Das Tagebuch Murnaus

Far too long since my last post, but it was a busy month or six weeks in there. I eked out some of my vacation and took most Fridays off, I suppose I could get used to a four-day week but certainly not as much gets done.

Aki got home without incident (pity about the 14-hour bus ride to his town from Tokyo, and back again), and I think making the flight by himself really boosted his self-confidence and ability to deal with the unknown. At least, I hope so. Like any 15 year old he has grumpy non-communicative days, and other days where he just amazes me with his insight and intelligence. Now he's in Grade 11, with a full load of demanding courses - Physics, Chemistry, Drafting and Design, and Computer Programming. Next term is English, Social Studies, Math and Auto Mechanics. He says he's planning on Engineering at UVic - if he can maintain the focus, not get distracted and cultivate good study habits, I think he'll make it. I hope so, because he doesn't have the option of becoming a glib nerdy Poli Sci fake-it type like me.

Tuvan Independence Day party went off well, lots of people showed and most of the meat got eaten. shadesofwinter and Blair came with a big ice cream cake with the Tuvan flag on top - printed on a piece of rice paper so we could eat the flag! epexegesis came, I hadn't seen or talked to him in a year or two. It was a nice warm day without too many bugs and afterwards we sat in chairs and watched the meteors come down.

A couple of weeks later my friend Lissa and her kids came to visit from Bainbridge Island. I've known Lissa for 24 years, she was one of my first contacts in Mail Art, back when she was "Phlegm Pets", doing pieces for a zine called Cerebral Discourse that her then boyfriend "Burnt Raisins" and other friend "CDR Rotor" printed on an offset press in a Seattle basement. Her kids are 19 and 15 now. They stayed for a few days and we all climbed Mount Doug, which I hadn't done before. With binoculars and difficulty I picked out our house from the summit.

I got to DJ again, this time in a public place! Recently the goth_vic people have had two chances a month to dress up and go out - "Cabaret Noir" mid month at Logan's and "Boneshaker" near-end-month at Paparazzi. Dan usually plays a lot of vinyl but was getting bored with it, and gave me a chance to play for an hour and a bit at the latter night. I brought a bunch of CDs and had a lot of fun! The best part was playing Nash the Slash's "Dance After Curfew" and getting a really good reaction from people. I hope I can do it again some time.

For the first time in years I went to a Fringe play - a production of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". It was OK, the cast tired hard with some interesting set design (scrim on angular frames that suggested the distorted buildings and perspectives of the film) but no one had any voice control and the sound (drones and the odd "deee-DEEE" to underline moments that were supposed to be scary) was just plain annoying.

Labour Day weekend would have been a lot more fun if, midway through Saturday, I hadn't cracked a big porcelain onlay while eating a chicken salad sandwich. A month before the same thing had happened when I was eating a tortilla chip. At first I thought it was the same tooth, but no it was the neighbour tooth (cracked in 2007 - http://ltmurnau.livejournal.com/157342.html). Still, I couldn't do anything about it until Tuesday - got it fixed all right, then Wednesday I had both toenails removed (I had lost both of them before in accidents, and each time they grew in more lumpy and ingrown, so I thought I would just get them removed once and for all, the scientific way) and I am still gimping around from that, then Thursday more dental indignities (cleaning and grinding). I mean, I'm glad I have a set of teeth in good repair (though many more of these porcelain onlays and my mouth will be on its way to life as a sink) and in a while my feet will be all right, but I was glad to see the end of that week.

The garden died with a whimper. Lots of snow peas came out, and there was some nice spinach and a few turnips, but most other plantings were - not good... radishes bolted, cabbage disappointing, onions flowered, and deer at lots of things. But the apple tree is loaded down - not so the pear, but next year should be good for it. I wonder what I should plant on the plot to save it from going back to sod during the winter, I'd like to do a bit less digging to prepare it this time.

Not a great deal of gaming done, but I am selling and trading a few items. I took Virtualia and pulled it apart into basic, intermediate and advanced versions, so that an acquaintance at McGill University could try and use it in his classroom. If it works and there is some kind of lesson from it we might make a presentation on it at the fall 2011 meeting of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies, in Ottawa. Hope so.

And, you know, I think I am really starting to like instrumental surf music.

Ten years ago tonight I was run over by a car in a crosswalk near my home, as I was on my way home from work. My left leg was mangled below the knee and it took a long time to get well. I think all my kollim ridders know the story but if you don't, go here (http://www.islandnet.com/~ltmurnau/text/news1999.htm) and read forward. If you dare.

