty much stopped writing and barely visited my buddies online. I hate running around online and presenting all of this, so I just kind of drop off of the face of the earth, which isn’t right, either. But, there it is.

I’ve adopted a “regimen” of sleeping 10 or as much as 12 hours a day, which has helped me tremendously. I’ve been eating as well as I possibly can. My weight is holding at 100 lbs. I take all of my vitamins and meds. My primary doctor and my psychiatrist have been working with me and I am enrolled in a couple of these programs where the drug companies pay for the most expensive drugs. In March, I will be covered under Medicare and *fingers crossed* going to the Center of Excellence study at USF where they are funding Parkinson’s Disease studies.

So, enough of my bullshit. My friend, Sundae Rye (visit his website at: http://sundaeryestudio.com/ and follow him on Twitter @SundaeRye) and I are "pen pals" (email pals?) Sundae is one of the most gifted and out there people I’ve had the great good fortune to run across. He’s a superb writer, illustrator and designer. He's funny as hell, and spurs me to new heights of… I don’t know, lunacy? My latest is “blahbernation.” Instead of “hibernation.” So, Sundae thought that was pretty cool. He used it in such a way though, like, “The United States of Blahbernation.” So, I’m here to say now, if that shit takes off? Sundae Rye gets first dibs on it. It’s his copyright. Do check him out; his books are awesome and wonderfully skewed, as is his artwork.  

I wonder what the flag to that country would look like? The national anthem would be: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, sung in the key of E#. No words, just eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Imagine the national bird. A parakeet? Nah. A wren. Yeah, we could have fun with this.

"What? Me, blah?" or, Alfred E. Blah

That’s really about it; although I did have another one of my crazy, fun trips to my grocery store, yesterday. I must correct an omission. When I wrote the post for Thanksgiving about the pink pumpkins, I mentioned two of the men who work at the store in produce. One gentleman is named Casey and I named him. The other gentleman, who is also a very fine man is named Jim, and I omitted his name, not out of negligence, but because I didn’t know his name. For that I am sorry. I told him about that post and he read it and we finally introduced ourselves to one another. So, Jim! Thank you! You valiantly wrangled those pink pumpkins!

YEEHAA!!!!!!

I love that store and the people who work there are awesome. Jim in produce is one of the more awesome among the group. I’ve been going to that market since I was first homeless and they’ve always been terrific. I’m there 3 times a week and it’s always fun to visit. It takes me 6 hours to shop.

I’m still not too sure about what goes on in the spice aisle though. The cake and brownie mixes are also in that aisle, across from the spices, and every time I go to get some yellow cake or brownie mix, there is covert activity. This time, it was a guy whispering into a cell phone. When he saw me coming, he hung up quickly and grinned sheepishly. He sort of hovered for a minute and then said, “Where’s the complete spice?” All Spice? I asked him, trying to be helpful. Nope, he insisted there was a “complete” spice. He never did find it and left, muttering about going to Publix. Okay, guy. I do hope he found what he needed. Not too freaky, but for the fact that his twin came by, not 2 seconds later, and we had to re-enact "Ground Hog Day." I got to do the Bill Murray part. Geeze o pete. Once again, I grabbed my brownies and skipped on out of there!

So, Row 80 starts up again on the 9^th of January. I’m glad to be back at it, but I need to try and figure out what my real goals are and what I am really trying to do. I’m 57, have had 2 different careers and am not really sure what I want to do next. I don’t want to be like my father, who found himself on disability at the age of 48. I think that was mostly by his choice. He did try to go back to work after what was a crippling heart attack, but he didn’t last long in the work-a-day world. He died 11 years later, after living pretty much the way he had always lived; heedless and unaware of what his own lifestyle and incapacitation would do to those around him who loved him.

As an only child, I was crushed when he died in his sleep, unexpectedly. I was 31. But, in truth, he outlived my prediction. I had last seen him at his mother’s funeral in 1985 and I really thought he would not live out the year. He out-lasted my prediction by 1 and ½ years. When he was first out on disability, he had mentioned something about law school, which he could easily have done, as smart as he was. It would have taken him 4 years. I have been on disability for almost 2 years. I take care of myself, but really, none of us knows when our time will come. I think I just answered my own question.