There's not much else to be said, as by now my leg is about the way it will always be (except for the arthritis). But things are better now; after a lot of angst and pain my son is again living with me, and in a few weeks I will no longer have to walk across the very spot I got hit, Every. Single. Night.

I grind my teeth. A lot. I have a night guard, but I usually don't wear it. Monday night I was eating supper (chicken burger) when I got a pain in my lower left molar - most of it had cracked off and, I'm afraid, been swallowed.

One painful day later, the dentist put a patch of cement on it, told me not to chew on anything, and said to come in next Friday (ten days hence). Immediately, I noticed how much everyone around me was enjoying chewing things - pizza crusts, nails, gum sandwiches, etc..

I'm now on a fairly liquid diet - yogurt (which I dislike), applesauce, mature bananas, and I made a big lentil soup last night - but I wonder if I can make a hamburger smoothie for Canada Day.

I hate my teeth.

The remaining swelling did not faze the Doc (or should I call him the Dent?) and we boogied at 8 am sharp. After 45 minutes he had drilled open the leaky filling on my 2-5 (left forward upper bicuspid), pulled out the old gutta-percha (whatever that is), drilled out the canal to a nice roundy circle instead of a flattish bacteria-admitting oblong, cleaned and restuffed it, and put in a temporary filling.

After a break he cut open my gum, sucked out all the putrid nastiness, did something to the top of my tooth, installed a cap to seal off the end, and sewed me up. He told me that the bacteria had been up there for a couple of years, eating away at the jawbone, so there was a big hole in the bone there now and the only reason why I had pain at this point was because there was nowhere else for the nasty stuff to go.

So, I am OK to travel to Phoenix and when I get back I will have the sutures out and a proper filling done. Then that should be it, until some ruffian punches me at that exact point and caves in my entire skull....

My pain is a little less today, but I still had a bad night. I am staying home from work today because my left cheek swelled up to twice the size of the right, and I look like a Poster Child for Something. ( Evidence behind the cut. )

Hopefully I will look less like a bespectacled pumpkin by Monday morning, which is when the dentist will clear this up for me once and for all (I hope).

"Hungry-angry"...is how Mxo describes my mood when I come home with lowered blood sugar, too much coffee flowing through my veins (and out my ears some days) nothing to eat but one cookie since my meagre lunch, and a bus ride full of fatuous, all-too-audible Other People. Now I don't even get that cookie.

SITUATION:
I weighed myself on the weekend and I weigh as much now as I ever have (not too much more, but I won't tell you how much).

MISSION:
I have to lose some weight. 10-15 pounds, anyway.

EXECUTION:
The method will be the same as friend John used to drop 30 pounds earlier this year when it was crucially important he do so, as fast as possible.

+ Cut out sugar completely, or at any rate refined sugar - fruit still OK except for certain things like grapes.
+ Cut back somewhat on carbs like potatoes, rice and pasta but don't try to cut them out entirely. I know, the Atkins diet is theoretically appealing to me because one could live on whiskey and sausages while on it, but I'm sorry, I cannot expunge starch from my life.
+ Reduce portions at each meal, and eat five snack-size meals during the day instead of two or three bigger ones. Do not skip meals. The body uses calories much more efficiently this way.

SERVICE SUPPORT:
Every time I talk about dieting Mxo tries to nix it on the grounds it will cost more. I have never been able to understand how eating less will cost more, unless methamphetamine was somehow involved (and it's not, my rubber band's twisted up tightly enough without extra "cranking").

COMMUNICATION:
From time to time I will whinge about how it's going. If I give up I won't even mention it. But right now, it's amazing to me how not eating sugar is changing my mood - of course, the way sugary things would change my mood when I ate them (especially ice cream) was also beginning to concern me. I have felt starved all day though I've eaten enough. I wonder how long it will take to exorcise the Sugar Demon.

To hell with that other rant about video games and dearth of imagination. I'm too tired and you could fill in the blanks yourself. Maybe I should feature Guest Ranters in this LJ, though I would hope the comment feature takes care of that.

Night before last Aki and I played a story-telling game with a set of picture cards I had found some time ago, and the imagination he displayed fills me with hope that he won’t be another uncreative lump. But he is having a lot of problems expressing himself clearly, and I hope his teachers will be able to take that “language deficit”, as they call it now, into account.

I'm so tired today. I thought I couldn't sleep because of the hot weather, but I think it is because of (yes, again) constant pain. I can't sleep on my back and with a broken right foot I now have two sore legs, so I am tossing and turning all night. Grinding my teeth to boot which gives me a sore head. I could take painkillers but they make me goony (or goonier).

If I were a horse I'd be several bottles of Elmer's Glue by now.

Poor, poor pitiful me... [Who else remembers that stupid picture of Linda Ronstadt trying to cook a meal in her kitchen wearing a bathing suit and roller skates? Pure 1970s kitsch.]

I. Am. In. Severe. Pain. Ow.

Yesterday I was doing pretty well, got home from work and had dinner and things, but after taking a shower my foot really started to hurt and would not calm down. I took two Emtecs (like Tylenol 3 but without the caffeine, so you can sleep) and it did no good at all. It was a constant burning pain that was centred over the broken bone in my foot but also going up and down my leg. I tried calming exercises and visualising the pain as just heat, and imagining the bone knitting itself back together and feeling better, but it did not work for more than a few minutes at a time.

So I got absolutely no sleep last night and I am staying home from work today. I stayed in bed all morning, just got up to check my e-mail and make this entry, then I am getting back off my foot. Perhaps I just overdid it yesterday and need to rest the foot - I hope things are not shifting around or breaking/chipping in new ways. My doctor is off on vacation until Monday as well, so no help there. Meanwhile, I have painkillers so I can at least get a little sleep.

Anne met me after work with a very welcome coffee, after I joked that if the day went any slower I would start snorting lines of Nescafe off my keyboard. We sat in the back yard of St. Anne's and talked, and then went and had ice cream at Liberty Java. She is a dear and is accorded ShorDurPerSav status until further notice (= Short Duration Personal Saviour, a SubGenius Church term for anyone who helps you whether you know it or not. The person who takes away the drink that will make you vomit before you drink it, the surgeon who gives you the amputation you really need, and the cousin who shared the last watermelon Popsicle with you are all examples of ShorDurPerSavs. Anne, by ending my caffeineless afternoon, is a pretty clear-cut example.).

I will take it dead easy today and hopefully will be better tomorrow - I have a meeting with my lawyer in the morning, a chinwag with my boss in the afternoon (Check: tie on straight? Shoes shiny? Extra clip of 9mm ammo?) and Gothvic coffee.

I hate having broken bones. This is entirely unsolicited, non-consensual pain and I do not want it.

OW. And that's my final word for today.

Last night was Hodgepodge at Second Story Cafe. I went with Eve - I wore my black Sun Yat-Sen jacket and pants, with a couple of school badges I'd picked up in Kudamatsu. Eve did my eyebrows up with black - unfortunately did not get the sweeping Emperor Penguin effect I wanted.

Attendance unfortunately quite sparse, and I am not sure why. Gray (DJ) said as far as he knew this was the only all-ages event in town that night. Well, I suppose it was just a question of getting the word out, and pitching it right - a lot of the music Gray was playing was popular around the time these all-ages kids might have been in diapers, which doesn't make it irrelevant (I loved what he was playing) but then again they didn't grow up with it. But we tried, and some of us had a lot of fun!

Two unfortunate things happened. There's a raised stage at the end of the cafe and I stumbled as I hopped up onto it to complete the evolutions of the Hamtaro Theme Song Dance, landing with the side of my right foot on the edge of the stage with most of my weight. Ow ow ow. I spent the rest of the night moving around gingerly. I put some ice on it then but today I have a big swollen purple bruise over most of the top of my foot. It just aches a bit if I don't put any weight on it, but I need a cane to walk. I went to the walk(hobble)-in clinic and the doc says he thinks something inside might be broken, but as it's Sunday I have to wait until tomorrow morning for an X-ray to make sure.

Please please please don't let me have any broken footbones. I know there are lots of them but they are all tiny, I can get along with a couple of damaged ones, really I can. If it's bad I'll have to go into a cast or something and this is going to seriously derail the rest of my summer, particularly the trip to Nevada. I will be EXTREMELY annoyed if I have to cancel that, after seven months of preparation and spending time and $$$ on getting ready.

So, is this some kind of punishment for me, for daring to enjoy myself for even a little while?

I don't want to start any blasphemous rumours...
But I think God's got a sick sense of humour
And when I die, I expect to find Him laughing

Or we can quote Danny Elfman (I used to sing this one to myself in advance of each surgery):

I'm so happy, dancing while the
Grim Reaper cuts cuts cuts
But he can't get me...

The other unfortunate thing was that a couple of drunk/stoned jocks came in, caused a disturbance on the landing, got hustled out and ended up kicking the lock off the door. I think the Second Story folks were not pleased. Arseholes.